Sheila Bair, who resigned as Fannie board chair earlier this year, said the GSEs are ready to exit conservatorship.

The former FHFA director said, given the Federal Reserve’s commitment to fight inflation, home prices could fall by double digits in percentage terms over the next few years.

Conservative economist Douglas Holtz-Eakin said the Federal Reserve’s exit from the MBS market is helping drive up interest rates in the affordable housing space. The remedy, he said, is GSE reform.

FHFA and Treasury haven’t discussed how to make the 2021 changes to the PSPAs permanent or whether to ease the capital requirements for the GSEs.

The Federal Housing Finance Agency acting director said there are lots of questions that must be answered before Fannie and Freddie can exit government supervision.

Biden’s FHFA nominee Sandra Thompson has made it clear that the agency can’t end the conservatorships without help from the Departments of Treasury and Justice and, most importantly, Congress itself.

Don Layton believes the new 2022 loan limits will cause home prices to increase even more, but the politicization of the housing-finance system makes it unlikely FHFA will be able to do anything about it.

In her first long-form interview since taking over as FHFA acting director, Sandra Thompson insisted that expanding the GSEs’ books of business won’t make them riskier.

Sen. Pat Toomey, R-PA, and NAMB President Kimber White each grade the brief performance of FHFA’s acting director.

The changes would reduce Fannie’s and Freddie’s capital requirements and increase incentives to issue CRT transactions.