Politics

The Housing Policy Council added its voice to previous requests for federal officials to provide a longer-term comment period on a draft categorization system for government mortgages.

After Democrats failed last year to rally support for a federal 36% limit, House and Senate proponents are trying to capitalize on the momentum from state rate caps that recently passed on a bipartisan basis.

Two progressive Democratic senators said they oppose the renomination of Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell to a second term, joining Elizabeth Warren in urging President Biden to choose someone else.

The consumer bureau is asking for comment on whether the rule implementing the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act is meeting its stated goals of detecting discrimination in mortgage lending.

Advocates negotiating with the Minneapolis bank also want commitments for mortgage assistance and payouts to financial nonprofits. The pressure for Federal Reserve hearings coincides with Biden administration calls for more scrutiny of big bank mergers.

GOP opposition and a packed Senate agenda have delayed the vote on Julia Gordon as head of the Federal Housing Administration. But industry representatives say that with FHA delinquency rates still elevated and loan forbearance plans expiring, there's an urgency for Congress to confirm her by year-end.

The Build Back Better reconciliation bill would raise the SALT cap to $80,000 from $10,000, and that impact varies widely from state to state.

In a letter to the agency’s new director, top Senate Democrats recommended policy steps intended to limit mistakes in consumers’ credit files that they said “can ruin lives.”

The Federal Housing Administration’s changes seek to bring guidelines for specialized Title I programs in line with current borrower and market needs.

Randal Quarles, who oversaw an easing of post-financial crisis rules as the Federal Reserve’s vice chair of supervision, announced he will resign at the end of this year. His departure will leave President Biden with another open seat to fill on the central bank’s board.

The seasoning clock for securitization eligibility restarts when a modification takes place, the government agency said.

The Fed said it would reduce Treasury purchases by $10 billion and mortgage-backed securities by $5 billion, marking the beginning of the end of the program aimed at shielding the economy from Covid-19.

Lawmakers from both parties are pushing for legislation to automatically substitute a new interest rate benchmark for the expiring London interbank offered rate in certain hard-to-amend legacy contracts.

The move by the agency, which is an arm of the Department of Housing and Urban Development, will help further efforts to give servicers more leeway to modify mortgage terms.

The bureau’s new director named former Obama administration officials Lorelei Salas and Eric Halperin, respectively, as the heads of supervision policy and enforcement.

Secretary Marcia Fudge’s statement has implications for other tribal nations in Oklahoma and may be watched closely by other government officials, housing and civil rights advocacy groups.

Eric Halperin, a longtime consumer advocate, is the first big hire by the new director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

Several housing groups wrote a letter calling for “substantially improved written proposals” for the period starting in 2022, and support for chattel manufactured-home loans.

Democrats’ $3.5 trillion social policy package would appropriate over $300 billion for housing-related measures, including down payment assistance for first-time homebuyers. But those provisions could be on the chopping block as centrists try to trim the bill’s price tag.

Zixta Q. Martinez has been with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau since its inception a decade ago and most recently was a senior advisor in the supervision, enforcement and fair-lending division.