[Federal Register Volume 84, Number 103 (Wednesday, May 29, 2019)]
[Notices]
[Pages 24783-24796]
From the Federal Register Online via the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
[FR Doc No: 2019-11182]
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FEDERAL HOUSING FINANCE AGENCY
[No. 2019-N-04]
Proposed Collection; Comment Request
AGENCY: Federal Housing Finance Agency.
ACTION: 60-Day notice of submission of information collection for
approval from Office of Management and Budget.
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SUMMARY: In accordance with the requirements of the Paperwork Reduction
Act of 1995 (PRA), the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) is seeking
public comments concerning an information collection known as the
``American Survey of Mortgage Borrowers,'' which has been assigned
control number 2590-0015 by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB).
FHFA intends to submit the information collection to OMB for review and
approval of a three-year extension of the control number, which is due
to expire on July 31, 2019.
DATES: Interested persons may submit comments on or before July 29,
2019.
ADDRESSES: Submit comments to FHFA, identified by ``Proposed
Collection; Comment Request: `American Survey of Mortgage Borrowers,
(No. 2019-N-04)''' by any of the following methods:
Agency Website: www.fhfa.gov/open-for-comment-or-input.
Federal eRulemaking Portal: http://www.regulations.gov.
Follow the instructions for submitting comments. If you submit your
comment to the Federal eRulemaking Portal, please also send it by email
to FHFA at [email protected] to ensure timely receipt by the agency.
Mail/Hand Delivery: Federal Housing Finance Agency, Eighth
Floor, 400 Seventh Street SW, Washington, DC 20219, ATTENTION: Proposed
Collection; Comment Request: ``American Survey of Mortgage Borrowers,
(No. 2019-N-04)''.
We will post all public comments we receive without change,
including any personal information you provide, such as your name and
address, email address, and telephone number, on the FHFA website at
http://www.fhfa.gov. In addition, copies of all comments received will
be available for examination by the public through the electronic
comment docket for this PRA Notice also located on the FHFA website.
FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: Saty Patrabansh, Manager, National
Mortgage Database Program, [email protected], (202) 649-3213; or
Eric Raudenbush, Associate General Counsel, [email protected],
(202) 649-3084, (these are not toll-free numbers), Federal Housing
Finance Agency, 400 Seventh Street SW, Washington, DC 20219. The
Telecommunications Device for the Hearing Impaired is (800) 877-8339.
SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:
A. Need For and Use of the Information Collection
FHFA is seeking OMB clearance under the PRA for a collection of
information known as the ``American Survey of Mortgage Borrowers''
(ASMB). The ASMB is an annual, voluntary survey of individuals who
currently have a first mortgage loan secured by single-family
residential property. The 2018 survey questionnaire consisted of 93
questions designed to learn directly from mortgage borrowers about
their mortgage experience, any challenges they may have had in
maintaining their mortgage and, where applicable, in terminating a
mortgage. It requested specific information on: the mortgage; the
mortgaged property; the borrower's experience with the loan servicer;
and the borrower's financial resources and financial knowledge. FHFA is
also seeking clearance to pretest future iterations of the survey
questionnaire and related materials from time to time through the use
of focus groups. A copy of the 2018 survey questionnaire appears at the
end of this notice.
The ASMB is a component of the ``National Mortgage Database''
(NMDB) Program, which is a joint effort of FHFA and the Consumer
Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB). The NMDB Program is designed to
satisfy the Congressionally-mandated requirements of section 1324(c) of
the Federal Housing Enterprises Financial Safety and Soundness Act.\1\
Section 1324(c) requires that FHFA conduct a monthly survey to collect
data on the characteristics of individual prime and subprime mortgages,
and on the borrowers and properties associated with those mortgages, in
order to enable it to prepare a detailed annual report on the mortgage
market activities of the Federal National Mortgage Association (Fannie
Mae) and the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation (Freddie Mac) for
review by the appropriate Congressional oversight committees. Section
1324(c) also authorizes and requires FHFA to compile a database of
timely and otherwise unavailable residential mortgage market
information to be made available to the public.
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\1\ 12 U.S.C. 4544(c).
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As a means of fulfilling these and other statutory requirements, as
well as to support policymaking and research regarding the residential
mortgage markets, FHFA and CFPB jointly established the National
Mortgage Database Program in 2012. The Program is designed to provide
comprehensive information about the U.S. mortgage market and has three
primary components: (1) The NMDB; (2) the quarterly National Survey of
Mortgage Originations (NSMO); and (3) the ASMB.
The NMDB is a de-identified loan-level database of closed-end
first-lien residential mortgage loans that is representative of the
market as a whole, contains detailed loan-level information on the
terms and performance of the mortgages and the characteristics of the
associated borrowers and properties, is continually updated, has an
historical component dating back to 1998, and provides a sampling frame
for surveys to collect additional information. The core data in the
NMDB are drawn from a random 1-in-20 sample of all closed-end first-
lien mortgage files outstanding at any time between January 1998 and
the present in the files of Experian, one of
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the three national credit repositories. A random 1-in-20 sample of
mortgages newly reported to Experian is added each quarter.
The NMDB also draws information on mortgages in the NMDB datasets
from other existing sources, including the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act
(HMDA) data that are maintained by the Federal Financial Institutions
Examination Council (FFIEC), property valuation models, and data files
maintained by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and by federal agencies. FHFA
obtains additional data from the quarterly NSMO, which provides
critical and timely information on newly-originated mortgages and those
borrowing that are not available from any existing source, including:
The range of nontraditional and subprime mortgage products being
offered, the methods by which these mortgages are being marketed, and
the characteristics of borrowers for these types of loans.\2\
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\2\ OMB has cleared the NSMO under the PRA and assigned it
control no. 2590-0012, which expires on April 30, 2020.
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While the NSMO provides information on newly-originated mortgages,
the ASMB solicits information on borrowers' experience with maintaining
their existing mortgages, including their experience maintaining
mortgages under financial stress, their experience in soliciting
financial assistance, their success in accessing federally-sponsored
programs designed to assist them, and, where applicable, any challenges
they may have had in terminating a mortgage loan. This type of
information is not available from any other source. Beginning in 2016,
the ASMB questionnaire has been sent out annually to a stratified
random sample of 10,000 borrowers in the NMDB. In 2018, the ASMB had an
18.7 percent overall response rate, which yielded 1,793 survey
responses.
When fully processed, the information collected through the ASMB
will be used, in combination with information obtained from existing
sources in the NMDB, to assist FHFA in understanding how the
performance of existing mortgages is influencing the residential
mortgage market, what different borrower groups are discussing with
their servicers when they are under financial stress, and consumers'
opinions of federally-sponsored programs designed to assist them. This
important, but otherwise unavailable, information will assist FHFA in
the supervision of its regulated entities (Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and
the Federal Home Loan Banks) and in the development and implementation
of appropriate and effective policies and programs. The information
will also be used for research and analysis by CFPB and other federal
agencies that have regulatory and supervisory responsibilities/mandates
related to mortgage markets and to provide a resource for research and
analysis by academics and other interested parties outside of the
government.
As it has done in the past, FHFA expects to continue to sponsor
focus groups to pretest possible survey questions and revisions to the
survey materials. Such pretesting ultimately helps to ensure that the
survey respondents can and will answer the survey questions and will
provide useful data on their experiences with maintaining their
existing mortgages. FHFA uses information collected through the focus
groups to assist in drafting and modifying the survey questions and
instructions, as well as the related communications, to read in the way
that will be most readily understood by the survey respondents and that
will be most likely to elicit usable responses. Such information is
also used to help determine how best to organize and format the survey
questionnaire.
B. Burden Estimate
This information collection comprises two components: (I) The ASMB
survey; and (II) the pre-testing of the survey questionnaire and
related materials through the use of cognitive testing. FHFA conducted
the survey annually from 2016 through 2018. Although the ASMB is
nominally an annual survey, the decision as to whether the ASMB will be
conducted in 2019 and thereafter depends upon the availability of
funding and on assessments as to whether there is a continuing need for
the type of data collected through the survey. For purposes of these
burden estimates, however, FHFA assumes that it will conduct the survey
once annually over the next three years and that it will conduct two
rounds of pre-testing on each set of survey materials.
FHFA has analyzed the total hour burden on members of the public
associated with conducting the survey (5,000 hours) and with pre-
testing the survey materials (24 hours) and estimates the total annual
hour burden imposed on the public by this information collection to be
5,024 hours. The estimate for each phase of the collection was
calculated as follows:
I. Conducting the Survey
FHFA estimates that the ASMB questionnaire will be sent to 10,000
recipients each time it is conducted. Although it expects that only
about 1,800 of those surveys will be returned, FHFA has calculated the
burden estimates below as if all of the surveys will be returned. Based
on the reported experience of respondents to earlier ASMB
questionnaires, FHFA estimates that it will take each respondent 30
minutes to complete each survey, including the gathering of necessary
materials to respond to the questions. This results in a total annual
burden estimate of 5,000 hours for the survey phase of this collection
(1 survey per year x 10,000 respondents per survey x 30 minutes per
respondent = 5,000 hours).
II. Pre-Testing the Materials
FHFA estimates that it will sponsor two focus groups prior to
conducting each annual survey, with 12 participants in each focus
group, for a total of 24 focus group participants. It estimates the
participation time for each focus group participant to be one hour,
resulting in a total annual burden estimate of 24 hours for the pre-
testing phase of the collection (2 focus groups per year x 12
participants in each group x 1 hour per participant = 24 hours).
C. Comment Request
FHFA requests written comments on the following: (1) Whether the
collection of information is necessary for the proper performance of
FHFA functions, including whether the information has practical
utility; (2) the accuracy of FHFA's estimates of the burdens of the
collection of information; (3) ways to enhance the quality, utility,
and clarity of the information collected; and (4) ways to minimize the
burden of the collection of information on respondents, including
through the use of automated collection techniques or other forms of
information technology.
Dated: May 23, 2019.
Kevin Winkler,
Chief Information Officer, Federal Housing Finance Agency.
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[FR Doc. 2019-11182 Filed 5-28-19; 8:45 am]
BILLING CODE 8070-01-C