Republican presidential contender Mitt Romney and his campaign team have released a 6-page housing policy white paper that identifies the areas that Romney would work on if elected, but the paper includes no specifics on how the policies would be filled out.

“Securing the American Dream and the Future of Housing Policy” lists five areas a Romney administration would target for action:

1. reforming secondary mortgage market companies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac,
2. disposing of up to 200,000 vacant foreclosed homes owned by the federal government,
3. facilitating short sales and other ways for struggling households to avoid foreclosure,
4. getting lenders to return to more normal lending standards rather than keep in place the overly tight standards in place today, and
5. improving the job market so households have the income and confidence to participate in the housing market.

The Obama administration has identified the same areas as priorities for addressing housing market problems since the financial services crisis struck in 2007, but the Romney campaign says the president’s policies haven’t worked or are adding to the problem. On the reform of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, for example, the Romney team says Obama has only come up with “noncommittal options” for what to do with the companies, even though four years have passed since the companies were put into conservatorship by the Federal Housing Finance Agency.

The Romney camp also said Obama’s effort to address the foreclosure crisis, with its HAMP and HARP programs, among others, has created a confusing array of programs with little to show for it. “These programs have been poorly administered with constantly changing terms and overstated goals that have never been met,” the paper says. HAMP stands for Home Affordable Modification Program and HARP stands for Home Affordable Refinance Program. HAMP is intended to help struggling home owners modify their mortgage and HARP is to help them refinance.

Romney’s goal  for lenders to return to more normal lending standards is something NAR has been calling for quite a bit in the past year, and the paper cites as one of the roadblocks to this some of the rules to come out of the big Wall Street reform law enacted two years ago, including the qualified mortgage (QM) rule, which is being drafted by the new  Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB). Although this and other rules are not out yet, they’re creating uncertainty that’s keeping lenders from moderating their standards.

To remedy this, the Romney paper says it will replace that Wall Street reform law with “sensible regulations”  that will “usher in a new era of responsible lending,” although it doesn’t says what these sensible regulations will be. Nor does it say what approach it will take on Fannie and Freddie reform, what approaches it will take to replace HAMP, HARP, and the other foreclosure-prevention programs in place, how it will dispose of the 200,000 government-owned foreclosed properties, or how it will spur home sales by boosting job growth.

Read the paper now. 

—Robert Freedman, REALTOR® Magazine