Donald Trump's views on housing finance reform remain a complete mystery, raising questions about whether he will seek changes or defer to others in Congress. Housing was the talk of the campaign two presidential elections ago, but it stayed under the radar in the 2016 race, leaving plenty of room to speculate about President-elect Donald Trump's likely mortgage policy for the next four years. On the one hand, without a crisis, observers said there is little incentive for him to move quickly on the issue. But the unresolved question of what to do with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac – both in conservatorship since before Barack Obama's election – will loom large over the future Trump administration. Exactly how Trump would address the issue is a complete mystery. The issue was never raised on the campaign trail.
The National Association of Realtors answers, gives forecast for next year
For the majority of this year, the housing market could not get past low inventory levels, which were continuously cited as the main road block to a fully healthy housing market. Next year should be better, according to the newly release forecast from the National Association of Realtors, but it’s going to take time. During the residential housing and economic forecast session at the 2016 Realtors Conference & Expo, Lawrence Yun, chief economist of the National Association of Realtors, and Dennis Lockhart, president and CEO of the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, discussed the 2017 housing and economic forecast, along with the economic conditions that support the housing sector.
HUD published in the Federal Register the initial implementation guidance for the Housing Opportunity through Modernization Act (HOTMA). HOTMA, which President Obama signed into law in July, makes several modifications to housing assistance programs, including streamlining Housing Choice Voucher (voucher) program inspections, simplifying the requirements for project basing vouchers, and providing public housing agencies (PHAs) greater flexibility to transfer funding between their operating and capital funds. HUD's guidance clarifies which statutory provisions went into effect immediately upon the President signing HOTMA into law and which provisions will be phased in as HUD promulgates further regulations.
Carol Galante — former Assistant Secretary at the Department of Housing and Urban Development — and her colleagues at the University of California, Berkeley’s Terner Center for Housing Innovation last week released a new report, commissioned by the J. Ronald Terwilliger Foundation for Housing America’s Families. As Will Fischer discusses, it proposes three options for a tax credit to help renters struggling to make ends meet, an idea that has received growing support from policy experts and others.
"If we're serious about protecting people and property from flooding, we have to think differently than we did 40 years ago," said HUD Secretary Julian Castro. The Department of Housing and Urban Development's proposed guidance for the construction of new homes located in flood plains is sparking a fight between homebuilders and environmentalists. The agency released a plan last week that would stipulate that newly constructed homes financed by the Federal Housing Administration would have to be elevated two feet above the 100 year-based flood level. That prompted an outcry from the National Association of Home Builders, which said the plan is inconsistent with the federal flood insurance program and most building codes.
The number of seriously delinquent mortgages declined 24.8% in September from one year prior, as the number of loans more than 90 days late is at its lowest since August 2007, according to CoreLogic. "This improvement is continued evidence of the recovery in the housing market, especially given that the decreases were fairly uniform in most cities across the country," said CoreLogic Chief Economist Frank Nothaft.
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