Coalition Letter to Senator Lee Regarding G-fee Appreciation

On August 5 NAR signed on to a letter to Senator Mike Lee. The letter thanks the Senator for  introducing amendment 2441, which is intended to eliminate the use of fees on homebuyers to fund the infrastructure bill.

Our members appreciate the effort to invest in critical improvements to America’s infrastructure. However, the U.S. also faces historical housing market challenges, including: a housing shortage of nearly 3.5 million units; more than 1.75 million homeowners who will need help transitioning out of forbearance; unprecedented low homeownership rates for the black and Latino communities; and, continuing efforts to expand homeownership to underserved rural and urban markets.

 

Guarantee fees charged by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (the GSEs) should be used for their designed purpose: to cover losses that occur in the natural course of business as well as their cost of operations. Use of these fees for non-housing purposes only hinders efforts to address the homeownership challenges described above.

 

Consequently, our organizations and their members believe that the GSEs’ guarantee fees should be set by the enterprises or their conservator to fund their operations in fulfillment of their charter duties, and that Congress should not statutorily raise these fees to fund other priorities.