This month’s Reverse Review includes an interview with NRMLA President Peter Bell where he discusses the current state of the industry and gives background on the FHA Modernization Bill.  

During the interview, Bell gives insight into how policy makers make decisions and the reasoning behind it.  “There is a challenge in making policy in that unfortunately you have the make policy for the lowest common denominator.  You can’t make policy for the 85% of people that do things right. Unfortunately you have to create policy to keep the 15% of people that do things wrong from doing things wrong and everybody else pays the price as a result of it,” said Bell.

When asked for an update on when we would hear from HUD regarding the new provisions, Bell said, “October 1st is the beginning of the new federal fiscal year.  There is a very aggressive effort underway at HUD to try and implement a number of provisions in conjunction with that new fiscal year start. I do expect to see mortgagee letters popping out in the next week or two so we can have things take shape on October 1st.”

Bell also explains how there was confusion about the way the bill was drafted and what was intended..  “The drafters involved on the house side had a completely different interpretation of what the language meant than the drafters on the Senate side. And folks within HUD had yet a third opinion. In the end what I think we will end up with and I hope to know this for sure later this coming week is a single national limit at 417,000.”

Click the link below to read a copy of the interview. 

Peter Bell Interview – Reverse Review