Mortgage Matters – Ensuring access to mortgages for the 62 million Americans in community associations
Mortgage Matters—Protecting communities, homeowners and homebuyers
- Ensuring that Americans can obtain mortgages for homes in community associations.
- Preserving the ability of community association homeowners to sell their homes.
- Safeguarding the financial well-being of homeowners and condominium associations.
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CAI Mortgage Matters Webinar*
The federal government is undertaking sweeping changes that will determine who gets mortgages, for what type of home and in what type of community. The impact of these changes will be profound and have the potential to impact the value and viability of tens of thousands of homeowner and condominium associations and the homes within them. In fact if there is one element of the federal response to the mortgage and housing crisis, it is that regulators and legislators lack a basic and clear understanding of the principles that govern housing in community associations.
Decisions that Congress and federal agencies are making today will determine the marketability of your home and your ability to get a mortgage in the future.
CAI’s Mortgage Matters initiative is a comprehensive response to critical challenges at the federal level. The common thread to each of these challenges is to ensure that potential homebuyers have access to affordable mortgage products and that the criteria used to determine loans in community associations are realistic measures of an association’s financial health. As the rules being developed today will likely govern mortgages and thus the financial health of associations for the next several decades, the stakes could not be higher.
CAI is working on four fronts to protect America’s community associations:
· Working to revise the FHA Condominium Insurance Guidelines.
· Opposing the misguided FHFA Private Deed-Based Transfer Fee Regulation.
· Providing expertise to several government agencies as they create the new regulations for mortgages called Qualified Residential Mortgages (QRM).
· Providing essential perspective on the larger issues of ensuring the flow of capital into the mortgage markets when Congress eliminated Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac as they undertake reform of these Government Sponsored Enterprises (GSE Reform).
Through our work in these four areas, CAI is fighting to ensure that homebuyers have access to affordable mortgages for homes in community associations and that associations remain a vibrant part of America’s housing mix.
Why is this important?
Common-interest communities—including homeowners associations, condominium communities and cooperatives—are home to more than one in five Americans—62 million people! Because community association residents assess themselves for the upkeep of their communities and their services and amenities, associations save state and local governments more than $40 billion a year in expenses that would otherwise fall on local taxpayers. Because of resident support amenities and rules to protect property values, homes in community associations are also worth more than similar properties that are not located in an association.
Learn more about our work on these issues at:
Mortgage Matters FHA
Mortgage Matters FHFA
Mortgage Matters QRM
Mortgage Matters GSE
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