(Source: Kimberly Miller The Palm Beach Post, Fla. (MCT) — A plan to end America’s housing woes is now posted on Mitt Romney’s campaign website, plugging a hole that has been fodder for critics who say the Republican nominee is ignoring one of the nation’s most pressing concerns.
Some housing experts and political watchdog groups noticed the addition Wednesday, a day after the launch of the Democratic National Convention and following the Republicans’ conference in Tampa where no specific plan to address foreclosures was delivered.
The lack of a detailed housing discussion was particularly noted in a swing state with 29 electoral votes and 44.5 percent of mortgages underwater.
The new page on Romney’s website, called “Fulfillment of the American Dream,” outlines a four-point plan that would include foreclosure alternatives for people struggling to pay their mortgagea seeming departure from the often quoted statement Romney made last year in Nevada about allowing foreclosures to run their course.
Still, analysts on Wednesday interpreted some of the points differently with at least one calling the plan both vague and similar to current administration policies.
“It’s short on specifics, but what is there appears to be pretty status quo,” said Stan Humphries, chief economist of the real estate analysis firm Zillow.
If Romney leans too heavily on letting the free market fix itself, he risks looking like an out-of-touch businessman, Humphries said. If he goes the other way, he “leaves less daylight” between him and current programs.
“He’s not going to alienate anyone with vagueness,” Humphries said.
Other points included in the plan are selling 200,000 government-owned vacant and foreclosed homes, replacing complicated economic rules with regulation that holds banks accountable while increasing lending, and reforming federal mortgage backers Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
The Federal Housing Finance Agency is already selling foreclosures in bulk to investors, including 418 homes in South Florida. The Federal Housing Administration is also planning to sell loans of struggling homeowners to private investors who have more flexibility in doing loan modifications.
And, a plan was unveiled by the Obama administration last year to slowly eliminate Fannie and Freddie.
But Anthony Sanders, George Mason University real estate finance professor, balked at the idea that Romney’s plan is similar to what the Obama administration has developed.
Sanders, who believes the plan was strategically released after the Republican National Convention to avoid attack by the Democrats, said current policies are too weak and too limited.
“The Obama administration has been talking about Fannie and Freddie reform for four years, and they haven’t done anything with them,” Sanders said. “The big thing is we have to get the economy back on its feet and then all else will follow, and that includes housing.”
Romney doesn’t name the massive Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform Act in his housing plan, but he’s said in the past that repealing some of its regulations would free up lending and increase loan modifications.
While the 2010 legislation was passed partly to thwart the kind of relaxed lending practices that led to the housing market crash, some economists say it is too heavy-handed and is strangling community banks.
“At the very time we wanted banks to be more flexible and creative and helping people stay in their homes, banks have become less flexible, less creative, more insistent on foreclosure,” Romney said in January during a stop in Lehigh Acres, a community on the west coast of Florida hard hit by foreclosures.
Sanders said Romney’s campaign will likely release more details of its housing plan as the election nears.
Jerry Howard, CEO of the National Association of Home Builders, said he’s counting on it. So far, he’s been discouraged by the lack of specifics from both parties on housing issues.
“We have been very much in the forefront criticizing both candidates for not saying anything about housing,” Howard said. “While the (Romney) website is a step in the right direction, the devil is in the details, as it always is.”
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Source: Kimberly Miller The Palm Beach Post, Fla. (MCT)
