Senators' Attitude on Housing Relief: What's the Rush?

Thousands of Americans may be losing their homes to foreclosure or facing hefty mortgage-payment resets, but the Senate appears to be in no rush to help.

The House has passed several major housing-relief measures in recent weeks, but the Senate hasn't passed even one. On the eve of its two-week Thanksgiving recess, the House approved by a bipartisan vote the most sweeping reforms of the national mortgage system in more than two decades. Meanwhile, the Senate stalled legislation that would strengthen the Federal Housing Administration's mortgage programs, a key resource for homeowners who need to refinance out of adjustable-rate loans into more affordable fixed-rate ones.

The FHA reform bill passed the House in September and had been approved by the Senate Banking Committee by a 20-1 vote. But it was blocked from floor action by a small group of Republicans who are unsympathetic to federal involvement in the mortgage market, even if it's designed to assist subprime borrowers.

The FHA bill is particularly important for high-cost housing markets -- California and parts of the East Coast in particular -- because it raises the maximum mortgage amounts the agency can insure. It also would cut minimum down payments and allow the FHA to charge lower premiums to applicants with better credit histories and higher premiums to borrowers with less-favorable credit.

The bill was blocked from a floor vote on Nov. 15 by Sens. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) and Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) after a hold by Elizabeth Dole (R-N.C.). Dole objects to the FHA's plan to begin pricing mortgages based on credit risk starting in January, whether the reform bill is approved or not. Dole is an ally of the private mortgage insurance industry, which would have to compete with a revived FHA in the low-down-payment segment of the mortgage market.

Coburn and DeMint argued that the FHA reform proposal was too far-reaching to be rushed through the Senate before the Thanksgiving break without a potentially lengthy floor debate.

The mortgage reform bill the House approved may well face a similarly uncertain fate in the Senate. Among other provisions, it would:

-- Require every loan originator in the country, whether a mortgage broker or a bank employee, to be registered and licensed in a national database and meet minimum educational and certification standards.

-- Require all originators to make only loans whose terms are "appropriate" to the borrower. For example, the borrower must have a "reasonable" ability to repay the mortgage and must receive a "net tangible benefit" from a refinancing.

-- Ban and punish "steering" of borrowers into higher-cost mortgages than their credit histories merit. This is a problem that has been prevalent in home loans made to first-time and minority applicants, who often have thin files at national credit bureaus but solid payment histories on rents, utility bills and other forms of credit that are not reported to the bureaus. Some loan officers also steer minority applicants into inappropriately higher-cost mortgages solely to reap higher fees, according to consumer advocates.

-- Extend legal liability for predatory loans to Wall Street firms that securitize pools of mortgages into bonds. Under current rules, those companies are often insulated from suits over predatory loans, even though they may have been aware, or should have suspected, that borrowers had been abused.

-- Clean up the appraisal field by prohibiting and punishing interference in valuations, especially by brokers and lenders pressuring appraisers to "hit the number" needed to allow loans to close.

Banking and mortgage lobbyists sought unsuccessfully to remove or soften some of the bill's reforms before the House vote, but they are in a position to block the legislation outright in the Senate. Banking Committee Chairman Christopher J. Dodd (D-Conn.), who is campaigning for his party's presidential nomination, had promised his own mortgage reform bill to focus support in the Senate, but to date he has introduced nothing.

The majority of members of both the House and the Senate would probably agree that the U.S. mortgage system broke down between 2001 and 2005, allowing lax underwriting, bogus appraisals and fraud to trigger billions of dollars of losses and hundreds of thousands of foreclosures.

But when the questions become "How do we fix the system?" and "How fast?" the final answers appear to rest with the Senate, where the clear message on housing problems so far this session has been "Hey, what's the rush?"

Kenneth R. Harney's e-mail address is KenHarney@earthlink.net.