[Federal Register Volume 81, Number 57 (Thursday, March 24, 2016)]
[Notices]
[Pages 15707-15718]
From the Federal Register Online via the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
[FR Doc No: 2016-06590]


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FEDERAL HOUSING FINANCE AGENCY

[No. 2016-N-03]


Proposed Collection; Comment Request

AGENCY: Federal Housing Finance Agency.

ACTION: 30-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 or the 
Agency) is seeking public comments concerning the information 
collection known as the ``American Survey of Mortgage Borrowers'' (in a 
prior PRA Notice, this information collection was referred to as the 
``National Survey of Existing Mortgage Borrowers''). This is a new 
collection that has not yet been assigned a control number 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 
control number.

DATES: Interested persons may submit comments on or before April 25, 
2016.

ADDRESSES: Submit comments to the Office of Information and Regulatory 
Affairs of the Office of Management and Budget, Attention: Desk Officer 
for the Federal Housing Finance Agency, Washington, DC 20503, Fax: 
(202) 395-3047, Email: [email protected]. Please also submit 
comments to FHFA, identified by ``Proposed Collection; Comment Request: 
`American Survey of Mortgage Borrowers, (No. 2016-N-03)' '' by any of 
the following methods:
     Agency Web site: 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. 2016-N-03)''.
    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 Web site at 
http://www.fhfa.gov. In addition, copies of all comments received will 
be available for examination by the public on business days between the 
hours of 10 a.m. and 3 p.m., at the Federal Housing Finance Agency, 
Eighth Floor, 400 Seventh Street SW., Washington, DC 20219. To make an 
appointment to inspect

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comments, please call the Office of General Counsel at (202) 649-3804.

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: Forrest Pafenberg, Supervisory Policy 
Analyst, Office of the Chief Operating Officer, by email at 
[email protected] or by telephone at (202) 649-3129; or Eric 
Raudenbush, Assistant General Counsel, by email at 
[email protected] or by telephone at (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 
Deaf 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 new collection of 
information known as the ``American Survey of Mortgage Borrowers'' 
(ASMB).\1\ The ASMB will be a periodic, voluntary survey of individuals 
who currently have a first mortgage loan secured by single-family 
residential property. The survey questionnaire will consist of 
approximately 90 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, terminating a 
mortgage. It will request 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 the survey questionnaire and related 
materials from time to time through the use of focus groups. A draft of 
the survey questionnaire appears at the end of this notice.
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    \1\ In the initial PRA Notice published in the Federal Register 
for this information collection, the survey was referred to as the 
``National Survey of Existing Mortgage Borrowers.'' See 80 FR 69664 
(Nov. 10, 2015).
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    The ASMB will be a component of the larger ``National Mortgage 
Database'' (NMDB) Project, which is a multi-year joint effort of FHFA 
and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) (although the ASMB 
is being sponsored only by FHFA). The NMDB Project is designed to 
satisfy the Congressionally-mandated requirements of section 1324(c) of 
the Federal Housing Enterprises Financial Safety and Soundness Act of 
1992, as amended by the Housing and Economic Recovery Act of 2008.\2\ 
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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    \2\ 12 U.S.C. 4544(c).
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    In order to fulfill those and other statutory mandates, as well as 
to support policymaking and research efforts, FHFA and CFPB committed 
in July 2012 to fund, build and manage the NMDB Project. When fully 
complete, the NMDB will be a de-identified loan-level database of 
closed-end first-lien residential mortgages. It will: (1) Be 
representative of the market as a whole; (2) contain detailed, loan-
level information on the terms and performance of mortgages, as well as 
characteristics of the associated borrowers and properties; (3) be 
continually updated; (4) have an historical component dating back 
before the financial crisis of 2008; and (5) provide 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 
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) 
database that is 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. 
Currently, FHFA obtains additional data from its quarterly National 
Survey of Mortgage Borrowers (NSMB), 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.\3\
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    \3\ OMB has cleared the NSMB under the PRA and assigned it 
control no. 2590-0012. The current OMB clearance expires on December 
31, 2016.
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    While the quarterly NSMB provides information on newly-originated 
mortgages, it does not solicit borrowers' experience with maintaining 
their existing mortgages; nor is detailed information on that topic 
available from any other existing source. The ASMB will solicit such 
information, including information on borrowers' experience with 
maintaining a mortgage 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. The ASMB 
questionnaire will be sent out to a stratified random sample of 10,000 
borrowers in the NMDB. The ASMB assumes a 25 percent overall response 
rate, which would yield 2,500 survey responses.
    The information collected through the ASMB questionnaire 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 
currently unavailable, information will assist the Agency 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 may 
also be used for research and analysis by 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.
    FHFA expects that, in the process of developing the initial and any 
subsequent ASMB survey questionnaires and related materials, it will 
sponsor one or more focus groups to pretest those materials. Such 
pretesting will ultimately help 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 
will use

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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 will also be used to help the 
Agency decide on how best to organize and format the survey 
questionnaire.

B. Burden Estimate

    While FHFA currently has firm plans to conduct the survey only 
once--in the second quarter of 2016--it may decide to conduct further 
periodic ASMB surveys once the first survey is completed. The Agency 
therefore estimates that the survey will be conducted, on average, once 
annually over the next three years and that it will conduct pre-testing 
on each set of annual survey materials. FHFA has analyzed the 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 the Agency expects only 
2,500 of those surveys to be returned, it assumes that all of the 
surveys will be returned for purposes of this burden calculation. Based 
on the reported experience of respondents to the quarterly NSMB 
questionnaire, which contains a similar number of questions, 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 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

Comments Received in Response to the Initial Notice
    In accordance with the requirements of 5 CFR 1320.8(d), FHFA 
published a request for public comments regarding this information 
collection in the Federal Register on November 10, 2015.\4\ The 60-day 
comment period closed on January 11, 2016. FHFA received two comment 
letters--one from an individual and one from a group of trade 
associations representing various constituencies in the financial 
services industry. The letter from the individual was not responsive to 
any of the questions in the notice and contained no comments relating 
to the ASMB, the NMBD Project, or any issues arising under the PRA.
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    \4\ See 80 FR 69664 (Nov. 10, 2015).
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    The trade associations' letter raised two issues that are relevant 
to the compliance of the ASMB with the PRA. First, the trade 
associations asserted that the information FHFA seeks to collect 
through the ASMB is, or could soon be, available from other sources and 
urged the Agency ``to again review existing surveys and data collection 
efforts to identify redundancies.'' The letter cites numerous existing 
sources of quantitative data about mortgage borrowers, loan terms, 
mortgaged properties and the origination and maintenance of first lien 
mortgages. However, most of the data sources cited are those from which 
the NMDB has drawn the bulk of its existing data. None of those sources 
(nor any other sources of which FHFA is aware) provide the type of 
qualitative information regarding borrowers' experience with 
maintaining a mortgage or their interactions with mortgage servicers 
that FHFA seeks to obtain through this information collection.
    Second, noting that the draft ASMB questionnaire published with the 
initial PRA Notice in the Federal Register was not the final version of 
the survey instrument, the trade associations urged FHFA ``to solicit 
additional public input on the substance of the survey when it is 
complete and before FHFA puts it into use.'' An updated draft of the 
survey questionnaire appears at the end of this notice. The trade 
associations, as well as any other interested parties, will have 30 
days within which to review the updated survey and to provide comments 
to both OMB and FHFA.
Further Comments Requested in Response to This Notice
    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 survey respondents, 
including through the use of automated collection techniques or other 
forms of information technology.

    Dated: March 17, 2016.
Kevin Winkler,
Chief Information Officer, Federal Housing Finance Agency.

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[FR Doc. 2016-06590 Filed 3-23-16; 8:45 am]
BILLING CODE 8070-01-P