By HousingWire
A coalition of housing trade groups — including the Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA), National Association of Realtors (NAR) and National Association of Home Builders(NAHB) — called on the Federal Reserve to provide market certainty about the Fed’s rate path and its plans for the mortgage-backed securities (MBS) portfolio.
Ongoing market uncertainty about the Fed’s rate path has “exacerbated housing affordability and created additional disruptions for a real estate market that is already straining to adjust to a dramatic pullback in both mortgage origination and home sale volume,” the organization said in a joint letter to the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System on Monday.
Housing trade groups urged Fed Chair Jerome Powell to make two clear statements — that the Fed does not contemplate further rate hikes; and the Fed will not sell off any of its MBS holdings until and unless the housing finance market has stabilized and mortgage-to-Treasury spreads have normalized.
