Tag Archives: Center for American Progress

Just over a week after conformation by the U.S. Senate, former FHFA exec sworn in by HUD Secretary Marcia L. Fudge to spearhead the FHA’s goals of expand access to safe, affordable, and sustainable housing.

After a re-nomination by President Biden, Julia Gordon has been confirmed by the Senate to serve as Commissioner of the FHA/Assistant Secretary of HUD.

To bolster oversight of the nation’s housing marketplace, the President has tapped housing advocate Julia Gordon and Acting CFPB Director Dave Uejio for key roles at HUD.

The report from the Center for American Progress makes recommendations for the FHA's distressed loan sale program to apply stronger standards in order to achieve the best outcomes for the borrowers and their communities.

The key to a viable, accessible mortgage market lays in the structure of the secondary market, according to opinions expressed by the Center for American Progress, a policy think tank, and the National Council of La Raza, a Hispanic advocacy group. In a report, the two groups propose ways the secondary market can accomplish the goals of accessibility and affordability.

With numbers from a CoreLogic report revealing 22.8 percent of borrowers are underwater, principal reduction has been eyed as a key solution to keep borrowers in their homes. The Center for American Progress has released a report detailing solutions to the ""moral hazard"" issue. One is to make principal reduction a one-time program open to borrowers already delinquent; another is to open the program only to current borrowers who are at-risk of default; and the third is ""shared appreciation"" modifications.

Mortgage servicing took center stage at a mortgage banking conference in Chicago on Monday, with industry experts making a case for reform. Panelists at a session on the future of mortgage servicing assured attendees that in five years, the servicing business ""will look nothing"" like it does today. Executives from such organizations as Freddie Mac, Amherst Securities, and the University of North Carolina advocated for national servicing standards, greater transparency, and new compensation structures.

The U.S. housing market could experience a severe double-dip contraction marked by lower home sales and depressed house prices if Congress fails to raise the federal debt ceiling, according to the Center for American Progress, a nonprofit research group. The Center says inaction to raise the debt limit would spark a return of the economic pain of the past few years as foreclosures would remain at record highs for an even longer stretch. Not raising the limit by early August threatens to put the U.S. itself on the verge of default.

Michael Barr has rejoined the nonprofit think tank the Center for American Progress (CAP) as a senior fellow. From 2009 to 2010, Barr served as the U.S. Department of the Treasury's assistant secretary for financial institutions and was a key architect of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act.

Organizations from every corner of the industry are weighing in on the administration's proposal to reform the nation's housing finance system. A number of groups are throwing their support behind the long-term reform option that calls for a group of private companies to provide guarantees for well underwritten mortgage securities, and the federal government to offer investors a type of reinsurance on these bonds. There are some, though, who say even this more prudent approach will raise borrowing costs and push small businesses out of the market.