Proposed Collection; Comment Request, 18962-18976 [2020-07033]
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Federal Register / Vol. 85, No. 65 / Friday, April 3, 2020 / Notices
section of the web page called
‘‘Currently Under Review,’’ (3) click on
the downward-pointing arrow in the
‘‘Select Agency’’ box below the
‘‘Currently Under Review’’ heading, (4)
select ‘‘Federal Communications
Commission’’ from the list of agencies
presented in the ‘‘Select Agency’’ box,
(5) click the ‘‘Submit’’ button to the
right of the ‘‘Select Agency’’ box, (6)
when the list of FCC ICRs currently
under review appears, look for the Title
of this ICR and then click on the ICR
Reference Number. A copy of the FCC
submission to OMB will be displayed.
SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: As part of
its continuing effort to reduce
paperwork burdens, as required by the
Paperwork Reduction Act (PRA) of 1995
(44 U.S.C. 3501–3520), the FCC invited
the general public and other Federal
Agencies to take this opportunity to
comment on the following information
collection. Comments are requested
concerning: (a) Whether the proposed
collection of information is necessary
for the proper performance of the
functions of the Commission, including
whether the information shall have
practical utility; (b) the accuracy of the
Commission’s burden estimates; (c)
ways to enhance the quality, utility, and
clarity of the information collected; and
(d) ways to minimize the burden of the
collection of information on the
respondents, including the use of
automated collection techniques or
other forms of information technology.
Pursuant to the Small Business
Paperwork Relief Act of 2002, Public
Law 107–198, see 44 U.S.C. 3506(c)(4),
the FCC seeks specific comment on how
it might ‘‘further reduce the information
collection burden for small business
concerns with fewer than 25
employees.’’
OMB Control No.: 3060–0865.
Title: Wireless Telecommunications
Bureau Universal Licensing System
Recordkeeping and Third-Party
Disclosure Requirements.
Form No.: N/A.
Type of Review: Extension of a
currently approved collection.
Respondents: Business or other forprofit entities, Individuals or
households, Not-for-profit institutions,
and State, Local or Tribal Government.
Number of Respondents and
Responses: 84,048 respondents; 84,050
responses.
Estimated Time per Response: .166
hours (10 minutes)—4 hours.
Frequency of Response:
Recordkeeping and third-party
disclosure requirements; on occasion
reporting requirement.
Obligation To Respond: Required to
obtain or retain benefits. The statutory
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authority for this collection is contained
in 47 U.S.C. 154(i) and 309(j).
Total Annual Burden: 116,306 hours.
Annual Cost Burden: No cost.
Privacy Act Impact Assessment: Yes.
Nature and Extent of Confidentiality:
This information collection contains
personally identifiable information (PII).
The FCC has a system of records notice
(SORN), FCC/WTB–1, ‘‘Wireless
Services Licensing Records,’’ to cover
the collection, maintenance, use(s), and
destruction of this PII, which
respondents may provide to the FCC as
part of the information collection
requirement(s). This SORN was
published in the Federal Register on
April 5, 2006 (71 FR 17234).
Needs and Uses: The Commission
will submit this information collection
to the Office of Management and Budget
(OMB) as an extension after this 60-day
comment period to obtain the full threeyear clearance from them.
The purpose of this information
collection is to continually streamline
and simplify processes for wireless
applicants and licensees, who
previously used a myriad of forms for
various wireless services and types of
requests, in order to provide the
Commission information that has been
collected in separate databases, each for
a different group of services. Such
processes have resulted in unreliable
reporting, duplicate filings for the same
licensees/applicants, and higher cost
burdens to licensees/applicants. By
streamlining the Universal Licensing
System (ULS), the Commission
eliminates the filing of duplicative
applications for wireless carriers;
increases the accuracy and reliability of
licensing information; and enables all
wireless applicants and licensees to file
all licensing-related applications and
other filings electronically, thus
increasing the speed and efficiency of
the application process. The ULS also
benefits wireless applicants/licensees by
reducing the cost of preparing
applications, and speeds up the
licensing process in that the
Commission can introduce new entrants
more quickly into this already
competitive industry. Finally, ULS
enhances the availability of licensing
information to the public, which has
access to all publicly available wireless
licensing information online, including
maps depicting a licensee’s geographic
service area.
Federal Communications Commission.
Cecilia Sigmund,
Federal Register Liaison Officer, Office of the
Secretary.
[FR Doc. 2020–06932 Filed 4–2–20; 8:45 am]
BILLING CODE 6712–01–P
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FEDERAL HOUSING FINANCE
AGENCY
[No. 2020–N–8]
Proposed Collection; Comment
Request
Federal Housing Finance
Agency.
ACTION: National Survey of Mortgage
Originations—30-day Notice of
Submission of Information Collection
for Approval from Office of
Management and Budget.
AGENCY:
In accordance with the
requirements of the Paperwork
Reduction Act of 1995 (PRA), the
Federal Housing Finance Agency
(FHFA) is seeking public comments
concerning an information collection
known as the ‘‘National Survey of
Mortgage Originations’’ (NSMO), which
has been assigned control number 2590–
0012 by the Office of Management and
Budget (OMB). FHFA intends to submit
the information collection to OMB for
review and approval of a three-year
extension of the control number, which
is due to expire on April 30, 2020.
DATES: Interested persons may submit
comments on or before May 4, 2020.
ADDRESSES: Submit comments to the
Office of Information and Regulatory
Affairs of the Office of Management and
Budget, Attention: Desk Officer for the
Federal Housing Finance Agency,
Washington, DC 20503, Fax: (202) 395–
3047, Email: OIRA_submission@
omb.eop.gov. Please also submit
comments to FHFA, identified by
‘‘Proposed Collection; Comment
Request: ‘National Survey of Mortgage
Originations, (No. 2020–N–8)’ ’’ by any
of the following methods:
• Agency website: www.fhfa.gov/
open-for-comment-or-input.
• Federal eRulemaking Portal: https://
www.regulations.gov. Follow the
instructions for submitting comments. If
you submit your comment to the
Federal eRulemaking Portal, please also
send it by email to FHFA at
RegComments@fhfa.gov to ensure
timely receipt by the agency.
• Mail/Hand Delivery: Federal
Housing Finance Agency, Eighth Floor,
400 Seventh Street SW, Washington, DC
20219, ATTENTION: Proposed
Collection; Comment Request: ‘‘National
Survey of Mortgage Originations, (No.
2020–N–8).’’
We will post all public comments we
receive without change, including any
personal information you provide, such
as your name and address, email
address, and telephone number, on the
FHFA website at https://www.fhfa.gov. In
SUMMARY:
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addition, copies of all comments
received will be available for
examination by the public through the
electronic comment docket for this PRA
Notice also located on the FHFA
website.
FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: Saty
Patrabansh, Manager, National Mortgage
Database Program, Saty.Patrabansh@
fhfa.gov, (202) 649–3213; or Eric
Raudenbush, Associate General
Counsel, Eric.Raudenbush@fhfa.gov,
(202) 649–3084, (these are not toll-free
numbers), Federal Housing Finance
Agency, 400 Seventh Street SW,
Washington, DC 20219. The
Telecommunications Device for the Deaf
is (800) 877–8339.
SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:
A. Need for and Use of the Information
Collection
The NSMO is a recurring quarterly
survey of individuals who have recently
obtained a loan secured by a first
mortgage on single-family residential
property. The survey questionnaire is
sent to a representative sample of
approximately 6,000 recent mortgage
borrowers each calendar quarter and
consists of 96 multiple choice and short
answer questions designed to obtain
information about borrowers’
experiences in choosing and in taking
out a mortgage. The questionnaire may
be completed either on paper (in
English only) or electronically online (in
either English or Spanish). FHFA is also
seeking clearance to pretest future
iterations of the survey questionnaire
and related materials from time to time
through the use of focus groups. A copy
of the survey questionnaire sent out in
the first quarter of 2020 appears at the
end of this notice.1
The NSMO is a component of the
‘‘National Mortgage Database’’ (NMDB)
Program which is a joint effort of FHFA
and the Consumer Financial Protection
Bureau (CFPB). The NMDB Program is
designed to satisfy the Congressionallymandated requirements of section
1324(c) of the Federal Housing
Enterprises Financial Safety and
Soundness Act.2 Section 1324(c)
requires that FHFA conduct a monthly
survey to collect data on the
characteristics of individual prime and
subprime mortgages, and on the
borrowers and properties associated
with those mortgages, in order to enable
it to prepare a detailed annual report on
the mortgage market activities of the
1 In
addition, copies of the questionnaire in both
English and Spanish can be accessed online at:
https://www.fhfa.gov/Homeownersbuyer/Pages/
National-Survey-of-Mortgage-Originations.aspx.
2 12 U.S.C. 4544(c).
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Federal National Mortgage Association
(Fannie Mae) and the Federal Home
Loan Mortgage Corporation (Freddie
Mac) for review by the appropriate
Congressional oversight committees.
Section 1324(c) also authorizes and
requires FHFA to compile a database of
otherwise unavailable residential
mortgage market information and to
make that information available to the
public in a timely fashion.
As a means of fulfilling those and
other statutory requirements, as well as
to support policymaking and research
regarding the residential mortgage
markets, FHFA and CFPB jointly
established the NMDB Program in 2012.
The Program is designed to provide
comprehensive information about the
U.S. mortgage market and has three
primary components: (1) The NMDB; (2)
the NSMO; and (3) the American Survey
of Mortgage Borrowers (ASMB).
The NMDB is a de-identified loanlevel database of closed-end first-lien
residential mortgage loans that is
representative of the market as a whole,
contains detailed loan-level information
on the terms and performance of the
mortgages and the characteristics of the
associated borrowers and properties, is
continually updated, has an historical
component dating back to 1998, and
provides a sampling frame for surveys to
collect additional information. The core
data in the NMDB are drawn from a
random 1-in-20 sample of all closed-end
first-lien mortgage files outstanding at
any time between January 1998 and the
present in the files of Experian, one of
the three national credit repositories. A
random 1-in-20 sample of mortgages
newly reported to Experian is added
each quarter.
The NMDB draws additional
information on mortgages in the NMDB
datasets from other existing sources,
including the Home Mortgage
Disclosure Act (HMDA) data that are
maintained by the Federal Financial
Institutions Examination Council
(FFIEC), property valuation models, and
data files maintained by Fannie Mae
and Freddie Mac and by federal
agencies. FHFA also obtains data from
the ASMB, which solicits information
on borrowers’ experience with
maintaining their existing mortgages,
including their experience maintaining
mortgages under financial stress, their
experience in soliciting financial
assistance, their success in accessing
federally-sponsored programs designed
to assist them, and, where applicable,
any challenges they may have had in
terminating a mortgage loan.3
3 OMB has assigned the ASMB control no. 2590–
0015, which expired on July 31, 2019.
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While the ASMB focuses on
borrowers’ experience with maintaining
existing mortgages, the NSMO solicits
information on newly-originated
mortgages and the borrowers’
experiences with the mortgage
origination process. It was developed to
complement the NMDB by providing
critical and timely information—not
available from existing sources—on the
range of nontraditional and subprime
mortgage products being offered, the
methods by which these mortgages are
being marketed, and the characteristics
of borrowers for these types of loans. In
particular, the survey questionnaire is
designed to elicit directly from mortgage
borrowers information on the
characteristics of the borrowers and on
their experiences in finding and
obtaining a mortgage loan, including:
Their mortgage shopping behavior; their
mortgage closing experiences; their
expectations regarding house price
appreciation; and critical financial and
other life events affecting their
households, such as unemployment,
large medical expenses, or divorce. The
survey questions do not focus on the
terms of the borrowers’ mortgage loans
because these fields are available in the
Experian data. However, the NSMO
collects a limited amount of information
on each respondent’s mortgage to verify
that the Experian records and survey
responses pertain to the same mortgage.
Each wave of the NSMO is sent to the
primary borrowers on about 6,000
mortgage loans, which are drawn from
a simple random sample of the 80,000
to 100,000 newly originated mortgage
loans that are added to the National
Mortgage Database from the Experian
files each quarter (at present, this
represents an approximately 1-in-15
sample of loans added to the National
Mortgage Database and an
approximately 1-in-300 sample of all
mortgage loan originations). By contract
with FHFA, the conduct of the NSMO
is administered through Experian,
which has subcontracted the survey
administration through a competitive
process to Westat, a nationallyrecognized survey vendor.4 Westat also
carries out the pre-testing of the survey
materials.
B. Need For and Use of the Information
Collection
FHFA views the NMDB Program as a
whole, including the NSMO, as the
monthly ‘‘survey’’ that is required by
4 The Fair Credit Reporting Act, 15 U.S.C. 1681
et seq., requires that the survey process, because it
utilizes borrower names and addresses drawn from
credit reporting agency records, must be
administered through Experian in order to maintain
consumer privacy.
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section 1324 of the Safety and
Soundness Act. Core inputs to the
NMDB, such as a regular refresh of the
Experian data, occur monthly, though
NSMO itself does not. In combination
with the other information in the
NMDB, the information obtained
through the NSMO is used to prepare
the report to Congress on the mortgage
market activities of Fannie Mae and
Freddie Mac that FHFA is required to
submit under section 1324, as well as
for research and analysis by FHFA and
CFPB in support of their regulatory and
supervisory responsibilities related to
the residential mortgage markets. The
NSMO is especially critical in ensuring
that the NMDB contains uniquely
comprehensive information on the range
of nontraditional and subprime
mortgage products being offered, the
methods by which these mortgages are
being marketed and the characteristics—
and particularly the creditworthiness—
of borrowers for these types of loans.
Datasets collected through the NSMO
for public use are available online.5 The
information provides a resource for
research and analysis by federal
agencies, by Fannie Mae and Freddie
Mac, and by academics and other
interested parties outside of the
government.
FHFA is also seeking OMB approval
to continue to conduct cognitive pretesting of the survey materials. The
Agency uses information collected
through that process to assist in drafting
and modifying the survey questions and
instructions, as well as the related
communications, to read in the way that
will be most readily understood by the
data can be accessed at: https://
www.fhfa.gov/nsmodata.
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survey respondents and that will be
most likely to elicit usable responses.
Such information is also used to help
the Agency decide on how best to
organize and format the survey
questionnaires.
The OMB control number for this
information collection is 2590–0012.
The current clearance for the
information collection expires on April
30, 2020.
C. Burden Estimate
FHFA has analyzed the hour burden
on members of the public associated
with: (1) Conducting the survey (12,000
hours); and (2) pre-testing the survey
materials (30 hours) and estimates the
total annual hour burden imposed on
the public by this information collection
to be 12,030 hours. The estimate for
each phase of the collection was
calculated as follows:
(1) Conducting the Survey
FHFA estimates that the NSMO
questionnaire will be sent to 24,000
recipients annually (6,000 recipients per
quarterly survey × 4 calendar quarters).
Although, based on historical
experience, the Agency expects that
only 20 to 30 percent of those surveys
will be returned, it has assumed that all
of the surveys will be returned for
purposes of this burden calculation.
Based on the reported experience of
respondents to prior NSMO
questionnaires, FHFA estimates that it
will take each respondent 30 minutes to
complete the survey, including the
gathering of necessary materials to
respond to the questions. This results in
a total annual burden estimate of 12,000
hours for the survey phase of this
collection (24,000 respondents × 30
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minutes per respondent-12,000 hours
annually).
(2) Pre-Testing the Materials
FHFA estimates that it will pre-test
the survey materials with 30 cognitive
testing participants annually. The
estimated participation time for each
participant is one hour, resulting in a
total annual burden estimate of 30 hours
for the pre-testing phase of the
collection (30 participants × 1 hour per
participant = 30 hours annually).
D. Comment Request
In accordance with the requirements
of 5 CFR 1320.8(d), FHFA published an
initial notice and request for public
comments regarding this information
collection in the Federal Register on
December 10, 2019.6 The 60-day
comment period closed on February 10,
2020. FHFA received no comments.
FHFA requests written comments on
the following: (1) Whether the collection
of information is necessary for the
proper performance of FHFA functions,
including whether the information has
practical utility; (2) The accuracy of
FHFA’s estimates of the burdens of the
collection of information; (3) Ways to
enhance the quality, utility, and clarity
of the information collected; and (4)
Ways to minimize the burden of the
collection of information on
respondents, including through the use
of automated collection techniques or
other forms of information technology.
Robert Winkler,
Chief Information Officer, Federal Housing
Finance Agency.
BILLING CODE 8070–01–P
6 See
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[FR Doc. 2020–07033 Filed 4–2–20; 8:45 am]
BILLING CODE 8070–01–C
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18976
Agencies
[Federal Register Volume 85, Number 65 (Friday, April 3, 2020)]
[Notices]
[Pages 18962-18976]
From the Federal Register Online via the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
[FR Doc No: 2020-07033]
=======================================================================
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
FEDERAL HOUSING FINANCE AGENCY
[No. 2020-N-8]
Proposed Collection; Comment Request
AGENCY: Federal Housing Finance Agency.
ACTION: National Survey of Mortgage Originations--30-day Notice of
Submission of Information Collection for Approval from Office of
Management and Budget.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
SUMMARY: In accordance with the requirements of the Paperwork Reduction
Act of 1995 (PRA), the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) is seeking
public comments concerning an information collection known as the
``National Survey of Mortgage Originations'' (NSMO), which has been
assigned control number 2590-0012 by the Office of Management and
Budget (OMB). FHFA intends to submit the information collection to OMB
for review and approval of a three-year extension of the control
number, which is due to expire on April 30, 2020.
DATES: Interested persons may submit comments on or before May 4, 2020.
ADDRESSES: Submit comments to the Office of Information and Regulatory
Affairs of the Office of Management and Budget, Attention: Desk Officer
for the Federal Housing Finance Agency, Washington, DC 20503, Fax:
(202) 395-3047, Email: [email protected]. Please also submit
comments to FHFA, identified by ``Proposed Collection; Comment Request:
`National Survey of Mortgage Originations, (No. 2020-N-8)' '' by any of
the following methods:
Agency website: www.fhfa.gov/open-for-comment-or-input.
Federal eRulemaking Portal: https://www.regulations.gov.
Follow the instructions for submitting comments. If you submit your
comment to the Federal eRulemaking Portal, please also send it by email
to FHFA at [email protected] to ensure timely receipt by the agency.
Mail/Hand Delivery: Federal Housing Finance Agency, Eighth
Floor, 400 Seventh Street SW, Washington, DC 20219, ATTENTION: Proposed
Collection; Comment Request: ``National Survey of Mortgage
Originations, (No. 2020-N-8).''
We will post all public comments we receive without change,
including any personal information you provide, such as your name and
address, email address, and telephone number, on the FHFA website at
https://www.fhfa.gov. In
[[Page 18963]]
addition, copies of all comments received will be available for
examination by the public through the electronic comment docket for
this PRA Notice also located on the FHFA website.
FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: Saty Patrabansh, Manager, National
Mortgage Database Program, [email protected], (202) 649-3213; or
Eric Raudenbush, Associate General Counsel, [email protected],
(202) 649-3084, (these are not toll-free numbers), Federal Housing
Finance Agency, 400 Seventh Street SW, Washington, DC 20219. The
Telecommunications Device for the Deaf is (800) 877-8339.
SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:
A. Need for and Use of the Information Collection
The NSMO is a recurring quarterly survey of individuals who have
recently obtained a loan secured by a first mortgage on single-family
residential property. The survey questionnaire is sent to a
representative sample of approximately 6,000 recent mortgage borrowers
each calendar quarter and consists of 96 multiple choice and short
answer questions designed to obtain information about borrowers'
experiences in choosing and in taking out a mortgage. The questionnaire
may be completed either on paper (in English only) or electronically
online (in either English or Spanish). FHFA is also seeking clearance
to pretest future iterations of the survey questionnaire and related
materials from time to time through the use of focus groups. A copy of
the survey questionnaire sent out in the first quarter of 2020 appears
at the end of this notice.\1\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ In addition, copies of the questionnaire in both English and
Spanish can be accessed online at: https://www.fhfa.gov/Homeownersbuyer/Pages/National-Survey-of-Mortgage-Originations.aspx.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
The NSMO is a component of the ``National Mortgage Database''
(NMDB) Program which is a joint effort of FHFA and the Consumer
Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB). The NMDB Program is designed to
satisfy the Congressionally-mandated requirements of section 1324(c) of
the Federal Housing Enterprises Financial Safety and Soundness Act.\2\
Section 1324(c) requires that FHFA conduct a monthly survey to collect
data on the characteristics of individual prime and subprime mortgages,
and on the borrowers and properties associated with those mortgages, in
order to enable it to prepare a detailed annual report on the mortgage
market activities of the Federal National Mortgage Association (Fannie
Mae) and the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation (Freddie Mac) for
review by the appropriate Congressional oversight committees. Section
1324(c) also authorizes and requires FHFA to compile a database of
otherwise unavailable residential mortgage market information and to
make that information available to the public in a timely fashion.
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\2\ 12 U.S.C. 4544(c).
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As a means of fulfilling those and other statutory requirements, as
well as to support policymaking and research regarding the residential
mortgage markets, FHFA and CFPB jointly established the NMDB Program in
2012. The Program is designed to provide comprehensive information
about the U.S. mortgage market and has three primary components: (1)
The NMDB; (2) the NSMO; and (3) the American Survey of Mortgage
Borrowers (ASMB).
The NMDB is a de-identified loan-level database of closed-end
first-lien residential mortgage loans that is representative of the
market as a whole, contains detailed loan-level information on the
terms and performance of the mortgages and the characteristics of the
associated borrowers and properties, is continually updated, has an
historical component dating back to 1998, and provides a sampling frame
for surveys to collect additional information. The core data in the
NMDB are drawn from a random 1-in-20 sample of all closed-end first-
lien mortgage files outstanding at any time between January 1998 and
the present in the files of Experian, one of the three national credit
repositories. A random 1-in-20 sample of mortgages newly reported to
Experian is added each quarter.
The NMDB draws additional information on mortgages in the NMDB
datasets from other existing sources, including the Home Mortgage
Disclosure Act (HMDA) data that are maintained by the Federal Financial
Institutions Examination Council (FFIEC), property valuation models,
and data files maintained by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and by federal
agencies. FHFA also obtains data from the ASMB, which solicits
information on borrowers' experience with maintaining their existing
mortgages, including their experience maintaining mortgages under
financial stress, their experience in soliciting financial assistance,
their success in accessing federally-sponsored programs designed to
assist them, and, where applicable, any challenges they may have had in
terminating a mortgage loan.\3\
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\3\ OMB has assigned the ASMB control no. 2590-0015, which
expired on July 31, 2019.
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While the ASMB focuses on borrowers' experience with maintaining
existing mortgages, the NSMO solicits information on newly-originated
mortgages and the borrowers' experiences with the mortgage origination
process. It was developed to complement the NMDB by providing critical
and timely information--not available from existing sources--on the
range of nontraditional and subprime mortgage products being offered,
the methods by which these mortgages are being marketed, and the
characteristics of borrowers for these types of loans. In particular,
the survey questionnaire is designed to elicit directly from mortgage
borrowers information on the characteristics of the borrowers and on
their experiences in finding and obtaining a mortgage loan, including:
Their mortgage shopping behavior; their mortgage closing experiences;
their expectations regarding house price appreciation; and critical
financial and other life events affecting their households, such as
unemployment, large medical expenses, or divorce. The survey questions
do not focus on the terms of the borrowers' mortgage loans because
these fields are available in the Experian data. However, the NSMO
collects a limited amount of information on each respondent's mortgage
to verify that the Experian records and survey responses pertain to the
same mortgage.
Each wave of the NSMO is sent to the primary borrowers on about
6,000 mortgage loans, which are drawn from a simple random sample of
the 80,000 to 100,000 newly originated mortgage loans that are added to
the National Mortgage Database from the Experian files each quarter (at
present, this represents an approximately 1-in-15 sample of loans added
to the National Mortgage Database and an approximately 1-in-300 sample
of all mortgage loan originations). By contract with FHFA, the conduct
of the NSMO is administered through Experian, which has subcontracted
the survey administration through a competitive process to Westat, a
nationally-recognized survey vendor.\4\ Westat also carries out the
pre-testing of the survey materials.
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\4\ The Fair Credit Reporting Act, 15 U.S.C. 1681 et seq.,
requires that the survey process, because it utilizes borrower names
and addresses drawn from credit reporting agency records, must be
administered through Experian in order to maintain consumer privacy.
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B. Need For and Use of the Information Collection
FHFA views the NMDB Program as a whole, including the NSMO, as the
monthly ``survey'' that is required by
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section 1324 of the Safety and Soundness Act. Core inputs to the NMDB,
such as a regular refresh of the Experian data, occur monthly, though
NSMO itself does not. In combination with the other information in the
NMDB, the information obtained through the NSMO is used to prepare the
report to Congress on the mortgage market activities of Fannie Mae and
Freddie Mac that FHFA is required to submit under section 1324, as well
as for research and analysis by FHFA and CFPB in support of their
regulatory and supervisory responsibilities related to the residential
mortgage markets. The NSMO is especially critical in ensuring that the
NMDB contains uniquely comprehensive information on the range of
nontraditional and subprime mortgage products being offered, the
methods by which these mortgages are being marketed and the
characteristics--and particularly the creditworthiness--of borrowers
for these types of loans. Datasets collected through the NSMO for
public use are available online.\5\ The information provides a resource
for research and analysis by federal agencies, by Fannie Mae and
Freddie Mac, and by academics and other interested parties outside of
the government.
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\5\ NSMO data can be accessed at: https://www.fhfa.gov/nsmodata.
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FHFA is also seeking OMB approval to continue to conduct cognitive
pre-testing of the survey materials. The Agency uses information
collected through that process to assist in drafting and modifying the
survey questions and instructions, as well as the related
communications, to read in the way that will be most readily understood
by the survey respondents and that will be most likely to elicit usable
responses. Such information is also used to help the Agency decide on
how best to organize and format the survey questionnaires.
The OMB control number for this information collection is 2590-
0012. The current clearance for the information collection expires on
April 30, 2020.
C. Burden Estimate
FHFA has analyzed the hour burden on members of the public
associated with: (1) Conducting the survey (12,000 hours); and (2) pre-
testing the survey materials (30 hours) and estimates the total annual
hour burden imposed on the public by this information collection to be
12,030 hours. The estimate for each phase of the collection was
calculated as follows:
(1) Conducting the Survey
FHFA estimates that the NSMO questionnaire will be sent to 24,000
recipients annually (6,000 recipients per quarterly survey x 4 calendar
quarters). Although, based on historical experience, the Agency expects
that only 20 to 30 percent of those surveys will be returned, it has
assumed that all of the surveys will be returned for purposes of this
burden calculation. Based on the reported experience of respondents to
prior NSMO questionnaires, FHFA estimates that it will take each
respondent 30 minutes to complete the survey, including the gathering
of necessary materials to respond to the questions. This results in a
total annual burden estimate of 12,000 hours for the survey phase of
this collection (24,000 respondents x 30 minutes per respondent-12,000
hours annually).
(2) Pre-Testing the Materials
FHFA estimates that it will pre-test the survey materials with 30
cognitive testing participants annually. The estimated participation
time for each participant is one hour, resulting in a total annual
burden estimate of 30 hours for the pre-testing phase of the collection
(30 participants x 1 hour per participant = 30 hours annually).
D. Comment Request
In accordance with the requirements of 5 CFR 1320.8(d), FHFA
published an initial notice and request for public comments regarding
this information collection in the Federal Register on December 10,
2019.\6\ The 60-day comment period closed on February 10, 2020. FHFA
received no comments.
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\6\ See 84 FR 67447 (Dec. 10, 2019).
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FHFA requests written comments on the following: (1) Whether the
collection of information is necessary for the proper performance of
FHFA functions, including whether the information has practical
utility; (2) The accuracy of FHFA's estimates of the burdens of the
collection of information; (3) Ways to enhance the quality, utility,
and clarity of the information collected; and (4) Ways to minimize the
burden of the collection of information on respondents, including
through the use of automated collection techniques or other forms of
information technology.
Robert Winkler,
Chief Information Officer, Federal Housing Finance Agency.
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[FR Doc. 2020-07033 Filed 4-2-20; 8:45 am]
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