From May 8-11, our local Santa Barbara Association of Realtors leadership traveled to Washington, D.C., to attend the National Association of Realtors (NAR) legislative conference.

During the conference the leadership of every Realtor association in the United States comes together and talks about trends in the market, legislation on a national level that affects the housing industry, and networks with one another.

This year there were a variety of hot topics including lack of inventory, new construction and replacing retail with residential, insurance, electrification, capital gains, tax incentives, initiatives for underserved communities and diversity, and legislation affecting homeowners.

Some big topics. And for fun, AI was thrown into the mix. When you go to these meetings with such broad topics, sometimes it is hard to feel like you can make a difference.

Announced in January, and garnering national news attention, the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) presented a proposal for a loan level-pricing adjustment, or upfront fee, on borrowers with debt-to-income ratios (DTIs) greater than 40%.

Along with this were increased fees for those borrowers with credit scores above 680 and down payments from 5-25%. Meaning basically that if you did well, and worked hard to establish good credit, you were now going to pay more in fees.

Well, I am happy to report some positive change was made, and directly from this NAR conference. It feels good to be a part of protecting homeowners, personal property rights, and buyers and sellers.

Coming out of the NAR conference on May 10, the FHFA rescinded its proposed loan level pricing adjustment. NAR President Kenny Parcell issued the following statement:

“We are pleased that our advocacy efforts on behalf of our 1.5 million members and their clients were successful. We applaud the FHFA for listening to the industry’s concerns by choosing to drop this fee on borrowers with higher debt-to-income ratios.

“It would have imposed a cost on borrowers at a time in the market when affordability is already stretched and only made them riskier

.”These changes would not occur without the efforts of all of our local Realtors, not only speaking their minds but from their financial contributions to the Realtor Action Fund (RAF), and nationally with the RPAC, Realtor Political Action Committee.

Each year, Realtors locally and around the nation contribute funds that go to help protect the industry and personal property rights as well as stopping point-of-sale mandates that could have cost the homeowner thousands of dollars reducing their equity or may have even prevented the sale from going through.

This also helps lobby for political candidates who are pro-housing and align with Realtor issues among other benefits.