The Federal Housing Finance Agency extended its deadline for accepting industry input on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac guarantee fees to Sept. 8.
The FHFA previously announced in June that it was seeking industry opinion through Aug. 4.
In FHFA Director Mel Watt’s first major policy speech in May, he said that the FHFA would seek comments on G-fee increases. In that speech, he said, “As many of you know, I issued a directive to the Enterprises that they delay the guarantee fee increase announced in December of last year. In our request for input, we will pose a number of questions the agency is considering, and we solicit and encourage your feedback.”
“FHFA’s Request for Input includes questions related to G-fee policy and implementation regarding the optimum level of G-fees required to protect taxpayers and implications for mortgage credit availability,” the agency said.
In December, former FHFA Acting Director Ed DeMarco announced that the G-fees would gradually rise throughout 2014. At the time, the FHFA said that the base G-fee, or ongoing G-fee, for all mortgages would increase by 10 basis points. That would have represented an average increase of 14 basis points on typical 30-year mortgages and 4 basis points on 15-year mortgages.
The plan was also to eliminate the up-front 25 basis point adverse market fee assessed on all mortgages purchased by Freddie and Fannie.
