July 31 -- The Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) is seeking public comments concerning its proposed 2020 American Survey of Mortgage Borrowers (ASMB). Comments are due by August 31, 2020.
The ASMB is a component of the “National Mortgage Database” (NMDB®) Program, which is a joint effort of FHFA and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) (jointly, “the agencies”). The NMDB Program is designed to satisfy the Congressionally-mandated requirements of section 1324(c) of the Federal Housing Enterprises Financial Safety and Soundness Act. Section 1324(c) requires that FHFA conduct a monthly survey to collect data on the characteristics of individual prime and subprime mortgages, and on the borrowers and properties associated with those mortgages, in order to enable it to prepare a detailed annual report on the mortgage market activities of the Federal National Mortgage Association (Fannie Mae) and the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation (Freddie Mac) for review by the appropriate Congressional oversight committees. Section 1324(c) also authorizes and requires FHFA to compile a database of otherwise unavailable residential mortgage market information and to make that information available to the public in a timely fashion.
As a means of fulfilling those and other statutory requirements, as well as to support policymaking and research regarding the residential mortgage markets, FHFA and CFPB jointly established the NMDB Program in 2012. The Program is designed to provide comprehensive information about the U.S. mortgage market and has three primary components: (1) The NMDB; (2) the quarterly National Survey of Mortgage Originations (NSMO); and (3) the ASMB.
The ASMB focuses on borrowers' experience with maintaining their existing mortgages. This includes their experience maintaining mortgages under financial stress, their experience in soliciting financial assistance, their success in accessing federally sponsored programs designed to assist them, and, where applicable, any challenges they may have had in terminating a mortgage loan. In short, the ASMB is designed to collect information necessary to allow empirical analysis of two questions of vital importance to residential mortgage market policymakers and stakeholders: (1) What factors explain or predict which borrowers will become delinquent on their mortgages?; and (2) Once a borrower becomes delinquent, what factors explain or predict whether the borrower will (a) become current on the loan, (b) decide they cannot afford the mortgage and sell the property or modify the mortgage, or (c) remain delinquent and enter into foreclosure?
From 2016 through 2018, the ASMB questionnaire was sent once annually to a stratified random sample of 10,000 borrowers with mortgages in the NMDB. In 2018, the ASMB had an 18.7 percent overall response rate, which yielded 1,793 survey responses. FHFA did not undertake the ASMB during 2019, but intends to send out the survey again in the Fall of 2020. The 2018 and 2020 survey questionnaires are substantially similar, except in that a number of questions specifically relating to the COVID-19 pandemic and its effects have been added to the 2020 questionnaire. Eight new questions have been added regarding expanded mortgage payment forbearance options that may have been offered to borrowers. Two other new questions address the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on borrowers' homeownership and employment. Because of the elimination of several questions, as well as the combination of some other questions, the total number of questions has actually decreased from 93 on the 2018 survey questionnaire to 92 on the 2020 questionnaire.
Each of the 92 questions on the 2020 survey questionnaire is designed to elicit one or more of five different categories of information that are not available in the administrative data and that are needed either to properly analyze the issues described above or to validate the survey responses. These categories are: (1) Information needed to validate that the survey reached the correct borrower and that the borrower is providing answers about the correct loan; (2) information about the mortgage loan that does not exist in sufficient detail in the administrative data; (3) information about the borrower's economic circumstances that does not exist, or exists in insufficient detail, in the administrative data; (4) information about the borrower's attitudes regarding his or her mortgage, property, interactions with lenders and servicers, and life circumstances; and (5) information needed to determine the ultimate outcome of the borrower's delinquency and the interim steps that led to that outcome.
FR notice:
https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2020/07/31/2020-16659/proposed-collection-comment-request
Draft survey instrument appended to FR notice.
FR notice correction:
https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2020/08/07/2020-17222/proposed-collection-comment-request
FHFA ASMB overview:
https://www.fhfa.gov/PolicyProgramsResearch/Programs/Pages/National-Mortgage-Database.aspx#:~:text=OF%20MORTGAGE%20BORROWERS-,Introduction,Financial%20Protection%20Bureau%20(CFPB).
Points of contact: Saty Patrabansh, Manager, National Mortgage Database Program, Saty.Patrabansh@fhfa.gov, (202) 649-3213; Angela Supervielle, Counsel, Angela.Supervielle@fhfa.gov, (202) 649-3973
