Front Lines: Washington Report

Kanjorski: Banks Out of Real Estate

NAR’s effort to win a permanent ban on national banks in real estate brokerage is enjoying renewed attention.

Senate appropriators in late July passed a permanent ban on federal regulators’ use of funds to finalize a rule that would allow banks to get into brokerage and property management.

The ban has passed the Senate in previous years, but it’s been a one-year ban by the House of Representatives that’s been enacted into law in each of the past several years.

Should the permanent ban survive a full Senate vote, which NAR analysts say could happen in September, it would have to be reconciled with House lawmakers, who this year have once again passed a one-year ban.

Rep. Paul Kanjorski (D-Pa.), who along with Rep. Ken Calvert (R-Calif.) is the original sponsor of NAR-backed legislation to prohibit bank-owned brokerages, says continued majority support for his bill is evidence House lawmakers are ready to enact the permanent ban—should it ever come up for a vote.

“The House has consistently demonstrated its clear, strong, and growing interest in our legislation,” Kanjorski says of the Community Choice in Real Estate Act, H.R. 111. “Support in the House has grown to 262 cosponsors during the first six months of the 110th Congress. H.R. 111 would clearly pass if brought to the House floor today.”

Kanjorski’s remarks were included in a letter he wrote in late July to a Washington newspaper popular among lawmakers and their staff called The Hill.

Look for final action on the appropriations ban in November, say NAR analysts. The timetable on H.R. 111 remains uncertain.

NAR: National Housing Fund Needed

A national affordable housing trust fund would help markets by shrinking the affordability gap, JoAnne Poole, a REALTOR® from Glen Burnie, Md., told the U.S. House Financial Services Committee in late July.

Poole provided her testimony in support of the National Affordable Housing Trust Fund Act of 2007 (H.R. 2895), introduced by House Financial Services Committee Chair Barney Frank (D-Mass.) and Jim Ramstad (R-Minn.), which would fund housing development, rehabilitation, and preservation and help eligible home buyers with their down payment and closing costs. Revenue from Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and the FHA would be among the funding sources.

It’s not clear how quickly the bill will move through the House, and a companion bill has yet to be introduced in the Senate, but supporters are taking the long view. Whether it passes this year or in two years, the program would represent the federal government’s most direct involvement in housing in decades. “The Affordable Housing Trust Fund represents a major step forward for housing policy in this country,” says Frank.

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