FHFA's Calabria: No Trump GSE plan until August or September

WASHINGTON — As Washington impatiently awaits the results of presidentially directed reports on housing finance reform, industry observers may have to prepare to wait even longer.

Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Mark Calabria now expects the report that will lay out the administration’s goals for releasing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac from conservatorship to be published in August or September, he said in an interview with Reuters.

Calabria also said the report was “essentially done,” and that he had reviewed a draft.

Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg

An FHFA spokesperson confirmed Calabria’s comments.

That timetable is in contrast to one that Calabria had previously laid out, in which he said he expected to see the report “hopefully” by the end of June.

Several analysts had also expected the report to come out later in July.

But Calabria himself has little control over the release of the report, which President Trump in March directed the Treasury Department and the Department of Housing and Urban Development to complete and provide both administrative and legislative solutions for modernizing the housing finance system and ending the conservatorship of the government-sponsored enterprises.

After the release of the report, the FHFA could begin discussing changes to the preferred stock purchase agreements in the fall, Calabria told American Banker in April. Those agreements could be modified to allow the GSEs to retain earnings and raise capital beyond the $3 billion limit they each are now permitted to hold.