[Federal Register Volume 86, Number 246 (Tuesday, December 28, 2021)]
[Notices]
[Pages 73770-73784]
From the Federal Register Online via the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
[FR Doc No: 2021-28052]


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FEDERAL HOUSING FINANCE AGENCY

[No. 2021-N-15]


Proposed Collection; Comment Request

AGENCY: Federal Housing Finance Agency.

ACTION: 60-Day notice of submission of information collection for 
approval from the 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 expired 
on March 31, 2021.

DATES: Interested persons may submit comments on or before February 28, 
2022.

ADDRESSES: Submit comments to FHFA, identified by ``Proposed 
Collection; Comment Request: `American Survey of Mortgage Borrowers, 
(No. 2021-N-15)' '' 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. 2021-N-15)''.
    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. 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 
Angela Supervielle, Counsel, [email protected], (202) 649-
3973, (these are not toll-free numbers), Federal Housing Finance 
Agency, 400 Seventh Street SW, Washington, DC 20219. For TTY/TRS users 
with hearing and speech disabilities, dial 711 and ask to be connected 
to any of the contact numbers above.

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, conducted annually or biennially, is a voluntary 
survey of individuals who currently have a first mortgage loan secured 
by single-family residential property. The 2020 survey questionnaire 
consisted of 92 questions designed to learn directly from mortgage 
borrowers about their mortgage experience, any challenges they may have 
had in maintaining their mortgage, and their experience with mortgage 
forbearance and the COVID-19 pandemic. It requested specific 
information on: The mortgage; the mortgaged property; the borrower's 
experience with the loan servicer; any serious life events that had 
happened to the borrower in 2020; 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 2020 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 
otherwise unavailable residential mortgage market information to make 
that information available to the public in a timely fashion.
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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

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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) 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 July 30, 2023.
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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. From 2016 to 2018, 
the ASMB questionnaire was sent out annually to a stratified random 
sample of 10,000 borrowers in the NMDB. The ASMB survey was not 
conducted in 2019, but the ASMB questionnaire was sent out again in 
2020 to a stratified random sample of 10,000 borrowers in the NMDB. In 
2020, the ASMB had a 21.5 percent overall response rate, which yielded 
2,119 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, 
including mortgage relief such as forbearance. 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: (1) The ASMB 
survey; and (2) 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 and again in 2020. Although the 
ASMB began as an annual survey, it will be conducted biennially, with 
plans to conduct the next survey in 2022. 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 2,000 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.

Shawn Bucholtz,
Chief Data Officer, Federal Housing Finance Agency.BILLING CODE 8070-
01-P

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[FR Doc. 2021-28052 Filed 12-27-21; 8:45 am]
BILLING CODE 8070-01-C