FHFA Publishes Notice of New Order for GSE SF Public Use Database.

Today's Federal Register has a FHFA "Notice of Order" HERE that revises the required data elements for the GSE SF (and MF) public use databases. (My prior post about delay in release of these databases is HERE).

The revision incorporates statutory changes [Sections 1126/1127] made by the 2008 Housing and Economic Recovery Act. Those changes require publication of data for the proceeding year NLT September 30th of the following year and incorporation of HMDA compliant data elements.

Thanks to Will White, Senator Merkley's Senior Advisor, I was able to confirm that FHFA plans to publish the 2008 GSE public use SF database by the end of July , and publish the 2009 GSE SF public use database by the required Sept 30 statutory deadline. This schedule would mean that the publication of the 2008 data is 10 months after the deadline for statutory compliance.  Public release is expected to meet the deadline for 2009 and subsequent years. (FHFA's web page HERE will be updated once these databases become available to the public; let's hope that the format for these databases are user friendly)

The GSE SF public use loan level database is more robust that the HMDA SF database because it includes rural areas, AND a first time home buyer data indicator. Coupled with minority status data elements, this allows identification of loans to minority first time home buyers, which then allows the tracking of progress toward the goal of increasing minority home ownership rates.

Originally created and posted on the Oregon Housing Blog.