Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac’s federal regulator has laid out its strategic goals for the mortgage giants over the next 5 years, and they don’t include promoting equitable access to affordable housing in minority communities, studying how climate change could impact housing finance, or ensuring that the mortgage giants are on the lookout for unfair or deceptive practices.
All of those goals — as well as cultivating a “high-performing, diverse, accountable and engaged workforce” at the mortgage giants — were part of the last strategic plan issued by the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) under the Biden administration in February 2022.
It’s no surprise that those goals are nowhere to be found in the draft strategic plan released by the FHFA for public comment on Oct. 15. President Trump’s pick to lead the FHFA, housing scion Bill Pulte, issued a raft of orders in March gutting many programs and policies aimed at fulfilling those goals.
Pulte, who declared that “DEI is dead” at the mortgage giants after purging their boards and appointing himself the chair of both companies, has issued dozens of orders out of the public eye.
Fannie and Freddie are “safe and sound businesses, but we are going to make them safer and stronger,” he promised in March.
While Democrats have questioned the legality of Pulte’s board purges, this will be the first opportunity for industry and consumer groups to formally weigh in on the new direction FHFA has laid out for Fannie and Freddie and the 11 Federal Home Loan Banks, which it also regulates.
Public comments can be submitted to the FHFA through its website until midnight on Nov. 5, 2025.
The 5-year draft plan the FHFA issued for comment in February 2022 drew comments from more than 40 industry and consumer groups, businesses, and individuals, including the National Association of Realtors, the National Association of Home Builders, the Mortgage Bankers Association, the Housing Policy Council, the National Fair Housing Alliance and the Council for Affordable and Rural Housing,
Cutting red tape and combatting fraud
New priorities outlined in the FHFA’s draft strategic plan for fiscal years 2026-2030 include reducing unnecessary regulatory burdens and identifying and combatting fraud and misconduct.
Pulte has claimed mortgage fraud is “rampant” in loans backed by Fannie and Freddie, and has personally made at least three criminal referrals of Trump administration opponents to the U.S. Department of Justice. One of those referrals led to the Oct. 9 indictment of New York Attorney General Leticia James, who maintains her innocence.
Although the strategic plan is light on details on how the FHFA will crack down on mortgage fraud, Fannie Mae hired controversial Silicon Valley data analytics company Palantir Technologies in May to help it detect mortgage fraud using “cutting edge AI technology.”
The strategic plan says the FHFA intends to “enhance and enforce strong standards that protect taxpayers” from fraud and misconduct, and “support anti-fraud related reporting and information sharing.”
The FHFA no longer expects Fannie and Freddie to develop Equitable Housing Finance Plans to boost lending in minority communities, or back Special Purpose Credit Programs (SPCPs) that incentivize lenders to provide credit to first-time homebuyers in underserved communities.
But the FHFA will continue to ensure that Fannie and Freddie comply with Congressionally mandated affordable housing goals and provide “duty to serve” programs that provide liquidity for mortgages in manufactured housing, affordable housing preservation, and rural housing.
Can Fannie and Freddie spur homebuilding?
Another new FHFA goal for Fannie and Freddie is to “support efforts to expand housing supply to meet national demand.”
One way the mortgage giants can do that is by supporting investment in Low-Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC) properties.
In August, the FHFA announced it was doubling the amount Fannie and Freddie can each invest in LIHTC properties to $2 billion each, a total of $4 billion per year — a move applauded by the National Association of Home Builders.
The strategic plan says the FHFA will also “encourage [Fannie and Freddie} to explore opportunities to address the national housing supply crisis.”
In an Oct. 5 Truth Social post, President Trump claimed that homebuilders “are sitting on 2 million empty lots” and that he’s “asking Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to get big homebuilders going.”
That prompted some head scratching among housing policy experts and investment analysts who cover homebuilders.
CNBC’s Diana Olick pointed out that while analysts agree that the 15 publicly traded homebuilders have about 2.2 million lots in their inventories, less than 1/4 have roads, sewers and local approvals that would allow construction to begin.
Builders are “aggressively building speculative homes” faster than they can sell them in the hopes that lower mortgage rates will unleash pent-up demand, Olick said, and most analysts say there’s not much Fannie and Freddie can do to speed up the pace of construction.
“What they really want to see, and the builders tell me this to a person, is they want the federal government to put pressure on states and local municipalities to ease the regulatory environment, because that would make home building faster and cheaper,” Olick said.
Bloomberg News and The Wall Street Journal also ran skeptical pieces, with the Journal’s editorial board pointing out that there’s “little Fannie and Freddie can legally do under their existing federal charters to support home builders. Guaranteeing construction loans to big home builders is beyond their remit, and subsidizing borrowers to buy new homes would likely push up home prices.”
That prompted Pulte to lash out at Olick — an Emmy Award-winning journalist who launched CNBC’s real estate beat more than two decades ago — on X, calling her “dishonest” and a “left wing, Trump-hating ‘journalist.’”
“I’m looking at the Fannie Mae builder data and with the top three homebuilders we buy EASILY over $20 billion in THEIR LOANS!,” Pulte posted on Oct. 6, referring to mortgages taken out by buyers of new homes.
Two days later, he said Fannie and Freddie will ask lenders “to disclose Big Builder loans they are selling to Fannie and Freddie.”
On Oct. 9, Pulte chastised the Journal’s editorial board for imagining “a plot of a movie that is actually not happening.”
U.S. housing finance policy, he said, “is now to be connected to Big Builders’ land, affordability, and liquidity.”
Pulte attempted to shed more light on the Trump administration’s approach to spurring new home construction in an exclusive interview with The Builder’s Daily, which on Oct. 8 reported that FHFA “has begun reviewing builder pricing, liquidity flows, and even potential mortgage fraud risk data tied to loans Fannie and Freddie purchase.”
Pulte told the publication that the review will shape how Fannie and Freddie engage with individual builders.
The FHFA did not respond to Inman’s request for comment.
On Oct. 6, Fannie Mae appointed Brandon Hamara, an executive at homebuilder Tri Pointe Homes Inc., as senior vice president and head of operations for single-family and multifamily, earning $1.9 million in annual compensation.
Hamara, who had been appointed to Freddie Mac’s board of directors in Pulte’s March board purge, has left that role for a seat on Fannie Mae’s board.
In announcing Hamara’s new roles on X the next day, Pulte said “it will take somebody with deep understanding of homebuilding in order to get homebuilding going again. As the President said we need to get building again, and Brandon will help us do just [that]!”
Former Standard Pacific Homes and CalAtlantic Group executive Scott Stowell was appointed to Fannie Mae’s board on Nov. 5, 2024 — the same day Trump was elected to a second term, but before Pulte took charge of FHFA.
Get Inman’s Mortgage Brief Newsletter delivered right to your inbox. A weekly roundup of all the biggest news in the world of mortgages and closings delivered every Wednesday. Click here to subscribe.
