[Federal Register Volume 81, Number 177 (Tuesday, September 13, 2016)]
[Notices]
[Pages 62889-62904]
From the Federal Register Online via the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
[FR Doc No: 2016-21983]
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FEDERAL HOUSING FINANCE AGENCY
[No. 2016-N-06]
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, the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA or the Agency) is
seeking public comments concerning the currently-approved information
collection known as the ``National Survey of Mortgage Originations''
(NSMO), which has been assigned control number 2590-0012 by the Office
of Management and Budget (OMB) (the collection was previously known as
the ``National Survey of Mortgage Borrowers''). 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
December 31, 2016.
DATES: Interested persons may submit comments on or before November 14,
2016.
ADDRESSES: Submit comments to FHFA, identified by ``Proposed
Collection; Comment Request: `National Survey of Mortgage Originations,
(No. 2016-N-06)' '' 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: ``National Survey of Mortgage
Originations, (No. 2016-N-06).''
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 comments, please call the Office of General
Counsel at (202) 649-3804.
FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: Forrest Pafenberg, Supervisory
Economist, Office of the Chief Operating Officer, by email at
[email protected] or by telephone at (202) 649-3129; or Eric
Raudenbush, Associate 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
Hearing Impaired is (800) 877-8339.
SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:
A. Need For and Use of the Information Collection
The NSMO is a recurring quarterly survey of individuals who have
recently obtained a loan secured by a first mortgage on single-family
residential property. The survey questionnaire is sent to a
representative sample of approximately 6,000 recent mortgage borrowers
each calendar quarter and typically consists of between 90 and 95
multiple choice and short answer questions designed to obtain
information about borrowers' experiences in choosing and in taking out
a mortgage. The questionnaire may be completed either on paper or
electronically online, where it is available in both English and
Spanish. A copy of the most recent NSMO questionnaire appears at the
end of this document.\1\
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\1\ Fully formatted copies of the questionnaire in both English
and Spanish can be accessed online at: http://www.fhfa.gov/Homeownersbuyer/Pages/National-Survey-of-Mortgage-Originations.aspx.
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The NSMO is one component of a larger project, known as the
``National Mortgage Database'' (NMDB) Project, which is a multi-year
joint effort of FHFA and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau
(CFPB) (although the NSMO is sponsored only by FHFA). The NMDB Project
was created, in part, 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 (Safety and Soundness Act).\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
[[Page 62890]]
support policymaking and research efforts, FHFA and CFPB committed in
July 2012 to fund, build and manage the NMDB Project. The core data in
the NMDB are drawn from a random 1-in-20 sample of all closed-end
first-lien mortgages 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 to the NMDB 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, data files maintained by
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and by federal agencies, and the NSMO and
other surveys.\3\ When fully complete, the NMDB will be a de-identified
loan-level database of closed-end first-lien residential mortgages
that: Is representative of the market as a whole; contains detailed,
loan-level information on the terms and performance of mortgages, as
well as 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.
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\3\ In addition to the NSMO, FHFA has recently begun to collect
data through a new survey called the American Survey of Mortgage
Borrowers (ASMB). While the NSMO solicits information about the
experiences of borrowers who have recently obtained a mortgage, the
ASMB solicits information on borrowers' experience with maintaining
their existing mortgages. OMB has cleared the ASMB under the PRA and
assigned it control no. 2590-0015, which expires on July 31, 2019.
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FHFA views the NMDB Project as a whole, including the NSMO, as the
monthly ``survey'' required by section 1324(c) of the Safety and
Soundness Act. Core inputs to the NMDB, such as a regular refresh of
the credit repository data, occur monthly, though NSMO itself does not.
In combination with the other information in the NMDB, the information
obtained through the NSMO is also used: (1) To prepare the report to
Congress on the mortgage market activities of Fannie Mae and Freddie
Mac that FHFA is required to submit under section 1324(c); (2) for
research and analysis to support policymaking by FHFA and other federal
regulators; and (3) to provide a resource for research and analysis by
academics and other interested parties outside of the government.
Generally, the information collected will enable regulators and other
interested parties to more effectively monitor emerging trends in the
mortgage origination process throughout the United States and will
allow them to determine more quickly and accurately when the mortgage
origination process is changing in a way that is unfavorable to
borrowers and consumers.
In particular, the NSMO provides timely information on newly-
originated mortgages and those borrowing that is not available from
existing sources, 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. The survey is critical to ensuring that the NMDB
contains complete and timely information on the characteristics of
individual subprime and nontraditional mortgages and on the
characteristics of borrowers on such mortgages, including information
on the creditworthiness of those borrowers and information sufficient
to determine whether those borrowers would have qualified for prime
lending. The NSMO questionnaire is designed to elicit this information
directly from borrowers, who are likely to be the most reliable and
accessible--and, in some cases, the only--source for this information.
The questionnaire focuses on topics such as mortgage shopping behavior,
mortgage closing experiences, and other information that cannot be
obtained from any other source, such as expectations regarding house
price appreciation, critical household financial events, and life
events such as unemployment, large medical expenses, or divorce. In
general, borrowers are not asked to provide information about mortgage
terms in the questionnaire since these fields are available in the
Experian data. However, the survey collects a limited amount of
information on each respondent's mortgage to verify that the credit
repository records and survey responses pertain to the same mortgage.
FHFA is also seeking clearance to pre-test the survey questionnaire
and related materials from time to time through the use of cognitive
testing. FHFA will use information collected through the cognitive
testing 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 help the Agency decide on how best to organize and format
the survey questionnaires.
The OMB control number for the information collection is 2590-0012.
The current clearance for the information collection expires on
December 31, 2016.
B. Burden Estimate
FHFA has analyzed the hour burden on members of the public
associated with conducting the survey (12,000 hours) and with pre-
testing the survey materials (30 hours) and estimates the total annual
hour burden imposed on the public by this information collection to be
12,030 hours. The estimate for each phase of the collection was
calculated as follows:
I. Conducting the Survey
FHFA estimates that the NSMO questionnaire will be sent to 24,000
recipients annually (6,000 recipients per quarterly survey x 4 calendar
quarters). Although, based on historical experience, the Agency expects
that only 30 to 35 percent of those surveys will be returned, it has
assumed that all of the surveys will be returned for purposes of this
burden calculation. Based on the reported experience of respondents to
prior NSMO questionnaires, FHFA estimates that it will take each
respondent 30 minutes to complete the survey, including the gathering
of necessary materials to respond to the questions. This results in a
total annual burden estimate of 12,000 hours for the survey phase of
this collection (24,000 respondents x 30 minutes per respondent =
12,000 hours annually).
II. Pre-Testing the Materials
FHFA estimates that it will pre-test the survey materials with 30
cognitive testing participants annually. The estimated participation
time for each participant is one hour, resulting in a total annual
burden estimate of 30 hours for the pre-testing phase of the collection
(30 participants x 1 hour per participant = 30 hours annually).
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 survey respondents,
including through the use of automated collection techniques or other
forms of information technology.
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Dated: September 7, 2016.
Kevin Winkler,
Chief Information Officer, Federal Housing Finance Agency.
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[FR Doc. 2016-21983 Filed 9-12-16; 8:45 am]
BILLING CODE 8070-01-C