home ownership

It's National Home Ownership Month, prompting lots of talk about the value of owning a home. The rhetoric isn't all bubbly.

Sheila Bair, the outspoken head of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, recently questioned the government's role in promoting homeownership. The speech wasn't widely covered, but The New York Times' Joe Nocera drew attention to it in a column headlined "Wake-Up Time for a Dream."

"Sustainable home ownership is a worthy national goal," Bair told the Housing Association of Nonprofit Developers. "But it should not be pursued to excess when there are other, equally worthy solutions that help meet the needs of people for whom home ownership may not be the right answer."

Nocera calls her comments "a bit of honest heresy."

Good news for those working their way back to home ownership. In an effort to aid in the recovery of the housing market, Fannie Mae has changed its loan rules for homeowners that went through a short sale or gave their deed back to the bank before foreclosure. The U.S. housing market has so far weathered six million foreclosures in the past three years, with another three million expected this year.

The government-sponsored public company has relaxed its loan guidelines that prevented applicants in these situations from obtaining a mortgage for extended periods of time. After meeting certain requirements, the wait for a new loan will be cut to two years from its current four-year wait.

For some former owners, this is the chance they've been waiting for.

Think time travel is impossible? Then explain how we've moved the clock back to 2003.

The latest Census stats on homeownership show that just 67 percent of U.S. households own their home, down from a peak of 69 percent in 2007. That brings the share of homeowners back down to its level seven years ago.

The nation actually has a few more homeowners than it did last year – just over 75 million -- because the population overall is growing. But foreclosures have pushed millions of families out of their homes in the last two years, and with it their chance to live the American Dream.

Those numbers alone don't tell the whole story, though. Some segments of the nation are losing ground faster than others.

The epic drama of Wall Street bailouts and Main Street foreclosures riveted the nation in 2009. Meanwhile, financial industry groups and Washington policy advocates have been prepping for the big story of 2010: The fight over the future of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac -- and with them, the fate of the 30-year, fixed rate mortgage that built the American dream.

The Obama administration has said that by February, it will lay out its vision for Fannie and Freddie, which in some form have been the bedrock of home mortgage financing since 1938. For months now, industry and consumer groups have huddled over bullet points, figuring out their official positions.

On the basics, they come surprisingly close to a consensus. Bankers and consumer groups alike want to essentially sign Fannie and Freddie up as contestants on The Biggest Loser. In place of gi-normous shareholder-owned, government regulated companies on a quest for stratospheric stock prices, the feds would back mini-Fannies that would sell and guarantee mortgage-backed securities under federal regulation. That would ensure that most Americans would continue to have access to long-term mortgages at fixed interest rates, something that wouldn't likely happen if left to the private market.