By Michael S. Derby
Jan 9 (Reuters) - Two Federal Reserve officials on Friday expressed some skepticism that a Trump administration plan to lower housing costs by buying billions in mortgage-backed bonds will do much to lift the troubled sector.
The policymakers - Atlanta Fed President Raphael Bostic and Richmond Fed President Thomas Barkin - instead argued that while financing costs are a real issue, housing affordability is even more a function of the supply of homes available for purchase.
"I do
think that a lot of the housing affordability challenges are about more than just financing, and there's a supply and demand issue that has persisted in many major markets," Bostic said in an interview with Florida radio station WLRN.
"I cut my teeth as a housing economist and understand how important housing is for families and also for creating stability so that families can do all the things that they want to do," Bostic said, adding "certainly financing is one piece to this, but it's not the only one, and we definitely need to get everything in order if we want to make sure that people can buy housing."
Barkin, speaking with reporters in suburban Baltimore, said when it comes to making housing more affordable, "the answer is on the supply side."
"If you tell me that there's a couple hundred billion dollars that could be put into buying mortgage bonds, then depending on what duration you're buying, that should have an impact on the mortgage resale market, which perhaps will have an impact on mortgage rates," Barkin said.
But he added, "I'm an advocate for the kind of initiatives that would get more houses into the market and onto the market" and would need to think if government purchases of bonds that support that market would notably help affordability.
TRUMP'S HOUSING FINANCE CHIEF SAYS PURCHASES HAVE STARTED
The Fed officials' comments followed an announcement by President Donald Trump on Thursday that laid out an effort to take money from government-sponsored housing lenders to buy $200 billion in mortgage bonds. While there are many uncertainties over the plan, its aim is to help lower borrowing costs for homes, which have been elevated due to the Fed's tight monetary policy stance, as policymakers have lifted short-term borrowing costs in a bid to lower inflation pressures.
Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Bill Pulte told reporters on Friday that the buying push has begun with $3 billion in purchases. He declined to say when the full scope of purchases would take place.
The plan has lifted mortgage bond prices and boosted the stocks of home builders, but analysts say it will have a modest impact at best. "We believe that $200 billion of MBS purchases could drive (around a) 10-to-25 basis-point reduction in mortgage rates, potentially reducing the current 30-year headline mortgage rate to roughly 6.0%" from the prevailing 6.21% rate, UBS analysts said.
The Trump administration's effort to make housing more affordable by way of asset purchases, while happening separately from any Fed-related action, is nevertheless akin to a central bank policy called quantitative easing, in which the central bank buys bonds to stimulate the economy by driving up asset prices and pushing down bond yields.
Fed mortgage bond purchases formed a key plank in the central bank's efforts to support the economy during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Those purchases, starting in the spring of 2020, pushed central bank mortgage bond holdings from $1.4 trillion to a peak of $2.7 trillion by the summer of 2022. The Fed currently holds about $2 trillion in mortgage-backed bonds, against total housing-related borrowing of $13.1 trillion in the third quarter, according to New York Fed data.
Trump's willingness to buy mortgage bonds outside of the crisis conditions blurs once firm lines between normal and emergency market conditions. Derek Tang, an analyst with forecasting firm LH Meyer, said the plan shows the administration is "willing to cross the line into crisis-fighting mode and using all levers at their disposal when there is not recession or financial crisis."
(Reporting by Michael S. Derby and Howard Schneider; Editing by Paul Simao)
