The agency should resist renewed calls to lower insurance premiums. Doing so would increase demand and raise home prices, negating any proposed benefits.
The new budget proposal projects a very profitable Federal Housing Administration in fiscal year 2019, but there are no indications the FHA will reduce its mortgage insurance premiums anytime soon.
Weak profits and the threat of false claims charges are keeping banks out of the market for loans guaranteed by the Federal Housing Administration and the Department of Veterans Affairs.
The Senate Banking Committee had approved Powell already in December, but a revote was necessary after the Senate adjourned for the year without finalizing his confirmation.
The JPMorgan Chase CEO is rejecting arguments that banks are poised to loosen underwriting standards to win more mortgage business. He said what's needed to encourage banks to make more loans to borrowers with spotty credit files are changes to FHA rules and other policy fixes.
Adolfo Marzol, an official at the Department of Housing and Urban Development, is optimistic that technological improvements and other changes can help draw Federal Housing Administration lenders back to the fold.
More than 100 pending Trump administration nominees, including Fed Chair-designate Jerome Powell, must update their financial disclosures and have the White House resubmit their names for consideration by the Senate.
HUD Secretary Ben Carson has spent much of his first year trying to convince lenders they wouldn't be harshly penalized if FHA-guaranteed loans went bad. But he still has a ways to go.
