The Obama Administration’s Weird Home Rental Plan

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac — now owned by you, the taxpayer! — have foreclosed on lots of homes. Those foreclosed homes act as a drag on the housing market, but Fannie and Freddie are reluctant to just get rid of them once and for all by offering them in bulk at rock bottom prices. Why? Because that would cause us, the taxpayers, to lose even more money than we already have on Fannie and Freddie.

So now the Obama administration is “seeking investors’ ideas” on a new proposal to rent out the homes instead of keeping them on the market:

One proposal would sell packages of hundreds or thousands of foreclosed properties in bulk to investors that agree to rent them out. That approach is preferred by the Department of Housing and Urban Development, which is taking back properties as defaults mount on loans backed by the FHA.

Another approach would let investors enter joint ventures with Fannie or Freddie to invest in a pool of converted rental homes. A national property-management business would handle day-to-day landlord responsibilities. Investors would pay for rehabbing and maintaining properties and would share revenue from monthly rental income and the ultimate sale of the property. Such a joint venture would be modeled on the Resolution Trust Corp., which sold failed banks’ assets in the early 1990s.

Jared Bernstein thinks this is an idea worth trying, and that makes me loath to admit that I don’t get this. But….I don’t get it. Right now, investors are free to buy packages of foreclosed properties any time they want and then do whatever they like with them. Sell them, rent them, demolish them, whatever. The problem is that Fannie and Freddie are asking too high a price so no one is interested.

So what changes under this new proposal? Well, we’re going to put a new restriction on what investors can do with their foreclosed properties: they’ll only be allowed to rent them. What’s more, apparently there will be some additional regulations to make sure that investors who participate in this plan will be good landlords. But restrictions and regulations make the properties less valuable, no? So investors will not only remain unwilling to pay Fannie and Freddie’s asking price, they’ll be even less willing than before because the properties now have additional encumbrances on them.

I just don’t get this. This plan would presumably require F&F to offer their foreclosed homes at fire sale prices. But if we’re willing to do that, why not just offer them at fire sale prices and be done with it? Why waste time with the rental plan? What am I missing here?

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with The Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with The Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate