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The MReport Webcast: Monday 7/18/2016

A housing policy bill that passed by a unanimous vote in the House of Representatives in February 427 to 0 has now passed by unanimous consent in the Senate. H.R. 3700, better known as the Housing Opportunity Through Modernization Act, includes reforms to FHA’s restrictions on condo financing and helps veterans achieve homeownership, among other housing policy changes.

The bill makes FHA’s recertification process, quote substantially less burdensome, according to NAR. It lowers FHA’s current owner-occupancy requirement from 50 percent to 35 percent and requires FHA to replace existing policy on transfer fees with the less restrictive model the Federal Housing Finance Agency uses. The bill also authorizes the Rural Housing Service single-family housing guaranteed loan program to delegate approval authority to preferred lenders.

Consumers’ experiences in the credit market have improved compared to earlier in the year, but at the same time consumers seem to be more pessimistic about their prospects for future credit approval—particularly with access to mortgage credit, according to the New York Fed’s SCE Credit Access Survey. The perceived likelihood of a mortgage application being rejected has risen by 5 percentage points since October 2015 up to 39 point 9 percent.