2025-2027 Enterprise Housing Goals

FEDERAL HOUSING FINANCE AGENCY <CFR>12 CFR Part 1282</CFR> <RIN>RIN 2590-AB34</RIN> <SUBJECT>2025-2027 Enterprise Housing Goals</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Federal Housing Finance Agency. <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Proposed rule. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> The Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) is issuing a proposed rule and requesting comments on the housing goals for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (the Enterprises) for 2025 through 2027 as required by the Federal Housing Enterprises Financial Safety and Soundness Act of 1992. The housing goals and subgoals include separate categories for single-family and multifamily mortgages on housing affordable to low-income and very low-income families, among others. The proposed rule also includes criteria for when housing plans would be required for 2025-2027, and it makes several technical changes to enhance clarity and conform the regulation to existing practice. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> FHFA will accept written comments on the proposed rule on or before October 28, 2024. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> You may submit your comments on the proposed rule, identified by regulatory information number (RIN) 2590-AB34, by any one of the following methods: • <E T="03">Agency Website: https://www.fhfa.gov/regulation/federal-register?comments=open.</E> • <E T="03">Federal eRulemaking Portal: https://www.regulations.gov.</E> Follow the instructions for submitting comments. If you submit your comment to the Federal eRulemaking Portal, please also send it by email to FHFA at <E T="03">RegComments@fhfa.gov</E> to ensure timely receipt by FHFA. Include the following information in the subject line of your submission: Comments/RIN 2590-AB34. • <E T="03">Hand Delivered/Courier:</E> The hand delivery address is: Clinton Jones, General Counsel, Attention: Comments/RIN 2590-AB34, Federal Housing Finance Agency, 400 Seventh Street SW, Washington, DC 20219. Deliver the package at the Seventh Street entrance Guard Desk, First Floor, on business days between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m. EST. • <E T="03">U.S. Mail, United Parcel Service, Federal Express, or Other Mail Service:</E> The mailing address for comments is: Clinton Jones, General Counsel, Attention: Comments/RIN 2590-AB34, Federal Housing Finance Agency, 400 Seventh Street SW, Washington, DC 20219. Please note that all mail sent to FHFA via U.S. Mail is routed through a national irradiation facility, a process that may delay delivery by approximately two weeks. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> For general questions, please contact <E T="03">MediaInquiries@FHFA.gov.</E> For technical questions, please contact Ted Wartell, Associate Director, Housing & Community Investment, Division of Housing Mission and Goals, (202) 649-3157, <E T="03">Ted.Wartell@fhfa.gov;</E> Padmasini Raman, Supervisory Policy Analyst, Housing & Community Investment, Division of Housing Mission and Goals, (202) 649-3633, <E T="03">Padmasini.Raman@fhfa.gov;</E> or Carey Whitehead, Assistant General Counsel, (202) 649-3630, <E T="03">Carey.Whitehead@fhfa.gov.</E> These are not toll-free numbers. The mailing address is: Federal Housing Finance Agency, 400 Seventh Street SW, Washington, DC 20219. For TTY/TRS users with hearing and speech disabilities, dial 711 and ask to be connected to any of the contact numbers above. </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">I. Comments</HD> FHFA invites comments on all aspects of the proposed rule and will take all comments into consideration before issuing a final rule. Comments will be posted to the electronic rulemaking docket on the FHFA public website at <E T="03">https://www.fhfa.gov,</E> except as described below. Commenters should submit only information that the commenter wishes to make available publicly. FHFA may post only a single representative example of identical or substantially identical comments, and in such cases will generally identify the number of identical or substantially identical comments represented by the posted example. FHFA may, in its discretion, redact or refrain from posting all or any portion of any comment that contains content that is obscene, vulgar, profane, or threatens harm. All comments, including those that are redacted or not posted, will be retained in their original form in FHFA's internal rulemaking file and considered as required by all applicable laws. Commenters that would like FHFA to consider any portion of their comment exempt from disclosure on the basis that it contains trade secrets, or financial, confidential or proprietary data or information, should follow the procedures in section IV.D. of FHFA's <E T="03">Policy on Communications with Outside Parties in Connection with FHFA Rulemakings,</E> see <E T="03">https://www.fhfa.gov/sites/default/files/documents/Ex-Parte-Communications-Public-Policy_3-5-19.pdf.</E> FHFA cannot guarantee that such data or information, or the identity of the commenter, will remain confidential if disclosure is sought pursuant to an applicable statute or regulation. <E T="03">See</E> 12 CFR 1202.8, 12 CFR 1214.2, and the FHFA <E T="03">FOIA Reference Guide</E> at <E T="03">https://www.fhfa.gov/about/foia-reference-guide</E> for additional information. <HD SOURCE="HD1">II. Background</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD2">A. Statutory and Regulatory Background for Enterprise Housing Goals</HD> The Federal Housing Enterprises Financial Safety and Soundness Act of 1992 (Safety and Soundness Act) requires FHFA to establish several annual housing goals for both single-family and multifamily mortgages purchased by the Enterprises. <SU>1</SU> <FTREF/> The annual housing goals are one measure of the extent to which the Enterprises are meeting their public purposes, which include “an affirmative obligation to facilitate the financing of affordable housing for low- and moderate-income families in a manner consistent with their overall public purposes, while maintaining a strong financial condition and a reasonable economic return.”  <SU>2</SU> <FTREF/> <FTNT> <SU>1</SU>  12 U.S.C. 4561(a). </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>2</SU>  12 U.S.C. 4501(7). </FTNT> Since 2010, FHFA has established annual housing goals for Enterprise purchases of single-family and multifamily mortgages consistent with the requirements of the Safety and Soundness Act. The structure of the housing goals and the parameters for determining how mortgage purchases are counted or not counted are defined in the housing goals regulation. <SU>3</SU> <FTREF/> The most recent amendments to the housing goals regulation were a final rule published in 2021 to establish benchmark levels for the 2022-2024 single-family housing goals and the 2022 multifamily housing goals, and a final rule published in 2022 to establish benchmark levels for the 2023-2024 multifamily housing goals. <SU>4</SU> <FTREF/> This proposed rule would establish benchmark levels for the single-family and multifamily housing goals for 2025-2027. <FTNT> <SU>3</SU>  12 CFR part 1282. </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>4</SU>   <E T="03">See</E> 86 FR 73641 (Dec. 28, 2021), 87 FR 78837 (Dec. 23, 2022). The 2021 final rule departed from historical FHFA practice of establishing single-family and multifamily housing goals at three-year intervals. As stated in the preamble to the 2021 final rule, this choice was motivated by the unique market conditions created by the COVID-19 pandemic. </FTNT> <E T="03">Single-family housing goals.</E> The single-family housing goals defined under the Safety and Soundness Act include separate categories for home purchase mortgages for low-income families, very low-income families, and families that reside in low-income areas. <SU>5</SU> <FTREF/> For purposes of the single-family housing goals, families that reside in low-income areas  <SU>6</SU> <FTREF/> include: (1) families in low-income census tracts, defined as census tracts with median income less than or equal to 80 percent of area median income (AMI);  <SU>7</SU> <FTREF/> (2) families with incomes less than or equal to 100 percent of AMI who reside in minority census tracts (defined as census tracts with a minority population of at least 30 percent and a tract median income of less than 100 percent of AMI);  <SU>8</SU> <FTREF/> and (3) families with incomes less than or equal to 100 percent of AMI who reside in designated disaster areas. <SU>9</SU> <FTREF/> The Enterprise housing goals regulation also includes subgoals, within the low-income areas housing goal, that focus on single-family housing occupied by families in low-income census tracts and moderate-income families in minority census tracts. <SU>10</SU> <FTREF/> Performance on the single-family home purchase goals and subgoals is measured as the percentage of the total home purchase mortgages purchased by an Enterprise each year that qualify for each goal or subgoal. There is also a separate goal for single-family refinance mortgages for low-income families, and performance on the refinance goal is determined in a similar way. <FTNT> <SU>5</SU>  12 U.S.C. 4562(a)(1). </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>6</SU>   <E T="03">See</E> 12 U.S.C. 4502(28); 12 CFR 1282.1 (definition of “families in low-income areas”). </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>7</SU>  12 CFR 1282.1 (par. (i) of definition of “families in low-income areas”). </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>8</SU>  12 U.S.C. 4502(29); 12 CFR 1282.1 (par. (ii) of definition of “families in low-income areas” and definition of “minority census tract”). </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>9</SU>  12 U.S.C. 4502(28); 12 CFR 1282.1 (definition of “designated disaster area” and par. (iii) of definition of “families in low-income areas”). </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>10</SU>  12 CFR 1282.12(f). </F ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 106k characters. 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