Congress freezes mortgage fees, blocking Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac updates

What it does

This bill blocks the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) and mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac from implementing fee changes announced in January 2023 that adjusted how they price credit risk into mortgage fees. The bill voids those fee changes and the guidance documents that created them, but explicitly permits the companies to continue using risk-based pricing (charging different fees based on borrower credit quality). The net effect is to freeze mortgage fees at pre-2023 levels for borrowers, preventing what the bill's sponsors view as unfair fee increases.

Why we flagged it

The bill's operative mechanism is a prohibition on implementing a specific fee-pricing framework, which freezes mortgage fees at pre-2023 levels. This is a direct revenue restriction on two government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs), not a deregulation or a consumer protection in the traditional sense — it is a mandate to preserve an older fee structure.

What the text implies

• If Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac cannot raise fees to reflect updated credit-risk models, they may reduce lending capacity, tighten underwriting standards, or raise rates on other loan products to offset lost revenue.
• The bill preserves risk-based pricing but freezes the framework used to calculate it, creating potential misalignment between actual credit risk and fees charged — borrowers with genuinely higher risk may be underpriced relative to the GSEs' loss exposure.

The full analysis lists 4 implications of this text.

Who stands to gain

mortgage borrowers (lower fees, especially those with lower credit scores); real estate agents and home builders (lower borrowing costs may support demand)