2026-2028 Enterprise Housing Goals

<RULE> FEDERAL HOUSING FINANCE AGENCY <CFR>12 CFR Parts 1209, 1281, and 1282</CFR> <RIN>RIN 2590-AB59</RIN> <SUBJECT>2026-2028 Enterprise Housing Goals</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Federal Housing Finance Agency. <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Final rule. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> The Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) is issuing a final rule on the housing goals for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (the Enterprises) for 2026 through 2028 as required by the Federal Housing Enterprises Financial Safety and Soundness Act of 1992. The rule establishes benchmark levels for the housing goals for 2026 through 2028. The rule replaces the two area-based subgoals with one low-income areas subgoal, simplifies the goal determination process, clarifies inflation adjustments to maximum civil money penalties related to housing goals, and makes other technical changes. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> This final rule is effective February 23, 2026. </EFFDATE> <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 Leda Bloomfield, Senior Associate Director, Office of Affordable Housing and Community Investment, Division of Housing Mission and Goals, 202-649-3415, <E T="03">Leda.Bloomfield@fhfa.gov;</E> Siobhan Kelly, Senior Associate Director, Office of Single and Multifamily Policy, Division of Housing Mission and Goals, 202-649-3142, <E T="03">Siobhan.Kelly@fhfa.gov;</E> or Kevin Sheehan, Associate General Counsel, Office of General Counsel, 202-649-3086, <E T="03">Kevin.Sheehan@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. 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 as defined by statute, 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> FHFA establishes 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 towards the goals are defined in FHFA's Enterprise housing goals regulation. <SU>3</SU> <FTREF/> This final rule establishes benchmark levels for the single-family and multifamily housing goals for 2026-2028. <FTNT> <SU>3</SU>  12 CFR part 1282. </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>4</SU> <FTREF/> For purposes of the single-family housing goals, families that reside in low-income areas  <SU>5</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>6</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>7</SU> <FTREF/> and (3) families with incomes less than or equal to 100 percent of AMI who reside in designated disaster areas. <SU>8</SU> <FTREF/> The current Enterprise housing goals regulation also includes subgoals  <SU>9</SU> <FTREF/> within the low-income areas home purchase goal. <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>4</SU>  12 U.S.C. 4562(a)(1). To distinguish the goals and subgoals related to home purchase mortgages from the goal related to refinance mortgages, this preamble refers to the “low-income home purchase goal” and the “very low-income home purchase goal” to refer to the low-income families housing goal and the very low-income families housing goal, respectively, described in 12 CFR 1282.12(c) and (d). </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>5</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>6</SU>  12 CFR 1282.1 (par. (i) of definition of “families in low-income areas”). </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>7</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>8</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>9</SU>  For brevity, sometimes this preamble uses the term “goals” to refer to goals and subgoals. </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>10</SU>  12 CFR 1282.12(f). </FTNT> Under the Safety and Soundness Act, the single-family housing goals are limited to mortgages on owner-occupied housing with one to four units. The single-family goals cover first lien, conventional, conforming mortgages, meaning mortgages that are not subordinate to other mortgage liens, that are not insured or guaranteed by the Federal Housing Administration or another government agency, and that have principal balances that do not exceed the conforming loan limits for Enterprise mortgages. <E T="03">Multifamily housing goals.</E> The multifamily housing goals defined under the Safety and Soundness Act include separate categories for mortgages on multifamily properties (properties with five or more units) with rental units affordable to low-income and very low-income families. The Safety and Soundness Act also requires reporting on smaller properties. <SU>11</SU> <FTREF/> The multifamily housing goals generally include all Enterprise multifamily mortgage purchases, regardless of the purpose of the loan. The multifamily housing goals evaluate the performance of the Enterprises based on the share of affordable units in properties that serve as collateral for mortgages purchased by an Enterprise (loans that are excluded as ineligible under 12 CFR 1282.16(b) are not counted for purposes of measuring Enterprise performance). The Enterprise housing goals regulation does not include a retrospective market level measure for the multifamily housing goals, due in part to a lack of comprehensive data about the multifamily market. As a result, FHFA measures Enterprise multifamily housing goals performance against the benchmark levels only and the final rule retains this approach. <FTNT> <SU>11</SU>  12 U.S.C. 4563(a)(3). </FTNT> The Safety and Soundness Act requires that affordability for rental units under the multifamily housing goals be determined based on rents that “[do] not exceed 30 percent of the maximum income level of such income category, with appropriate adjustments for unit size as measured by the number of bedrooms.”  <SU>12</SU> <FTREF/> The Enterprise housing goals regulation considers the net rent paid by the renter, <E T="03">i.e.,</E> the rent is decreased by any subsidy payments that the renter may receive, including housing assistance payments. <SU>13</SU> <FTREF/> <FTNT> <SU>12</SU>   <E T="03">See</E> 12 U.S.C. 4563(c). </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>13</SU>   <E T="03">See</E> 12 CFR 1282.1 (par. (i)(B) of definition of “rent”). </FTNT> <HD SOURCE="HD2">B. Considerations After Publication of the Final Rule</HD> If, after publication of this final rule, new information indicates that any of the single-family or multifamily housing goals or subgoals should be adjusted in light of market conditions or the safety and soundness of the Enterprises, or for any other reason, FHFA may take any steps that are necessary and appropriate to respond, consistent with the Safety and Soundness Act and the Enterprise housing goals regulation. For example, under the Safety and Soundness Act and the Enterprise housing goals regulation, FHFA is permitted to reduce a benchmark level in response to an Enterprise petition for reduction for any of the single-family or multifamily housing goals or subgoals in a particular year. Any adjustment in response to such a petition must be based on a determination by FHFA that: (1) market and economic conditions or the financial condition of the Enterprise require a reduction; or (2) efforts to meet the goal or subgoal would result in the constraint of liquidity, over-investment in certain market segments, or other consequences contrary to the intent of the Safety and Soundnes ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 136k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━