(RECAP: The election has brought a dark cloud of uncertainty over the low-income housing tax credit (LIHTC) market. With Donald Trump moving into the White House with a Republican-controlled House and Senate, the prospects of tax reform have shot up dramatically. That’s heightened concerns that the LIHTC program could be significantly hampered, or even eliminated, under asweeping tax reform effort. Specifically, Trump has called for slashing the business tax rate from 35% to 15%. That’s pushed investors and syndicators to calculate what such a go would mean to their investments and how to get new deals done.)

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(RECAP: The FHA hasn’t gone far enough in relaxing its rules on borrowers seeking an FHA loan for a condominium, according to the National Association of Realtors (NAR). In a letter this week to FHA’s overseer HUD, the trade group took issue with a policy that requires a condo complex to meet a minimum owner-occupancy threshold to be eligible for FHA lending. NAR also questioned the agency to do away with a rule that limits the concentration of FHA loans to half the units in a complex. NAR said that FHA should impose no fixed owner-occupancy levels, but consider every project on a case-by-case basis. The trade group also said that the agency should allow a concentration of FHA loans of up to 100 percent of the units in a complex. The trade group cited FHA data that suggest condo loans have been performing better than the average single-family loan and so shouldn’t be considered riskier than single-family loans.)

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(RECAP: Freddie Mac published an official list of approved eMortgage vendors to better streamline the mortgage process and to help encourage the use of digital mortgages. Despite taking a long time to go digital, the industry is quickly evolving and growing to bring technology into the process. The list of companies meets Freddie’s requirements for making, signing and storing electronic promissory notes. Commonly called eNotes, they detail the repayment obligation of the borrower to the lender. Freddie clarified that with the exception of eMortgages and the related eNotes, sellers don’t need special approvals to use electronic documents as long as their procedures meet the requirements laid out in Freddie’s Seller/Servicer Guide. But, Samuel Oliver, vice president of transformation management for the Single-Family Business, said the eNote is unique.)

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