CHLA Sends Letter To FHFA Director Pulte Highlighting Small Lender Priorities For Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac
Days after the confirmation of Bill Pulte as Director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA), The Community Home Lenders of America (CHLA) sent a comprehensive letter to Director Pulte, laying out CHLA’s priorities for protecting small IMB mortgage lenders and the GSE affordable housing mission.
The four key recommendations in the CHLA letter are:
1. Fannie and Freddie should maintain their affordable housing footprint, including condo, investor, and second home loans – without volume caps or fee increases unrelated to risk.
2. Fannie and Freddie should strictly adhere to PSPA cash window requirements – and should not arbitrarily reduce the number of seller-servicers, out of convenience or to cut costs.
3. Fannie and Freddie should complete the process of replacing repurchase demands for performing loans with loan defects with an indemnification fee based on Enterprise risk.
4. Fannie and Freddie should take actions to cut mortgage origination costs – e.g., rejecting bi-merge in favor of tri-merge and addressing FICO’s monopolistic credit score price hikes.
The CHLA letter began by expressing appreciation for the first Trump Administration’s actions to create a permanent equitable cash window requirement and supporting the Administration’s interest in moving forward on a Fannie and Freddie exit from conservatorship.
A major focus of the CHLA letter was on Fannie and Freddie maintaining their commitment to their affordable housing mission – identifying reasons why they should not shrink their housing footprint, including addressing investor loans and second homes, which were the subject of restrictions in 2020.
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