This is the Kator Daily Podcast for Friday, June 26, 2020.

I'm Caleb Brown.

What has happened to the housing market since COVID-19 arrived in the US?

How realistic are the hopes that Congress and the President will

successfully help the massive mortgage buyers Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac emerge

from conservatorship without another massive taxpayer bailout.

Mark Calabria directs the Federal Housing Finance Agency, otherwise known as the chief regulators of Fannie and Freddie.

We spoke earlier this week about the housing market, more specifically the mortgage market, and where the housing market stands today.

What has been the impact on the overall mortgage market of COVID-19 so far. For many people who purchased homes in May or June or April, you might not have been able to tell.

Well, so let's start with recognizing that the primary impact on the housing and mortgage

market of COVID has been rather indirect through the job to the job market and income market.

So we really didn't have as much of a housing shock as we had 20 plus million people laid off some temporary not so temporary

And of course Congress did expand unemployment insurance and there were relief payments

So most people use those to pay their rent, pay their mortgages. And of course we had a small number for the Fannie and Freddie book. There were about 200,000 households that were already in some process of foreclosure pre-COVID,

which is why we at FHFA decided that we would allow those people to stay in place

to facilitate social distancing.

Assume that they're already there, unlikely that in many localities had already

shut down the foreclosure process and so it seemed a reasonable position to say let's keep you in place

let's pause the eviction process we don't want sheriffs going through your house in

this environment and so those were paused. For a number of people looking to buy during that time,

the biggest impact was the number of local government functions. So to buy a house, you need to transfer the deed for instance.

Courthouses across the country was shut down for much of the early certainly April and into May.

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