Almost 30 housing and mortgage-related organizations midweek issued an open letter to the White House and Congress, asking that policymakers make permanent several changes to operations of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, fearing that the “stability” of the U.S. housing market is “illusory.”
One housing lobbyist dismissed the bill as misguided, adding: “This is like someone laying on their death bed after drinking and sinning and finally realizing they need to get baptized.”
The Urban Institute advocates dropping the debt-to-income cap for qualified mortgages to level the playing field between the government-sponsored enterprises and the private market.
Two federal government agencies have reopened the debate over the use of a disparate-impact analysis to show discrimination against protected classes. It’s unclear how much the agencies can do in reworking their regulations, or how aggressive they will be in taking up cases based on the theory.
Mortgage lenders that rely on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac for liquidity have a simple message for policymakers in Washington regarding what to do about the government-sponsored enterprises: Leave them alone. The two are working just fine.
First-time homebuyers accounted for over half of the purchase-money mortgages securitized by Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and Ginnie Mae during the second quarter of 2018, according to a new analysis of mortgage-backed securities data by Inside Mortgage Finance. [Includes four data charts.]
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