As financial hardships mount with the COVID-19 outbreak, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac released their plans for mortgage borrowers impacted by the pandemic.
A number of proposals have been floated for debt payment holidays and other types of moratoria, but such approaches offer solutions that are worse than the problems.
![“We are delaying the opening of ... [the] comment period until we have some certainty on what the current overall situation is,” said FHFA Director Mark Calabria.](https://arizent.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/e8174b2/2147483647/strip/true/crop/4182x2787+0+0/resize/1024x683!/format/webp/quality/90/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fsource-media-brightspot.s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com%2F24%2F4f%2F09d186a142899167373b7d4166b7%2Fcalabria-mark-bl-031820.jpg)
FHFA Director Mark Calabria said the health crisis will complicate the release of a proposal establishing new capital requirements for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
The temporary foreclosure moratorium on loans backed by HUD, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac comes after lawmakers and housing advocates had pushed for steps to avoid consumers getting booted from their homes.
The agencies were up and running Monday but have taken steps to allow employees to work from home.
A national moratorium would be costly to lenders and servicers, but proponents say it's needed to help cushion the economic blow of the pandemic.
Sen. Mark Warner led a group of Democratic senators in calling on bank, credit union and GSE regulators to give detailed instructions on helping consumer and commercial borrowers hurt by the COVID-19 outbreak.
As officials prepare plans for the government-sponsored enterprises' exit from conservatorship, there's no shortage of speculation about what those plans might look like and how they might affect the mortgage industry.