- Enterprise Community Partners made comments to the Senate Finance Committee’s Community Development and Infrastructure Tax Reform Working Group, as part of a New Market Tax Credit Coalition, which is calling for preservation of the credit as it has been critical to the development of affordable housing.
- Federal Housing Finance Agency finds, after studying the matter, “no compelling economic reason” to change the guarantee fees charged by Fannie May and Freddie Mac. FHFA’s review focused on reaching an appropriate balance between FHFA’s statutory obligations to: 1) ensure the safety and soundness of the Enterprises, and 2) foster a liquid national housing finance market.
Tag Archives: Senate
Thursday’s Advocacy & Think Tank Round-up
- Brookings Institution Spring 2015 Brookings Panel on Economic Activity Research Paper: Risk Management for Monetary Policy Near the Zero Lower Bound Concludes that It Is Better if Interest Rates Stay Low Rather than be Raised Too Soon.
- Center on Budget and Policy Priorities Report: Highlights How President Obama’s Budget Will Restore 67,000 Housing Vouchers lost During the 2013 Sequestration
- Federal Reserve Board’s Division of Research & Statistics and Monetary Affairs, Report: Crowding out Effects of Refinancing on New Purchase Mortgages, Concludes that High Credit Risk Borrowers Get Approved for Mortgage Loans Nire often When Interest Rates are High.
- The Federal Reserve Board’s Consumer and Community Development Research Team evaluated the success of Neighborhood Stabilization Program in, Have Distressed Neighborhoods Recovered?
- New Climate Economy Report: Provides Comprehensive Estimates of the Costs of Sprawl and Potential Benefits of Smart Growth, Describes Planning and Market Distortions that Foster Sprawl, and Smart Growth policies that can help correct these distortions.
- National Association of Realtors Letter to Senators Delany (D-MD) and Others Thanking them for Re-Introducing the Partnership to Strengthen Home Ownership Act, which would Reform the Housing Finance System
Tuesday’s Regulatory & Legislative Round Up
- Representative Delany (D-MD) and Others Recently Re-Intoroduced The Partnership to Strengthen Homeownership Act, originally introduced in July 2014, The Act Promises to Reform Housing Finance, Strengthen Affordable Housing and Reduce Taxpayer Risk
- Senator Charles Schumer and Others recently Sent a Letter Urging Congress to Allocate at Least $35 Million to Fund the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Section 4 Capacity Building and Affordable Housing Program
- The Energy Savings and Industrial Competitiveness Act, Recently Introduced Into the Senate, Would Invite Private Contractors to Upgrade HUDs Energy Efficiency, With Compensation Tied to Acually Realized Energy Savings
Reiss on Marketplace: Cash Cows to Slaughter
I was interviewed on Marketplace for its story, Fannie and Freddie: Cash Cows Avoid The Slaughter? (sound file) The text of the story reads
We are making money – the tax payer, that is – on Fannie and Freddie Mac.
When Freddie Mac hands the treasury a $10.4 billion dividend next month, tax payers will have received more money in interest than was put in. (Technically the two institutions still owe the principal on the loan that bailed them out, but the interest they’re paying will shortly exceed that amount).
But.
There always is a but with these things.
Making money for the tax payer isn’t good if you ask those who want reform.
Back during the financial crisis, conservatives and liberals disagreed over whether Freddie and Fannie were a victim of or a cause of the housing collapse, but they agreed that the institutions needed reform. The profits are throwing a wrinkle into this debate.
“As long as Fannie and Freddie continue to pay substantial amounts of money to the government, they are looked at by some people in Congress as a great source of revenue that reduces the deficit,” explains Peter Wallison with the American Enterprise Institute. His concern – shared by reformers on both sides of the political spectrum – is that if Fannie and Freddie become cash cows, congress won’t want to touch them.
David Reiss, professor of law at the Brooklyn Law School, agrees. He says the financial crisis wasn’t a one time problem.
“We should think of it as that we dodged a bullet. There’s fundamental problems with the Fannie and Freddie business model which rests on this notion of privatizing profits and socializing losses.”
Freddie and Fannie buy mortgages from lenders, and then bundle them into “mortgage backed securities” that can be sold to investors. It’s useful because it converted illiquid mortgage loans into liquid securities. In plain English, it means a bank or investor who made a mortgage loan to someone didn’t have to wait around for 30 years to be paid back. They could sell their stake in the mortgage to Fannie or Freddie, move along, and go invest in other things. This helped more people get mortgages.
One concern was that Fannie and Freddie were simply too big and too concentrated. Another concern was that the federal government implicitly guaranteed investments in Freddie and Fannie, and that encouraged people to make home loans that were too risky.
Even without the complication of profits, the debate over how to reform Fannie and Freddie is at a stand still.
House Republicans don’t want the government involved at all, they want an efficient market. The Senate wants the government to be involved a little bit, essentially to promote housing.
“What I see,” says David Reiss, “is nothing really happening, and us being a holding pattern for a long time.”
It’s possible that reform-minded politicians will compromise before they lose their chance. Also possible they won’t.
Reiss on Watt Confirmation
Law360 interviewed me about the Senate confirmation of Mel Watt as the Director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency in Fannie, Freddie’s Footprint Could Grow Under New FHFA Head. The article reads in part,
The U.S. mortgage industry is in for a sea change as Rep. Mel Watt, D-N.C., takes the helm of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, experts say, predicting Watt will seek to expand Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, veering sharply from his predecessor’s plans but lining up more closely with President Barack Obama’s.
The confirmation came Tuesday in a 57-41 vote after months of delay ended by Senate Democrats’ implementation of the so-called “nuclear option” eliminating the filibuster of presidential nominees. Senate Republicans had expressed concern about the choice of a politician like Watt — as opposed to an academic or economist — to head the agency.
Members of the real estate finance community are also divided about whether Watt’s confirmation will have a positive or negative impact on the industry, but most agree that a major change is ahead.
“I think Watt, as director, could end up having a very big impact both in terms of reversing some changes that have been implemented, and also taking the agency in a very different direction,” said David Reiss, a professor at Brooklyn Law School.
Since 2009, interim FHFA head Ed DeMarco has made an effort to shrink the footprint of the regulator and its government-sponsored enterprises, Fannie and Freddie, in the U.S. residential mortgage market.
DeMarco faced pushback in these efforts from industry groups and lawmakers, causing him to backpedal a bit in November when the FHFA announced that it would hold off on reducing the size of mortgages that Fannie and Freddie can guarantee for at least the first half of next year.
Obama also did not share DeMarco’s ideology, but experts believe Watt’s plans for the GSEs are much more in line with those of the president. He appears cautious about allowing Fannie and Freddie to back away from the market entirely and may in fact favor policies that will increase the GSEs’ role in the mortgage market.
“My guess is that Watt will further enmesh Fannie and Freddie in the operations of the mortgage markets, whereas DeMarco was actually shrinking their footprint,” Reiss said.
* * *
The difference between the short-term and long-term impacts of Watt’s expected actions will be significant, experts say.
DeMarco’s moves made short-term waves, but supporters believed the aim was long-term equilibrium and an eventual balance of public and private capital in the mortgage market. Watt may have more potential for positive short-term results, but there will still be a question as to whether this will translate into a stable market for the next generation, Reiss said.
“Often when people are talking about government intervention, they want help for problems now, but they’re also setting up the rules of the game for once the crisis has passed,” he said.
