Consumer advocates are pushing for changes that could impact the non-agency market, including raising concerns about the use of Federal Home Loan Bank advances and calling for revisions to standards for qualified mortgages. In a letter this month to the Federal Housing Finance Agency, a group of 136 consumer advocates were critical of Starwood Property Trust’s recently disclosed use of FHLBank advances to fund acquisitions of non-QMs. Starwood is a real estate investment ...
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 ...
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have been approved to once again participate in the low income housing tax credit program aimed at affordable rental housing, but their share will be limited as to not impede on the private market.
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