Real Estate Marketing & Beyond
The National Association of Realtors is teaming up with a number of housing and mortgage trade associations to ask the Federal Housing Finance Agency to enable greater access to mortgage credit by using “alternative credit scoring models”.
The new coalition, which calls itself “America’s Homeowners Alliance”, argues that the competition among different credit scoring models is making it more difficult for many borrowers to access affordable credit.
The alliance comes after comments made by FHFA Director Mel Watt, who said that mortgage finance giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac would not be making any changes to their credit scoring models until 2019 at the earliest.
But this timeframe is too long for the coalition members, who say Fannie and Freddie have already completed almost “three full years of internal review and assessment” relating to the matter.
"FHFA's effort to expand the use of alternative credit scoring models is a critical component to reversing the steady decline in homeownership particularly for low- and moderate-income as well as minority consumers," the coalition said in an open letter to Watt. "We were dismayed to hear about this significant push back of the timeline, and we would like to request a meeting with you to explore the factors contributing to the delayed implementation."
Some of the trade associations that make up America’s Homeowners Alliance include the Mortgage Bankers Association, the National Association of Home Builders, the Consumer Federation of America, the Asian Real Estate Association of America, and the National Association of Hispanic Real Estate Professionals.
