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Businesses across the country have ground to a halt because of the coronavirus outbreak, leaving millions of Americans wondering how they will make their next mortgage payments. Their lenders may soon say they don’t have to worry — for a while, at least, the New York Times reported. A broad group of bankers and other mortgage industry participants is working on a plan to offer a temporary pause in payments on home loans, according to the Housing Policy Council, a trade group that includes Citigroup, Wells Fargo, JPMorgan Chase and Quicken Loans. Details were still being decided, but the plan would allow borrowers to stop paying for as long as the public health and economic disruptions lasted, said Ed DeMarco, the chief executive of the council. Once the economy gets going again, borrowers would resume making payments. DeMarco said that he had been talking with banks, servicers and mortgage bond investors to complete the details of the policy. He said that it was not clear when the plan would be announced, but that the group wanted it in place by April 1.

As the coronavirus continues to spread, companies, government agencies and organizations across the nation are responding, HousingWire.com reported. Miami-Dade County Mayor Carlos A. Gimenez yesterday declared a state of emergency in the county. As a result, the Miami-Dade County police will temporarily suspend eviction notices until further notice. And the Florida county is not alone in these actions. According to the <em>San Jose (Calif.) Mercury News</em>, the city is moving forward with a moratorium on evictions. The moratorium, which is expected to receive final approval from the San Jose City Council in the next few weeks, will be in effect for at least 30 days. San Jose council members will also consider adding small businesses under commercial leases to the eviction moratorium at their meeting next week. In addition, they will consider setting aside a pool of additional public funds for San Jose renters and small businesses to access if needed to meet their rent payments. This comes on the heels of FHFA and FHA reminding servicers that mortgage relief options exist as coronavirus spreads. Fannie Mae also sent out an email on March 5, reminding borrowers about forbearance opportunities if they are impacted by COVID-19.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac’s existing shareholders shouldn’t expect a huge payday after the mortgage giants raise capital from new investors as part of a plan to free them from U.S. control, the companies’ chief regulator said yesterday, according to Bloomberg News. “The shareholders will be heavily diluted when we raise capital,” Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Mark Calabria said. “So at the end of the day I am not focused on whether there’s a windfall, because I don’t think there’s really going to be that big of a windfall.” He noted that the shareholders haven’t had a dividend in more than a decade. Calabria reiterated his view that investors should have been wiped out after Fannie and Freddie were seized by regulators during the 2008 financial crisis, and said that current shareholders could be wiped out in the future “were we to find ourselves in the situation where they’re insolvent again.” He said that when the time comes for the companies to go to the public markets to raise capital, it could result in the “largest equity offering ever.” FHFA is working with investment bank Houlihan Lokey to figure out specifics such as whether Fannie and Freddie would go to market at the same time or sequentially, he said.

Two senior lobbyists for the Federal Home Loan Bank of San Francisco pushed a long-shot idea for ending U.S. control of mortgage giant Freddie Mac, Bloomberg News reported. The proposal, pitched behind closed doors in 2016 by Lawrence H. Parks and Timothy Simons, called for federal home loan banks to buy Freddie using cash windfalls they won in settlements with Wall Street after the financial crisis. The plan was quickly tabled but got revived in 2017 when President Donald Trump took office and top administration officials made clear they wanted the government out of the business of running Freddie and its sibling, Fannie Mae. The scheme ultimately unraveled and has become the focus of a legal battle that pits Parks and Simons against the San Francisco lender, which fired them in 2018. The two men say that they are victims of racial discrimination, while the bank claims that they may have committed fraud. The saga, laid out in a lawsuit Parks and Simons filed last month, reveals the jockeying for influence that’s gone on as Trump’s Treasury Department seeks to figure out a future for mortgage-finance companies that earn billions of dollars. Fannie and Freddie’s near collapse pushed them into the government’s arms almost 12 years ago. Their recovery, along with the crucial role they play in the housing market, has set off a lobbying frenzy among banks, hedge funds and other financial titans that continues to this day.

JPMorgan Chase & Co. may jump back into a U.S. mortgage program that helps low-income Americans buy homes, mulling a return years after most banks pulled back from the business in frustration over billions of dollars in penalties, Bloomberg News reported. The New York-based bank is deciding whether to offer more loans insured by the Federal Housing Administration, a program that insures more than $1.2 trillion in U.S. mortgage debt. Promises by President Donald Trump’s administration to make it easier for lenders to avoid fines for mistakes in underwriting are prompting JPMorgan executives to take a fresh look at the risks of making a meaningful push into the market, the people said, asking not to be identified discussing internal talks. The deliberations are still active, and any decision to proceed will depend on a variety of factors. The return of JPMorgan, the nation’s largest bank, would almost certainly encourage competitors to revive their own FHA lending. Chief Executive Officer Jamie Dimon has been a vocal critic of the government’s punishment of banks for errors in loans backed by the agency, telling investors in 2017 that JPMorgan had scaled back its FHA lending because “aggressive use” of the False Claims Act, which resulted in massive fines, had made the program too risky and cost prohibitive for banks.