[Adam] Hi, I’m Adam DeSanctis. This is the Mortgage Minute, the latest news from the Mortgage Bankers Association. Federal Reserve Vice Chair Michael Barr last week confirmed his intent to recommend to the board sweeping changes to the Basel 3 end game proposal issued by federal regulators last July. According to Barr, this recommendation would include a re proposal, which the FDIC and OCC would also have to agree to. As you know, MBA has consistently called for changes to the proposal, including in testimony before Congress, speeches, comment letters, and ongoing conversations with federal regulators. Barr outlined some of the high level highlights of the recommended changes to the proposal, including revisions that appear to address several of MBA’s top concerns regarding the mortgage market impact of the rule. This includes removing the 20% point risk weighting add on for single family mortgages. Which would have further diminished banks participation in mortgage lending, while reducing credit availability for LMI home buyers. In addition, Barr indicated that most of the new rule would not be applied to banks with $100 billion to $250 billion in assets, which will provide relief to many regional banks from the mortgage servicing rights and warehouse lending provisions of the proposal that we argued would hurt the entire mortgage market. Vice Chair Barr stated that a re proposal, along with the release of results of the quantitative impact study is imminent. MBA continues to urge the regulators to ensure that the re proposal and any final rule be the result of a rigorous impact analysis that is also subject to stakeholder comment. A re proposal followed by a new common period potentially pushes the implementation of a final rule beyond 2025. We will continue to discuss this issue with federal regulators as we await the release of the re proposed rule. That’s it for this week. Thank you for listening.

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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 considered to be 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.