Recently, House Republicans from across the political spectrum of their party have been campaigning against changes made by the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) to better serve larger groups of Americans benefiting from government involvement in their residential financing arrangements. The director of that agency itself has provided a comprehensive fact-check that dismantles Republican claims.
Prominent names in Congress like Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) have been among those promoting what the federal agency has already established are simply false claims. For starters, the arrangements put in place by those federal authorities do not mean that potential borrowers with a better credit score are paying more in order to cover for prospective borrowers with lower scores, which Boebert has specifically claimed. “Higher-credit-score borrowers are not being charged more so that lower-credit-score borrowers can pay less. The updated fees, as was true of the prior fees, generally increase as credit scores decrease for any given level of down payment,” the agency relayed via a statement from Director Sandra L. Thompson.
There are some new benefits in place for more financially disadvantaged groups… and these benefits focus in part on those with lower incomes, which obviously aren’t simply the same as lower credit scores. “The targeted eliminations of upfront fees for borrowers with lower incomes – not lower credit scores – primarily are supported by the higher fees on products such as second homes and cash-out refinances,” the agency’s director explained. The explanation made available by the federal agency also explains how these benefits that have been established are directly in line with the legal framework established for these portions of the government’s involvement in the home financing market.
“Borrowers with excellent credit should not be punished for doing right and be forced to bear more financial burdens due to the fiscal irresponsibility of others,” Boebert recently said in Congress, misrepresenting the facts. To be clear, she made those comments after the statement cited above from the federal agency in question itself, but the refutation inherent in that agency explanation still obviously applies. House Republicans who got behind a bill to undo some of that assistive action from the federal housing authority are generally incorrect.
