In addition to controversial changes in the treatment of housing-related tax breaks, the fast-moving Senate tax reform bill includes provisions that could disrupt the mortgage servicing business. The Senate was scheduled to vote on the legislation by the end of the week.

A former FHA commissioner has recommended raising the agency’s capital reserve ratio to 3 percent, to make FHA stronger and more resilient. Carol Galante, who served two years as FHA commissioner and assistant secretary for housing in the second term of the Obama administration, laid out her proposal along with other recommendations in a paper that she co-authored. Housing-finance reform without a retooled FHA could threaten families’ access to homeownership and increase risk to taxpayers, contrary to the goals of reform, said Galante, currently the faculty director of the Terner Center for Housing Innovation at University of California Berkeley. In her paper, Mission Critical: Retooling FHA to Meet America’s Housing Needs, Galante spelled out the changes necessary to help FHA perform its complementary and countercyclical role in the nation’s housing markets. Galante called for ...

Last week, the House Financial Services Committee approved several bills that would override the CFPB on some of its key mortgage-related rulemakings. The voting included the passage of H.R. 1153, the Mortgage Choice Act of 2017, which would exclude from the ability-to-repay calculation of points and fees insurance and taxes held in escrow and fees paid to affiliated companies as a result of their participation in an affiliated business arrangement. The bill passed by a recorded vote of 46 ayes and 13 nays. Jaret Seiberg, an analyst with Cowen Washington Research Group, said in a client note, “This would permit lenders to work with affiliate title insurers without worrying about the points-and-fees cap.” Another measure that survived the legislative gauntlet ...

Last week, the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs committee endorsed a handful of legislative provisions related to mortgage financing, including a measure that tackles one aspect of the CFPB’s integrated-disclosure rule under the Truth in Lending Act and the Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act.One section of the still-to-be-named bill would remove the three-day waiting period required for the combined TILA/RESPA mortgage disclosure if a creditor extends to a consumer a second offer of credit with a lower annual percentage rate. It also would express the sense of Congress that the CFPB should provide clearer, authoritative guidance with respect to certain issues. A separate section deals with escrow requirements for certain consumer credit transactions. These provisions would provide an ...

More Industry Advice for a Post-Cordray CFPB. Competitive Enterprise Institute financial policy expert John Berlau said last week, “Richard Cordray’s impending resignation as director of the CFPB is long overdue.... Growth of CFPB Leveling Off. The total number of employees at the CFPB came to 1,668 for fiscal year 2017, up 20 positions from the year before, according to the bureau’s latest financial statements for the last two years.... GAO Signs Off on CFPB Financial Statements. The Government Accountability Office audited the CFPB’s financial statements for fiscal years 2016 and 2017, and found they are “presented fairly, in all material respects, in accordance with U.S. generally accepted accounting principles.”...

With the Senate and the House having both recently released their tax proposals, it’s the House plan to cut corporate taxes in 2018 that would impact the GSEs by threatening their deferred tax assets. A corporate tax cut would likely force Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to take draws from the U.S. Treasury. This is especially true in light of the fact that by Jan. 1, 2018, neither GSE will be allowed to hold a capital buffer to absorb any losses. A cut to corporate taxes means a write down of some Fannie/Freddie DTAs, including mortgage-related assets, allowances for bad loans, derivatives-related basis differences and deferred fees, which are all currently held at a higher tax rate.

With several recent hearings on sustainable housing finance under its belt, the House Financial Services Committee appears to be exploring GSE reform in depth, but no word yet on when and what that may look like. The HFSC’s Subcommittee on Insurance and Housing held three hearings over a three-week period with the latest taking place last week. A financial services committee staffer wouldn’t confirm whether a piece of legislation is being worked on, but she said that committee Chair Jeb Hensarling, R-TX, believes housing finance reform is a priority for the committee this Congress.

Three analysts at Wells Fargo Securities discussed in a new report this week what could happen to the agency MBS market as a result of pending tax reform, one version of which was passed by the U.S. House of Representatives this week. As always, the devil is in the details; hence, the bitter in-fighting among entrenched interests on Capitol Hill.

Republican leaders in the Senate detailed their tax reform legislation late last week, with some differences compared with the bill making its way through the House. While the Senate bill would leave the existing mortgage interest deduction largely untouched, participants in the housing industry raised a number of other concerns.

Industry stakeholders are increasingly dour on the prospect of Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Mel Watt acting to rectify the government-sponsored enterprises’ capital buffer issue before yearend, but there’s growing hope that bipartisan reform legislation might be enacted next year.