As required by their regulator, the Federal Housing Finance Agency, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac today released released multiyear plans detailing how they will identify homeownership barriers faced by Black and Latino consumers and how they will address racial and ethnic gaps in homeownership.
Among other things, the plans address how the GSEs will execute future consumer education initiatives, help tenants build credit profiles and enable better access to financial services, expand counseling services to support housing stability and use technology to improve access to sustainable credit and fair home appraisals. The plans also highlight special purpose credit programs the GSEs will test to help address barriers to sustainable homeownership, including for mortgage servicing.
Under a new pilot transparency framework created by FHFA, the GSEs will also be required to publish and maintain a list of pilot programs and “test-and-learn” activities on their public websites.