John Bartling

Rebuilding Housing Finance: The Next Steps

Ed DeMarco, John Bartling, John Delaney, Nagendra Jayanty, Rick Lazio, Phillip Swagel

Leading policymakers and market experts convened to analyze the post-crisis housing finance landscape, highlighting that taxpayer-backed support now comprises 75% to 80% of U.S. mortgage finance while homeownership rates have stagnated near 64%. Participants scrutinized the Delaney-Carney-Himes legislative framework, a proposal designed to reintroduce private capital by mandating a 5% first-loss layer and forcing the government to sell guarantee exposure pari passu to market investors. The dialogue concluded with a strategic pivot away from broad homeownership subsidies toward targeted affordable housing solutions, projecting an incremental 20-to-30-year transition from government-heavy models to private market risk absorption.