I stumbled across your writings on this topic and appreciate your write ups. I spent an inordinate amount of time researching this fee change the other week after a friend sent me some of the links you mentioned because I was convinced I must be missing something based on how heated the commentary was. David Stevens, who you mention here, provided this quote in a Fox Business article:
"I literally just got an email from an executive with a mortgage lending company. He goes, ‘So I guess we have to teach borrowers to worsen their credit before they apply for a mortgage in order to get the better price.’ I mean, that's a bit of an extreme, but yes, I totally recognize and appreciate the effort to bring more people into homeownership who have traditionally not had that opportunity. But using Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac for these sorts of political purposes may not be the best thing to do," Stevens said.
I was so convinced I must be missing something after reading that that I emailed him asking for clarification, and got a response similar to what you posted from him above. I thought the quote was a particularly artful way of lying without outright lying on either his part or Fox Business's. It's like someone angry at a marginal tax rate hike quoting an innumerate accountant who advises his customers to take paycuts in order to take home more money.
The article below has a nice heatmap of the fee changes. My favorite insight from it that's not mentioned in most of the recent articles is that for borrowers with FICOs >780 (20-25% of consumers, according to a quick google search), fees are only slightly decreasing in the 80-85% LTV bucket and either staying flat or decreasing in all other buckets.
There were also various new fees added for high DTI loans, investment properties, etc., where higher fees were associated with default risks. And without missing a beat, in some articles, the complainers found a way to complain about those changes too.
I stumbled across your writings on this topic and appreciate your write ups. I spent an inordinate amount of time researching this fee change the other week after a friend sent me some of the links you mentioned because I was convinced I must be missing something based on how heated the commentary was. David Stevens, who you mention here, provided this quote in a Fox Business article:
"I literally just got an email from an executive with a mortgage lending company. He goes, ‘So I guess we have to teach borrowers to worsen their credit before they apply for a mortgage in order to get the better price.’ I mean, that's a bit of an extreme, but yes, I totally recognize and appreciate the effort to bring more people into homeownership who have traditionally not had that opportunity. But using Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac for these sorts of political purposes may not be the best thing to do," Stevens said.
I was so convinced I must be missing something after reading that that I emailed him asking for clarification, and got a response similar to what you posted from him above. I thought the quote was a particularly artful way of lying without outright lying on either his part or Fox Business's. It's like someone angry at a marginal tax rate hike quoting an innumerate accountant who advises his customers to take paycuts in order to take home more money.
The article below has a nice heatmap of the fee changes. My favorite insight from it that's not mentioned in most of the recent articles is that for borrowers with FICOs >780 (20-25% of consumers, according to a quick google search), fees are only slightly decreasing in the 80-85% LTV bucket and either staying flat or decreasing in all other buckets.
https://www.mortgagenewsdaily.com/news/01192023-big-llpa-changes
Thanks for the comments!
There were also various new fees added for high DTI loans, investment properties, etc., where higher fees were associated with default risks. And without missing a beat, in some articles, the complainers found a way to complain about those changes too.
Embarrassing all around.