The Obama administration Friday released its long-awaited proposal for overhauling the mortgage market, calling for gradually shutting down...
Los Angeles Times
The 32-page plan calls for phasing in an increase in the down-payment requirement for loans guaranteed by Fannie and Freddie to 10 percent, while reducing the maximum size of mortgages they can back — a move that would affect areas with high property values.
During the financial crisis, Congress boosted the limit on such loans to as much as $729,750. The administration said it supports letting the limit drop back to $625,500 as scheduled on Oct. 1.
The plan also calls for increasing mortgage fees to encourage more private investment while winding down the huge investment portfolios of Fannie and Freddie — whose bailouts have cost $150 billion so far — by at least 10 percent a year as the entities are slowly put out of business.
But demonstrating the complexity of pulling back government support from a still-fragile housing market, the plan offers Congress three options for long-term restructuring.
"This is a plan for fundamental reform of the housing market, but I want to emphasize we're going to proceed on this path of reform very carefully," said Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner. He said the plan would take five to seven years to enact.
Fannie and Freddie own or guarantee more than half of all U.S. mortgages and are vital players in the $11 trillion mortgage market.
The three options are:
• Scaling back the government's role but continuing a limited government guarantee mechanism for mortgages;
• A greater pullback that would have the government step in with guarantees largely only during a recession, providing an "emergency backstop" to mortgages to keep the housing market from collapsing;
• Limiting the government's role in the market to supporting only low-income buyers through the Federal Housing Administration.
"All three of those options would amount to a fundamental change in the way our housing-finance markets operate, and they would all have the virtue of not leaving us vulnerable to the kind of risks we faced in this housing crisis," Geithner said.
But the report is unlikely to satisfy many Republicans, who blame Fannie and Freddie for creating the housing bubble that triggered the financial crisis, and have criticized the Obama administration for not moving more quickly to end the bailouts of the firms.
Those critics want Fannie and Freddie, which are 80 percent owned by taxpayers, shut down much faster and the government to get completely out of the housing-finance market, letting private capital take its place.
But many in the banking and housing industry said the government needs to maintain some role in housing finance, particularly during times of crisis, when lenders wouldn't want to issue any new mortgages. The report specifically rules out a complete government pullout from the market.
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