Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA)

Last week the Supreme Court of the U.S. (SCOTUS) ruled 7-2 in Collins v. Yellen that the director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) is removable by the president. The court ruled that the Housing and Economic Recovery Act’s structure, which restricts the President’s power to remove the FHFA director, violates the separation of powers. 

The Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) announced that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac will offer COVID-19 forbearance to qualifying multifamily property owners through June 30.

The Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) announced the authorization of more than $1 billion in affordable housing allocations to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the largest disbursement in history. HUD’s National Housing Trust Fund (NHTF) will receive $711 million and the Department of the Treasury’s Capital Magnet Fund (CMF) will receive $383 million.

The Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) announced that the 2021 multifamily loan purchase caps for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (the Enterprises) will be $70 billion for each Enterprise. NH&RA applauds the increased caps and looking forward to working with FHFA, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to ensure sufficient liquidity in the multifamily mortgage market during this economic downturn.

Don Layton authored a new paper with Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies, What Should We Do with the GSEs? Common-Sense Reform Recommendations for the Biden Administration. Layton concludes that the new administration, if it is to successfully address the GSE question, must follow one of two possible paths in the next twelve to twenty-four months.

FHFA determined the Enterprises’ purchases of mortgages exceeded the benchmarks for all the 2019 housing goals. The report also concluded both Enterprises complied with their 2019 Duty-to-Serve requirements in all three underserved markets.

A new blog and paper by Don Layton with the Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University explore whether the Federal Housing Finance Agency’s (FHFA) plans and actions are consistent with making the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (collectively, the Government Sponsored Enterprises or GSEs) attractive enough to equity investors, and – given the need to raise such unprecedentedly large amounts of equity – to do so globally and broadly.

For the past ten years, the American Housing Survey (AHS) has been under the stewardship of Dr. Shawn Bucholtz. Shawn left HUD to become the chief data officer at the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA).

Reps. Maxine Waters (D-CA), Wm. Lacy Clay (D-MO) and Denny Heck (D-WA), sent a letter to Dr. Mark Calabria, director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA), urging the agency to prioritize economic recovery amid the COVID-19 pandemic crisis by pausing a rulemaking that would set new capital requirements for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (collectively “the Enterprises”) until after the pandemic.

A divided Supreme Court of the U.S. (SCOTUS) recently ruled in Seila Law v. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), that restrictions on the removal of the CFPB director are unconstitutional. Under the law that created the CFPB, the director can be removed only for “inefficiency, neglect of duty or malfeasance in office.” This decision will likely impact the Federal Housing Finance Agency, which has a similar structure as the CFPB and has a challenge pending in court related to its structure. The directors of the CFPB and the FHFA will likely no longer be independent regulatory agencies, but rather parts of any presidential administration that can be fired at will.

To help renters in multifamily properties stay in their homes and to support multifamily property owners during the Coronavirus national emergency, the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) announced that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (the Enterprises) are allowing servicers to extend forbearance agreements for multifamily property owners with existing forbearance agreements for up to three months.

The Senate Banking Committee held a hearing on June 9 entitled Oversight of Housing Regulators. The witnesses included HUD Secretary Benjamin Carson and Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Mark Calabria.