RALEIGH — North Carolina’s Republican U.S. Sens. Thom Tillis and Ted Budd announced they were joining the effort to introduce legislation aimed at combating the Biden administration’s latest rule change to mortgage fees.
Earlier this year, the Biden Administration’s Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) changed the Loan-Level Price Adjustment (LLPA). As of May 1 under the LLPA changes, new homebuyers and those refinancing their current loans who have good credit scores of 680 or higher now face an additional fee on their home loans.
The two North Carolina senators joined U.S. Sens. Mike Braun (R-IN) and Roger Marshall (R-KS) in introducing the Middle Class Borrower Protection Act.
“President Biden’s reckless proposal to social engineer the housing market by forcing homeowners to subsidize other Americans considered high-risk borrowers must be stopped,” Tillis tweeted. “Last week, I co-introduced the Middle-Class Borrower Protection Act to fortify efforts to overturn this unfair rule.”
“The Biden administration continues to double-down on misguided policies that only make life more difficult for the majority of hard-working Americans. We should not be punishing fiscally responsible home buyers in order to bail out those with poor credit,” Budd said in a statement. “This rule is fundamentally unfair and must be overturned.”
Under the legislation, the fee structure that was in place prior to May 1, 2023, would be reinstated and FHFA, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac would be “prohibited from imposing any loan-level pricing adjustment fee that is based on the ratio of the debt of the mortgagor to the income of the mortgagor.”
North Carolina State Treasurer Dale Folwell, who in June called the changes being made by the FHSA “catastrophic,” applauded Tillis and Budd for stepping up.
“I applaud the efforts of Sens. Tillis and Budd to protect citizens who have saved and played by the rules to bring home ownership into their lives,” Folwell said in a statement to North State Journal. “As I said weeks ago, punishment for good behavior is Washington D.C.’s answer to everything.”
