Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Mel Watt is prepared to allow Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to build some type of capital buffer to avoid a Treasury draw that could weaken investor confidence. But some lawmakers vehemently disagreed with his views during a hearing in the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee this week. Watt reiterated his concern about the declining capital buffer, which is scheduled to reach zero by 2018 under the preferred stock purchase agreements that set the terms of the conservatorships of the two government-sponsored enterprises. With no capital buffer, Fannie and Freddie would be forced...

The Republican effort to reform many aspects of the Dodd-Frank Act was approved by the House Financial Services Committee last week on a party-line vote. The Financial CHOICE Act will likely be approved by the full House at some point, but DFA reform doesn’t appear to be a priority in the Senate. The House panel approved H.R. 10, the Financial Creating Hope and Opportunity for Investors, Consumers and Entrepreneurs Act, on a 34-26 vote after a three-day markup ...

Appropriation levels for FHA and Ginnie Mae from the previous fiscal year were unchanged in the FY 2017 omnibus spending bill, which President Trump signed into law on May 5. The bill, which passed the House by a 309-118 vote and the Senate by a 79-18 vote on May 4, will fund the federal government through the rest of the fiscal year ending Sept. 30, 2017. Among other things, the bill allocates $400 billion to single-family guarantee commitments under the FHA Mutual Mortgage Insurance Fund, and provides $130 million for administrative contract expenses. In addition, the budget provides an additional $30 million if guaranteed loan commitments exceed $200 billion. The agreement also sets aside up to $30 billion for FHA multifamily and specialized loan guarantees during FY 2017. A total of $55 million was set aside for housing counseling programs, $65.3 million for fair housing activities, and $4 million to ...

Federal Housing Finance Director Mel Watt this week expressed strong reluctance to allow Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to be forced to take another draw on their Treasury line of credit. “FHFA has explicit statutory obligations to ensure that each enterprise ‘operates in a safe and sound manner’ and fosters ‘liquid, efficient, competitive and resilient national housing finance markets,’” Watt testified in a hearing at the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Development Committee. “To ensure that we meet these obligations, we cannot risk...

BlackRock this week joined with most other industry participants recommending that housing-finance reform include an explicit government guarantee for mortgage-backed securities backed by conventional home loans. The asset manager also highlighted the need to respect the rights of investors, ensure fungibility of the existing government-sponsored enterprise MBS in any new system and provide transparency at all levels. “This includes transparency regarding loan origination, securitization, and access to the secondary market,” said BlackRock. “We believe the role of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac as they exit conservatorship should be clearly defined in any new housing finance system.” The firm suggested...

The Trump administration’s tax-reform plan could boost home sales somewhat, though the National Association of Realtors and National Association of Home Builders have raised significant concerns about the treatment of deductions. At the end of April, the Trump administration released a one-page outline for reforming federal taxes. It calls for doubling the standard deduction to $24,000, maintaining the mortgage interest deduction and repealing the deduction for state and local taxes. William Brown, president of NAR, said the plan would effectively eliminate...

The House Financial Services Committee last week spent three days marking up the Republican majority’s alternative to the Dodd-Frank Act. H.R. 10, the Financial CHOICE Act, introduced late last month by committee Chairman Jeb Hensarling, R-TX, would make a number of changes to the mortgage regulatory landscape. One provision would provide a safe harbor against litigation for residential mortgages held on the lender’s balance sheet since the origination of the loan if the mortgage fails to comply with ability-to-repay requirements. The measure also would revise the definition of “points and fees” under the Truth in Lending Act to exclude fees paid for affiliated business arrangements. Other language in the bill would exempt smaller creditors from TILA’s escrow requirements. Another provision ...

As the House Financial Services Committee prepared to begin marking up the Financial CHOICE Act last week, the Consumer Mortgage Coalition warned lawmakers that the bill would actually interfere with fixing the problems with the CFPB’s mortgage rules, despite the improvements it would otherwise make in the regulatory landscape. “A major problem facing the mortgage industry today is the Rube Goldberg morass of CFPB regulations that are so poorly written that no one knows how to comply,” the CMC said in a letter to lawmakers prior to the hearing. “The mortgage markets will not heal until the CFPB mortgage regulations are fixed. Fixing the regulations requires revising them through the normal notice and comment rulemaking process.” The problem, however, is ...

Rep. Andy Barr, R-KY, last week re-introduced the Portfolio Lending and Mortgage Access Act (H.R. 2226), legislation that aims to expand access to mortgage credit by conferring qualified mortgage status upon loans originated by a bank and held in portfolio. The bill sponsor also hopes that it will discourage the practices that led to the 2008 financial crisis and the resulting taxpayer bailouts of Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and too-big-to-fail financial institutions. The legislation had some bipartisan support when Barr introduced it in the previous Congress, passing the U.S. House of Representatives by a vote of 255-174. However, the measure never made it out of the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee. Supporters hope this time around will be ...

The House Financial Services Committee passed the updated version of the Financial CHOICE Act, which includes a new provision that lets the president fire the director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency at will and makes Congress responsible for setting the agency’s budget. The CHOICE Act 2.0 removed the original text, which recommended restructuring the agency to a five-member board. So while the current single-directorship structure would be maintained, the FHFA director can be asked to vacate the position by the president at any time. FHFA Director Mel Watt’s five-year term ends in early 2019. The provisions in this Republican bill would make widespread changes to the Dodd-Frank Act, but...