[Federal Register Volume 89, Number 40 (Wednesday, February 28, 2024)]
[Notices]
[Pages 14650-14664]
From the Federal Register Online via the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
[FR Doc No: 2024-04126]


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FEDERAL HOUSING FINANCE AGENCY

[No. 2024-N-3]


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 (ASMB),'' 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, 2025.

DATES: Interested persons may submit comments on or before April 29, 
2024.

ADDRESSES: Submit comments to FHFA, identified by ``Proposed 
Collection; Comment Request: `American Survey of Mortgage Borrowers, 
(No. 2024-N-4)' '' by any of the following methods:
     Agency Website: www.fhfa.gov/open-for-comment-or-input.
     Federal eRulemaking Portal: https://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, Fourth 
Floor, 400 Seventh Street SW, Washington, DC 20219, ATTENTION: Proposed 
Collection; Comment Request: ``American Survey of Mortgage Borrowers, 
(No. 2024-N-4).'' Please note that all mail sent to FHFA via U.S. Mail 
is routed through a national irradiation facility, a process that may 
delay delivery by approximately two weeks. For any time-sensitive 
correspondence, please plan accordingly.
    FHFA will post all public comments received without change, 
including any personal information you provide, such as your name and 
address, email address, and telephone number, on the FHFA website at 
https://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: Jonathan Spader, Manager, National 
Mortgage Database Program, [email protected], (202) 649-3213; or 
Angela Supervielle, Senior 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

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mortgage loan secured by single-family residential property. The 2023 
survey questionnaire consisted of 88 questions designed to learn 
directly from mortgage borrowers about their perceptions and 
experiences with flood risk, flood damage, and flood insurance. It 
requested specific information on: the mortgage; the mortgaged 
property; the borrower's expectations of flood risk; the borrower's 
prior experience with flood damage, the borrower's insurance coverages, 
and the borrower's demographic and household characteristics. A copy of 
the 2023 survey questionnaire appears at the end of this notice. The 
change of the collection's focus will result in a change in the number 
of questions for 2024.
    FHFA is also seeking clearance to conduct cognitive testing 
interviews that pre-test iterations of the survey questionnaire and 
related materials from time to time. The Agency uses information 
collected through that process 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 the Agency decide on 
how best to organize and format the survey questionnaires.
    The American Survey of Mortgage Borrowers is a component of the 
``National Mortgage Database'' (NMDB[supreg]) Program, which is a joint 
effort of FHFA and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) 
(jointly, ``the agencies''). 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 and 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 those and other statutory requirements, as 
well as to support policymaking and research regarding the residential 
mortgage markets, FHFA and CFPB jointly established the NMDB 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 a 
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 mortgages outstanding at any time between January 1998 and the 
present in the files of Experian, one of the three national credit 
repositories, with a random sample of mortgages newly reported to 
Experian added each quarter.
    The NMDB draws additional information on mortgages in the NMDB 
datasets from other existing sources, including Home Mortgage 
Disclosure Act (HMDA) data that are maintained by the Federal Financial 
Institutions Examination Council (FFIEC), property valuation models, 
and administrative data files maintained by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac 
and by federal agencies. FHFA also obtains data from the two surveys 
conducted as part of the program--the NSMO and the ASMB. The NSMO is a 
quarterly survey that provides critical and timely information on 
newly-originated mortgages and associated borrowers that are not 
available from other 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.\2\
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    \2\ OMB has cleared the NSMO under the PRA and assigned it 
control no. 2590-0012, which expires on June 30, 2026.
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    While the NSMO provides information on newly-originated mortgages, 
the purpose of the ASMB is to collect voluntary feedback directly from 
mortgage borrowers about their experience with their mortgage and 
property. ASMB respondents are representative of the overall population 
of borrowers with a mortgage loan, including those who recently took 
out a loan and those who have had their loan for multiple years. The 
feedback collected by the ASMB includes information about a range of 
topics related to maintaining a mortgage and property, such as 
borrowers' experiences with managing their mortgage, responding to 
financial stressors, insuring against risks, seeking assistance from 
federally-sponsored programs and other sources, and terminating a 
mortgage loan.
    From 2016 through 2018, the ASMB questionnaire was sent once 
annually to a stratified random sample of 10,000 borrowers with 
mortgages in the NMDB. FHFA did not undertake the ASMB during 2019 but 
sent the survey again in the fall of 2020 with a specific focus on the 
experiences of borrowers during the COVID-19 pandemic using a 
stratified random sample of 10,000 borrowers. The 2020 survey was 
substantially similar to the 2018 survey, except it included a number 
of questions specifically relating to the COVID-19 pandemic and its 
effects. The 2022 survey was similar to the 2020 survey in its focus on 
how the pandemic impacted borrowers and extended the focus to the 
experiences of those who used forbearance. The 2023 survey focused on 
mortgage borrowers' experiences with flood risk and flood insurance. In 
2023, the ASMB had a 27 percent overall response rate from its 
stratified random sample of 10,000 borrowers with mortgages in the 
NMDB. The 2024 ASMB survey will focus on existing borrowers' 
experiences with higher mortgage rates and non-mortgage costs like 
insurance and property maintenance.
    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, including how existing borrowers are affected by 
higher interest rates, the extent to which existing borrowers' are 
experiencing higher non-mortgage costs, borrowers' understanding and 
management of escrow accounts, and how these factors influence mortgage 
performance and homeownership outcomes. 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

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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.

B. Burden Estimate

    This information collection comprises two components: (1) the ASMB 
survey; and (2) the pre-testing of future survey questionnaires and 
related materials through the use of cognitive testing. FHFA conducted 
the survey annually from 2016 through 2018 and again in 2020, 2022 and 
2023, but did not conduct the survey in 2019 nor 2021. 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 year of 
survey materials.
    FHFA has analyzed the total hour burden on members of the public 
associated with conducting the survey (4,200 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 
4,224 hours for each annual survey. The estimate for each phase of the 
collection was calculated as follows:

C. 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 20 
to 30 percent 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 25 
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 4,200 hours for the survey phase of this collection 
(1 survey per year x 10,000 respondents per survey x 25 minutes per 
respondent = 4,200 hours).

II. Pre-Testing the Materials

    FHFA estimates that it will sponsor 2 rounds of 12 cognitive 
interviews prior to conducting each annual survey for a total of 24 
cognitive interview participants. It estimates the participation time 
for each cognitive interview 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. 2024-04126 Filed 2-27-24; 8:45 am]
BILLING CODE 8070-01-C