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A realtor forwarded me the email below, showing that he is being pressured by the NAR to lobby against 20% downpayments. Lending without 20% down is very risky, but it generates realtor commissions -- and commissions are the only thing that the NAR cares about. The NAR clearly does not care that risky lending causes banks to fail, and forces taxpayers to bail out failed banks.

The email contains a dead giveaway that the NAR knows it is encouraging bad lending : "it would take 14 years for a typical person to save up a 20% down payment to buy a median-priced home."

If it would take a buyer 14 years to pay only 20% (one fifth) of the purchase price, it would take five times as long to pay it all off, and that's 70 years!

Anyone who needs 70 years to pay off a house should not be buying that house. If realtors can't get a commission because some math-challenged buyer can no longer borrow ten times his income, that would be a very good thing. If prices fall to the point where most people can afford a house without crazy amounts of mortgage debt, that would be an even better thing.

Please write congress and strongly support the QRM proposal. Your chance of getting a reasonably priced house depends on stopping the criminally insane lending that realtors are lobbying to continue.

Tell Congress: 20% Down Payments Put the American Dream Out of Reach
Could your clients afford a 20% down payment? Could you? Can you envision what your prospective client pool will look like if new regulations governing Qualified Residential Mortgages (QRM) take effect this year?

Neither can we. And neither can many elected officials in Congress who did not intend for these regulatory provisions to be so narrowly defined. We must continue our efforts to explain how detrimental the new QRM rules would be to the ongoing housing and lending crisis in America.

According to NAR Research, 60% of recent home buyers made less than a 20% down payment, and it would take 14 years for a typical person to save up a 20% down payment to buy a median-priced home.

Please contact Congress today and ask them to make it clear to the regulators that this proposed regulation was not their legislative intent and to instead implement a more reasonable Qualified Residential Mortgage (QRM) that will keep credit-worthy buyers in the market and able to acquire a loan.
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Message Subject: Subject: Ask Federal Regulators to follow Dodd-Frank intent of QRM exemption provisions
Dear [Decision Maker],
As both a constituent and one of a million members of the National Association of REALTORS, I believe that our economic recovery depends largely on a housing market recovery. Implementing a new rule requiring a twenty percent or higher down-payments would stop the housing recovery in its tracks.
That is what will happen if the restrictions in the proposed Qualified Residential Mortgage (QRM) regulation are implemented. It is my belief that this was not your legislative intent.
I am writing to ask you as my Senators and Representative to sign on to a letter being circulated by your colleagues, Senators Landrieu (D-LA), Isakson (R-GA), and Hagan (D-NC). In the House, Representatives Campbell (R-CA), Sherman (D-CA), Perlmutter (D-CO), Capito (R-WV), Moore (D-WI), Miller (R-CA), Himes (D-CT) and Posey (R-FL) are circulating a similar letter. Both letters ask Federal Regulators to follow the intent and language of the QRM exemption provision contained in the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act.
The proposed QRM rule would create an enormous down-payment requirement and reduce the availability of affordable mortgages for qualified consumers. Few borrowers would be able to meet these requirements and those that do would be forced to pay much higher rates and fees for safe loans did not meet the exceedingly narrow QRM criteria.
Congress included the QRM to exempt safe, well-underwritten mortgages from the risk retention requirements. Well-underwritten loans, regardless of down payment, were not the cause of the mortgage crisis.
I urge you to insist that regulators to follow congressional intent. Please sign the Landrieu-Hagan-Isakson letter or the Sherman-Campbell letter today to help keep the American Dream of Home Ownership in reach.

#housing