Duty To Serve “Final Rule” Mocked by MHARR, “Continues To Fail Consumers and Industry – Time For Accountability”

Mark Weiss has had a surprising number of quiet victories in the past year, and the Washington, D.C. based trade association is hoping for another win that will benefit consumers and manufactured housing’s independent producers, retailers, communities, and all involved in the sales of new manufactured homes.

In a release yesterday evening to the Daily Business News started with, “The Manufactured Housing Association for Regulatory Reform (MHARR), in a February 6, 2018 communication to the Chairmen and Ranking Members of the Senate Banking Committee and the House Financial Services Committee (copies attached), has called on Congress to intervene in order to ensure the proper, timely and robust implementation of the Duty to Serve Underserved Markets (DTS) mandate as a statutory remedy for the failure of the Government Sponsored Enterprises (GSEs) to properly serve manufactured housing consumers over the course of decades.”

 

Citing excessive delays, “inadequate progress and continuing institutional resistance by Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and their federal regulator, the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA), to the market-significant implementation of the DTS directive of the Housing and Economic Recovery Act of 2008 (HERA),” the MHARR communication seeks both congressional oversight and full accountability for these entities.

“Nearly ten years after the DTS mandate was enacted by Congress,” said MHARR, “the erstwhile DTS “implementation” plans produced by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and approved by FHFA in late 2017, would delay for at least another three years, any possible market-significant securitization or secondary market support for the personal property (i.e., chattel) loans which comprise 80% or more (and a growing proportion) of all manufactured housing purchase loans, and provide consumer financing for the industry’s most affordable homes. Instead, the long-delayed and wholly inadequate DTS “implementation” plans call for purchases of little more than 1% (i.e., 2,800 to 4,000) of the approximately 230,000 new manufactured home chattel loans expected to be originated between 2018 and 2020, with no impact whatsoever in expanding the availability of the nation’s most affordable source of non-subsidized homeownership for moderate and lower-income American families at a time of nearly record-high demand and need for quality, affordable housing.”

The Daily Business News previously published the announced 3 year plans of both Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, at the link below.

FHFA Publishes Fannie Mae’s and Freddie Mac’s Underserved Markets Plans for Duty to Serve (DTS) Program

MHARR’s release blasted away with this, “In addition to failing millions of American homebuyers in need of affordable, non-subsidized homeownership opportunities, the supposed DTS implementation plans also fail the traditional core of the American manufactured housing industry – thousands of smaller businesses, including manufacturers, retailers, communities, installers, finance providers, transporters and others – that will not see any appreciable increase in either production, sales, financing, or related economic activity for the indefinite future, as a result of DTS plans that provide only for grudging, de minimus involvement with the vast bulk of the manufactured housing market (which Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have previously made quite clear that they have no interest in) in direct defiance of Congress.”

Industry professionals may find the two highlighted graphic-quotes from Weiss/MHARR above and below of particular interest.

If these concerns prove true, it would represent a de facto hijacking of the Duty to Serve’s purpose, which is why MHARR is calling for Congress to exercise their oversight in the matter in a robust way.

The full MHARR release is linked here.

The letters to Congress, are linked here. “We Provide, You Decide.” © ## (News, linked context, analysis, and commentary.)

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Submitted by Soheyla Kovach to the Daily Business News for MHProNews.com.

Soheyla is a managing member of LifeStyle Factory Homes, LLC, the parent company to MHProNews, and MHLivingNews.com.