Housing Finance: Options to Help Prevent Suspensions of FHA and RHS Loan Guarantee Programs

United States. Government Accountability Office.

United States. Government Accountability Office.

关键词: Government accountability -- United States.;    housing;    housing finance;    letter report;   

RP-ID  :  GAO-05-227
RP-ID  :  245628

美国|英语

来源: UNT Digital Library

【 摘 要 】

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "In fiscal year 2004, the Department of Housing and Urban Development's Federal Housing Administration (FHA) and the Department of Agriculture's Rural Housing Service (RHS) guaranteed approximately $136 billion in mortgages for single-family homes, multifamily rental housing, and healthcare facilities under a variety of programs. In past years, both agencies have occasionally had to suspend the issuance of guarantees under some programs when they exhausted the dollar amounts of their commitment authority (which serves as a limit on the volume of new loans that an agency can guarantee) or credit subsidy budget authority (the authority to cover the long-term costs--known as credit subsidy costs--of extending these guarantees) before the end of a fiscal year. These suspensions can be disruptive to homebuyers, developers, and lenders. GAO was asked to determine (1) how often and why FHA and RHS have suspended their loan guarantee programs over the last decade, (2) how these agencies manage and notify Congress of the rate at which the authorities for these programs will be exhausted, and (3) options Congress and the agencies could exercise to help prevent future suspensions and the potential implications of these options."