Hi, I’m Adam DeSanctis with the Mortgage Minute, the latest news from the Mortgage Bankers Association. The Federal Housing Administration last week announced an important update to its property standards that will help expand access to FHA financing in some communities. Effective immediately, FHA is waiving its minimum distance requirements between wells and potential sources of contamination for existing homes as long as their property complies with applicable state or local requirements and the lender documents acceptable water quality testing results. This change removes an unnecessary barrier in areas where local authorities have already determined that shorter distances are safe. Like I said, the waiver applies only to existing construction and not to newly built homes. This action reflects a key recommendation MBA has made to FHA as part of our broader effort to modernize the agency’s minimum property requirements by eliminating outdated or duplicative standards and relying on appropriate state and local requirements. Looking ahead, MBA will continue working with FHA to pursue additional updates, including aligning its minimum property requirements more closely with those used by the GSEs. That’s it for this week. Thank you for listening!
Adam DeSanctis, VP, Communications at Mortgage Bankers Association
As a strategic public affairs and communications executive with nearly two decades of experience, Adam has deep expertise in strategy, management, and media relations. He is widely regarded as an expert in a variety of communications, including advocacy, brand, executive, crisis, grassroots, and social media. In his career, he has been the MBA spokesperson on a wide variety of real estate research and advocacy-related issues, promoted MBA research and advocacy efforts to financial, political, and trade industry media and on MBA’s social media channels, and secured media opportunities for MBA leadership on key real estate trends and issues, generated media coverage for MBA’s research and data on mortgage applications, credit availability, homebuilder applications, mortgage forbearance/delinquencies, commercial real estate originations, and forecasts, and other industry analysis, developed key strategic initiatives for MBA’s organizational public affairs plan, media relations and member communications support for mPower, MBA’s Opens Doors Foundation and MBA’s Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion programs.