National Advocacy Committee Blog: Winning on the QM Patch

Celebrating NAHREP familia, cultura, politics, and grassroots action

Que onda mi gente?

Has someone at an event made you text NAHREP to 50457 recently?

Have you filled out your profile to join our National Advocacy Committee by clicking on this link?

Are you asking yourself, ok pues I did it, ahora que?

Well… congratulations and welcome to the National Advocacy Committee!

So you’re a part of the National Advocacy Committee (the NAC), what should you expect?

NAHREP’s Policy Blog:

You’ll receive this weekly blog where I’ll highlight some key policy issues impacting our industry and what we can do to grow our influence. As a NAC member, it’s important to stay informed because public policy matters. (#7 of the NAHREP 10)

Calls to Action:

You’ll receive calls to action to contact your elected officials when we’re launching issue campaigns. Make sure to contact your representative right away as these campaigns will be time sensitive!

You’ll receive calls to action on spreading a message through social media so that we can be “woke” as to what policies are impacting our industry, and so that we can tag our elected officials with key messages. We have to let people know that #NAHREPKNOCKS, #NAHREPVOTES and we’re paying attention.

In-Person Meetings:

You may be asked to attend an in-person meeting to advocate for our policy priorities. These meetings can take place in Washington DC during our annual Housing Policy Summit or year-round in your district.

We will recognize our top advocates at our national conventions – i.e. those who answered our calls to action!

BIG NEWS: CFPB Moves to remove Debt-to-income (DTI) requirement

A piece of good news. Our advocacy paid off! CFPB has signaled that it will adopt our proposal for the definition of a qualified mortgage (QM).

One of the pillars of our policy priorities is access to credit or ensuring that enough Latinos qualify for sustainable mortgages in order to reach our 50% Hispanic homeownership rate by 2024.

The CFPB’s pending expiration of the QM Patch was something we’ve been following carefully as it would mean that Latinos with a DTI higher than 43% would have fewer options for financing. (I guarantee you, that’s a lot of your clients.) However, our advocacy paid off. CFPB Director Kathy Kraninger has announced the following:

An extension of the QM patch until it is replaced with a new model.
An elimination of the DTI requirement for QM loan status (huge win for us!)
A move toward a pricing model rather than a DTI model (another huge win for us)

For those of you who have been reading the blog since the start, you might have heard me talk about the expiration of the QM patch. You can see our last post on the QM Patch here.

There are a few things we still need to make sure happen:

Ensure that the pricing threshold used to determine QM does not disproportionately exclude Latino borrowers.
That underwriting guidelines ensure that people have the Ability to Repay a loan.

I’ll keep you posted as we move forward advocating for these outstanding decision points that will impact the Hispanic market. We should all expect a proposed rule by March of 2020 (around our conference!).

About Noerena Limón

Noerena Limón is NAHREP’s Executive Vice President of Public Policy and Industry Relations. Noerena heads the organization’s policy and advocacy efforts on issues ranging from homeownership, housing inventory, credit access and immigration.

Prior to joining NAHREP, Noerena spent six years at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) and served as a political appointee under President Obama in the White House Office of Political Affairs.