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Financial Services Law Insights and Observations

House Financial Services Ranking Member Unveils Housing Finance Reform Alternative

Freddie Mac Fannie Mae U.S. House Housing Finance Reform Maxine Waters

Lending

On March 27, Congresswoman Maxine Waters (D-CA), Ranking Member of the House Financial Services Committee, released draft legislation to reform the housing finance market. Congresswoman Waters also released a summary of the proposal and a section-by-section analysis of the bill. The proposed bill, titled the Housing Opportunities Move the Economy (HOME) Forward Act of 2014, offers a counter to a bill already approved by the committee—without any Democratic votes—that would replace Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac with a secondary market funded only by private capital. In certain ways, the HOME Forward Act parallels legislation recently unveiled by the leaders of the Senate Banking Committee. Like its Senate counterpart, Ms. Waters’s bill would establish an insurance fund to provide an explicit government guarantee for certain mortgage-backed securities. Also, similar to the Senate bill, Congresswoman Waters’s proposal would require private backers to take the first 5 percent of any loss (the Senate bill requires private backers to take the first 10 percent of any loss) before the government guarantee is activated. But unlike the Senate bill, which would allow for a variety of issuers to access the mortgage backed security market, the HOME Forward Act would create a co-op of lenders with exclusive authority to issue government-backed MBS. In further contrast to the Senate bill, the HOME Forward Act includes a “waterfall” plan for distribution of Fannie Mae’s and Freddie Mac’s earnings in conservatorship to (i) Treasury Senior Preferred shares; (ii) any reserve funds needed in connection with wind-down of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac; (iii) outstanding Affordable Housing Fund payments; and (iv) existing preferred and common shareholders, including Treasury as holder of warrants. The HOME Forward Act also would eliminate rigid affordable housing goals and replace them with a broad based duty to serve requirement.