[Federal Register Volume 89, Number 169 (Friday, August 30, 2024)]
[Notices]
[Pages 70636-70650]
From the Federal Register Online via the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
[FR Doc No: 2024-19575]


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FEDERAL HOUSING FINANCE AGENCY

[No. 2024-N-13]


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 Agency) 
is seeking public comments on a generic information collection called 
the ``National Survey of Mortgage Originations'' (NSMO). 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 September 
30, 2024.

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: 
`National Survey of Mortgage Originations, (No. 2024-N-13)' '' by any 
of the following methods:
     Agency Website: https://www.fhfa.gov/regulation/federal-register?comments=open.
     Federal eRulemaking Portal: https://www.regulations.gov. 
Follow the instructions for submitting comments.
     Mail/Hand Delivery: Federal Housing Finance Agency, Fourth 
Floor, 400 Seventh Street SW, Washington, DC 20219, ATTENTION: Proposed 
Collection; Comment Request: ``National Survey of Mortgage 
Originations, (No. 2024-N-13).'' Please note that all mail sent to FHFA 
via the U.S. Postal Service 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 on the FHFA public website at 
http://www.fhfa.gov, except as described below. Commenters should 
submit only information that the commenter wishes to make available 
publicly. FHFA may post only a single representative example of 
identical or substantially identical comments, and in such cases will 
generally identify the number of identical or substantially identical 
comments represented by the posted example. FHFA may, in its 
discretion, redact or refrain from posting all or any portion of any 
comment that contains content that is obscene, vulgar, profane, or 
threatens harm. All comments, including those that are redacted or not 
posted, will be retained in their original form in FHFA's internal file 
and considered as required by all applicable laws. Commenters that 
would like FHFA to consider any portion of their comment exempt from 
disclosure on the basis that it contains trade secrets, or financial, 
confidential or proprietary data or information, should follow the 
procedures in section IV.D. of FHFA's Policy on Communications with 
Outside Parties in Connection with FHFA Rulemakings, see https://www.fhfa.gov/sites/default/files/documents/Ex-Parte-Communications-Public-Policy_3-5-19.pdf. FHFA cannot guarantee that such data or 
information, or the identity of the commenter, will remain confidential 
if disclosure is sought pursuant to an applicable statute or 
regulation. See 12 CFR 1202.8, 12 CFR 1214.2, and the FHFA FOIA 
Reference Guide at https://www.fhfa.gov/about/foia-reference-guide for 
additional information.

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

    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 mailed to a 
representative sample of approximately 6,000 recent mortgage borrowers 
each calendar quarter and typically consists of about 96 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 (in English only) or 
electronically online (in either English or Spanish). FHFA is also 
seeking clearance to pretest future iterations of the survey 
questionnaire and related materials from time to time through the use 
of cognitive pre-testing.
    The NSMO 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 
(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 NSMO; and (3) the American Survey of Mortgage 
Borrowers (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 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, 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 the 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 ASMB, which 
historically

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solicited 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.\2\
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    \2\ OMB has assigned the ASMB control no. 2590-0015, which 
expires on August 31, 2027.
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    While the ASMB focused on borrowers' experience with maintaining 
existing mortgages, the NSMO solicits information on newly-originated 
mortgages and the borrowers' experiences with the mortgage origination 
process. It was developed to complement the NMDB by providing critical 
and timely information--not available from existing sources--on 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. In particular, 
the survey questionnaire is designed to elicit directly from mortgage 
borrowers information on the characteristics of the borrowers and on 
their experiences in finding and obtaining a mortgage loan, including: 
their mortgage shopping behavior; their mortgage closing experiences; 
their expectations regarding house price appreciation; and critical 
financial and other life events affecting their households, such as 
unemployment, expenses or divorce. The survey questions do not focus on 
the terms of the borrowers' mortgage loans because these fields are 
available in the Experian data. However, the NSMO collects a limited 
amount of information on each respondent's mortgage to verify that the 
Experian records and survey responses pertain to the same mortgage.
    Each wave of the NSMO is sent to the primary borrowers on about 
6,000 mortgage loans, which are drawn from a simple random sample of 
the newly originated mortgage loans that are added to the NMDB from the 
Experian files each quarter. Because the volume of originations varies 
across time, the sampling rate for the 6,000 sampled loans also varies 
from one quarter to the next. On average, the NSMO sample represents an 
approximately 1-in-15 sample of loans added to the NMDB and an 
approximately 1-in-300 sample of all mortgage loan originations. By 
contract with FHFA, the conduct of the NSMO is administered through 
Experian, which has subcontracted the survey administration through a 
competitive process to Westat, a nationally-recognized survey 
vendor.\3\ Westat also carries out the pre-testing of the survey 
materials.
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    \3\ The Fair Credit Reporting Act, 15 U.S.C. 1681 et seq., 
requires that the survey process, because it utilizes borrower names 
and addresses drawn from credit reporting agency records, must be 
administered through Experian in order to maintain consumer privacy.
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B. Need For and Use of the Information Collection

    FHFA views the NMDB Program as a whole, including the NSMO, as the 
monthly ``survey'' that is required by section 1324 of the Safety and 
Soundness Act. Core inputs to the NMDB, such as a regular refresh of 
the Experian data, occur monthly, though NSMO itself does not. In 
combination with the other information in the NMDB, the information 
obtained through the NSMO is used 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, as well as for research and 
analysis by FHFA and CFPB in support of their regulatory and 
supervisory responsibilities related to the residential mortgage 
markets. The NSMO is especially critical in ensuring that the NMDB 
contains uniquely comprehensive information on the range of 
nontraditional and subprime mortgage products being offered, the 
methods by which these mortgages are being marketed and the 
characteristics--and particularly the creditworthiness--of borrowers 
for these types of loans.
    Since November 2018 FHFA and CFPB have periodically released loan-
level datasets collected through the NSMO for public use. Each release 
incrementally adds loans collected from additional waves of the survey. 
The most recent release was in July 2024 covering loans originated 
through 2021.\4\ Prior to each release, FHFA and the CFPB implement a 
series of disclosure avoidance analyses and protections to ensure that 
the confidentiality of study participants is protected. The loan-level 
datasets provide a resource for research and analysis by federal 
agencies, by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and by academics and other 
interested parties outside of the government.
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    \4\ The July 2024 NSMO public use dataset can be accessed here: 
https://www.fhfa.gov/data/national-survey-mortgage-originations-nsmo-public-use-file.
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    FHFA is also seeking OMB approval to continue to conduct cognitive 
pre-testing of the survey materials. 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.
    FHFA previously maintained a standard clearance for this 
information collection, the OMB control number for that clearance was 
2590-0012.

C. Burden Estimate

    FHFA has analyzed the hour burden on members of the public 
associated with conducting the survey (10,080 hours) and with pre-
testing the survey materials (50 hours) and estimates the total annual 
hour burden imposed on the public by this information collection to be 
10,130 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 20 to 30 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 25 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 10,080 hours for the survey phase of 
this collection (24,000 respondents x 25 minutes per respondent = 
10,080 hours annually).

II. Pre-Testing the Materials

    FHFA estimates that it will pre-test the survey materials with 50 
cognitive testing participants annually. The estimated participation 
time for each participant is one hour, resulting in a total annual 
burden estimate of 50 hours for the pre-testing phase of the collection 
(50 participants x 1 hour per participant = 50 hours annually).

D. Comment Request

    In accordance with the requirements of 5 CFR 1320.8(d), FHFA 
published an initial notice and request for public comments regarding 
this information collection in the Federal Register on

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June 25, 2024.\5\ The 60-day comment period closed on August 26, 2024. 
FHFA received no comments.
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    \5\ See 89 FR 53086 (June 25, 2024).
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    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.
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[FR Doc. 2024-19575 Filed 8-29-24; 8:45 am]
BILLING CODE 8070-01-C