A Quiet NAR Success on Its Calls for Action

By Robert Freedman, Senior Editor, REALTOR® Magazine

There are many reasons for the success of NAR’s most recent Call for Action, to which more than 18 percent of NAR members—a record— responded.

First and foremost is the compelling subject of the CFA: getting the home buyer tax credit extended and expanded. As NAR Chief Ecionomist Lawrence Yun has been saying for weeks, residential home prices are stabilizing and are on the cusp of heading up—the all-important precursor to restored confidence in homeownership. We’re relying on that improved confidence to boost sales, tighten inventories, and restore healthy credit markets.

Given that, letting the credit expire on Nov. 30 could have stopped sales momentum dead in its tracks.

It was also huge that Congress added the $6,500 credit for repeat buyers, because throughout 2009 much of the sales weight has been carried by first-time buyers. For market stability, repeat buyers needed to get off the fence and Congress saw that. Read more

Stevens Strongly Defends FHA’s Financials

By Brian Summerfield, Online Editor, REALTOR® Magazine

In an address to hundreds of REALTORS® at the 2009 NAR Conference & Expo Saturday afternoon, FHA Commissioner David Stevens offered a fervent defense of the organization’s financials. He specifically addressed the negative press surrounding the FHA’s recent audit, which showed part of its capital reserves below congressionally mandated levels.

Stevens distinguished the FHA’s capital reserves for unexpected losses from its regular reserve fund, which remains above 2 percent. Together, the two funds equal almost 4 percent in reserves. “We’ve come through the 100-year flood,” he said. “Despite the crisis, FHA is still standing with $31 billion in capital, $3.5 billion more than it had a year ago.” Read more

What Will NAR’s Political Strength Be in 5 Years?

By Robert Freedman, Senior Editor, REALTOR® Magazine

Heather Smith knows how to get young professionals engaged in our political process. She founded an initiative called Young Voter Strategies as a way to reinvigorate our democracy by making clear to young people the importance of their political involvement. One outcome of that, arguably, is the success of Barack Obama’s presidential candidacy. Whatever your views of his politics, his camapign was built on a massive influx of young Americans who had little or no involvement in politics before. That can only be healthy for a democracy, regardless of where you fall on the political spectrum. She’s now head of an initiative called Rock the Vote. You might have heard of that: It works through rock acts like the Fall Out Boy and entertainers like Zach Braff to reach out to young adults about voting.

I mention Smith because she’s one of the speakers at a forum called Rock the REALTOR® at the 2009 REALTORS® Conference & Expo on Friday that touches on an important topic for the health of real estate in the years ahead: getting today’s young real estate professionals to take an interest in the politics of real estate.

What are the politics of real estate? Getting the home buyer tax credit extended and expanded is a good example. If you don’t follow the day-to-day machinations of the legislative process—hopefully you’re too busy cultivating customers and closing deals to do that—it might seem like there was little controversy behind the effort to get the credit extension passed (which happened last week). After all, the Senate passed the credit without a single “no” vote. But in fact passage of that law was in some sense years in the making. That’s because it’s taken years for NAR (and other real estate associations, for that matter) to develop the ability to energize its members on behalf of what’s best for real estate.

You should know that NAR broke all records on its Call for Action to extend and expand the tax credit. I don’t have the latest figure, but the last time I checked NAR had an 18 percent response rate. Compare that to just two years ago, when the typical response rate was 3 percent. That kind of turnout is crucial, because lawmakers respond when thousands of real estate professionals in their district or state contact them about an issue. Read more

FHA Eases Concentration, Other Condo Rules

By Robert Freedman, Senior Editor, REALTOR® Magazine

In an effort to give condo lending a boost, FHA yesterday released a mortgagee letter (2009-46 A) that lets lenders make loans to condo buyers even if it means 100 percent of the project units would have FHA financing.

That’s a level of market exposure far above what FHA is allowing in its baseline rules (which you’ll find in another mortgagee letter: 2009-46 B), which limit FHA concentration to no more than 30 percent of units.

FHA is also easing its 50-percent owner-occupancy requirement—long an industry concern—by allowing lenders to exclude foreclosed properties in their calculation. That could go a long way in helping buyers in the hardest-hit areas tap FHA financing because it means none of a project’s distressed units count against the owner-occupancy limit.

The agency’s also allowing lenders to make spot loan approvals until February 1, 2010. If you’re not familiar with spot approval, it’s an authority given to lenders to finance one unit in a project that hasn’t yet been approved by FHA for financing.

These and a few other changes that reflect a realistic assessment of today’s market conditions take effect Dec. 7 and they last, with the exception of the spot approvals, until the end of 2010.

If you’re going to San Diego for the 2009 REALTORS® Conference & Expo this week, make it a point to hear FHA Commissioner David Stevens in the An Hour with the FHA Commissioner session. Read more

New Financial Regulator Would Impact You

By Robert Freedman, Senior Editor, REALTOR® Magazine

But not in the way you might think.

A new financial regulator is in the works but it’s one of those developments that’s easily lost in the news while other federal initiatives command the headlines.

The Consumer Financial Protection Agency (CFPA), which passed the House Financial Services Committee just a few weeks ago, would represent a sweeping change in the way financial services companies are regulated. Right now, our alphabet soup of federal banking regulators—OCC, FDIC, NCUA, and so on—have two missions: 1) to oversee the safety and soundness of financial services companies, and 2) to protect consumers.

The logic behind CFPA is to split off the consumer-protection side of the regulators’ portfolio so they can focus on bank safety and soundness. The new agency would focus on consumer protection.

What’s key for real estate professionals is that CFPA will focus only on financial services companies. That seems obvious, but it wasn’t always this way. As the language was originally drafted, any number of professional services that handle money in some way would have fallen under the definition of financial services. Thus, real estate professionals, who handle earnest-money deposits among other things, could have been subject to regulation under CFPA.

The fact that the House Financial Services Committee makes clear in its bill that real estate brokers and sales associates aren’t regulated under CFPA is an advocacy victory for REALTORS®, who, through NAR, let lawmakers know that the original draft would lead to unforseen consequences if it wasn’t changed. It was.

You should be aware that CFPA could still touch the real estate transaction in several ways, though. Read more

The Tax Credit Vs. Cash for Clunkers

By Brian Summerfield, Online Editor, REALTOR® Magazine

Amid several news reports that the first-time home buyer tax credit will almost certainly be extended, I’ve seen more than a few blogs and online comments arguing against it. Some of them say the government can’t afford it, and lament the fact that we’re borrowing from our children and grandchildren to pay for this. Others maintain that the tax credit artificially stimulates demand, and the market will resume its slump whenever it does expire. Still others claim that it hasn’t really motivated enough buyers who would not have otherwise purchased a home to justify the program.

I may disagree with some of these arguments, but I’m glad people are making them. It’s essential that we have a healthy debate on this important subject rather than move forward with our eyes closed and our mouths shut.

However, there is one argument that I take issue with: The tax credit and the “Cash for Clunkers” program are essentially the same thing. I’ve read this line of reasoning in a few places, and in each instance, it seems to confuse rather than clarify. It seems to me that the two initiatives are very different in a few significant ways: Read more

Stevens: Facts Getting Lost in FHA Safety Debate

By Robert Freedman, Senior Editor, REALTOR® Magazine

“Nobody has asked to come in and look at our balance sheet, to go through our finances, which I’ve offered to everybody.”—FHA Commissioner David Stevens

News reports raising concerns that FHA might be the next major financial institution requiring a government infusion are based on misinformed comparisons with what happened in the subprime market, FHA Commissioner David Stevens said in an exclusive interview with REALTOR® Magazine this week.

At their peak, subprime lenders commanded 40 percent of the residential mortgage market by making low-downpayment, no-document, interest-only, and other types of exotic loans to high-risk borrowers, investors, and speculators, a market that FHA sat out entirely, says Stevens.

Today, it’s FHA that commands 40 percent of the market, but that’s where the comparison ends. The agency makes 30-year, fixed-rate, fully documented loans only for households buying their primary residence. For each loan, the agency maintains capital reserves for the full 30 years of the loan rather than for the 1-2 years required of banks.

Today, the agency has more than $30 billion in reserves, including a fully funded loan-loss reserve. All the talk in the media about reserves dipping below a 2-percent required threshold is about a secondary account that’s above and beyond the agency’s primary reserve. Those two accounts together represent more than 4 percent of assets, he says.

An actuarial audit of FHA finances due out in a few weeks from a non-governmental auditor is expected to find that FHA has sufficient capital to cover all forecasted losses, even assuming further delines in home prices, says Stevens.

“What concerns me, and I think should concern all REALTORS®, is . . . non-fact-based [criticism] from people who jump to conclusions without looking at data [and] create an environment where we’ll be forced to make corrections where they are not required and can hurt this housing recovery.”

Stevens sat down with the magazine for a 30-minute interview that covered the agency’s new appraisal policy and an upcoming mortgagee letter that’s expected to make condo financing more attractive as well as the agency’s credit health. He also talked about the improvements to the agency’s processing that makes it comparable to conventional lenders in terms of processing speed and paperwork requirements.

Listen to snippets of the conversation here: Read more

An Under-the-Radar Win for Common Sense

By Robert Freedman, Senior Editor, REALTOR® Magazine

It’s a small thing, but it’s impact could have been big. Some new federal lending rules take effect tomorrow (under HOEPA—the Home Ownership and Equity Protection Act) and among them is a restriction on prepayment penalties, something anyone who’s taken out a mortgage would certainly appreciate. No one likes to pay a prepayment penalty, and certainly not when they’re abusive.

But lenders were concerned that the rule, which imposes the prepayment restriction on higher-priced loans (those with an interest rate 1.5 percent above prime), would snag higher-priced FHA loans. FHA requires borrowers, when they pay off their loan, to pay the entire month’s interest, no matter when during the month the pay-off occurs.

Depending on how you look at it, that extra interest payment has the character of a prepayment penalty, and indeed, NAR has been trying to get FHA to change that policy. Read more

Getting the Tax Credit Extended: Outlook

By Robert Freedman, senior editor, REALTOR® Magazine

What are the chances of getting the first-time home buyer tax credit extended, particularly before its expiration Dec. 1? No one can know that, of course, but what’s clear is that the leadership in Congress wants it extended—and if you have the leadership on board, you’re in a strong position. Yet with health care reform consuming Congress’ attention, even the leadership faces a challenge ensuring the tax credit gets the consideration it deserves.

After sitting down with Linda Goold, NAR’s director of tax policy, and Samuel Whitfield, an NAR legislative representative, I learned the tax credit has really been the economic recovery’s workhorse. The IRS says 1.4 million households have used the credit. What’s more, a number of independent looks at the credit, including one by Economy.com (owned by Moody’s) and Campbell Surveys, estimate that between 350,000 and 400,000 home purchases would not have happened without the credit. NAR has come up with a similar estimate.

Goold and Whitfield say there’s bipartisan support for extension, and NAR is on Capitol Hill daily reminding lawmakers that the clock is running. But it’s coming down to the wire.

Lawmakers Who Went the Distance on Banks

By Robert Freedman, Senior Editor, REALTOR® Magazine

Today, with the financial crisis still very much with us, it would be a hard sell for federal banking companies to get the go-ahead to own real estate brokerages and property management companies. It’s safe to say that the Federal Reserve and the U.S. Treasury Department would take a hard look at whether the business lines of federally chartered banking companies should extend so far into the commercial sector like that.

But eight years ago, when banks sought to get the U.S. Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve to let them do that, they came just shy of succeeding. What stopped them was the action of a few determined members of Congress. Read more

Next Page »