The Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA), Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae have collaborated to launch a centralized clearinghouse of online resources to assist lenders, servicers, housing counselors and other real estate professionals in serving limited English proficient (LEP) borrowers called Mortgage Translations.
Noting that the share of LEP borrowers in the mortgage market continues to grow, and is not expected to stop in the coming decades, the entities gathered input from industry experts, consumer advocates and other government agencies to develop an online collection of mortgage documents and educational materials, as well as a new online Spanish-English glossary produced by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, according to a press release.
The glossary is expected to be particularly helpful in standardizing translations across the mortgage industry.
The first phase of the launch consists of Spanish-language documents, the release states. According to the U.S. Census, 60 percent of the LEP population lists Spanish as their primary language. Four other languages commonly spoken by LEP households – Chinese, Vietnamese, Korean and Tagalog – will be added in the coming years.
“FHFA is proud to collaborate with Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae and so many others on this important initiative to help address language barriers that impede access to mortgage credit,” FHFA Chief of Staff Janell Byrd-Chichester said. “The Mortgage Translations clearinghouse is one part of a language access multi-year plan and includes a number of meaningful resources to help mortgage industry professionals reach a broader range of borrowers.”
Jonathan Lawless, Fannie Mae’s vice president for product development and affordable housing, and Danny Gardner, Freddie Mac’s senior vice president of single-family affordable lending and access to credit, both stated that their eagerness to work with the FHFA on the language access multi-year plan demonstrates their respective company’s commitment to helping all borrowers – now and in the future – as well as provide lenders the tools they need to educate, engage and assist those borrowers.