This bill inserts a new Section 1355A into the Federal Housing Enterprises Financial Safety and Soundness Act of 1992 requiring the Federal Housing Finance Agency Director to order Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (the enterprises) to establish programs that have multifamily borrowers request resident consent to report positive rent payments to consumer reporting agencies. The reporting is consent-driven and may include up to 24 months of prior on-time payments where available.
The measure makes reported positive rent payments an input that must be considered in applications for mortgage insurance under FHA Section 203, puts administrative costs on the enterprises, requires a five-year congressional report on program operation, and authorizes appropriations. The change creates a new, federally enabled pipeline for rental payment data into credit files—potentially widening access to mortgage credit while raising operational, privacy, and data-quality questions for owners, servicers, CRAs, and regulators.
At a Glance
What It Does
The FHFA Director must require each enterprise to establish and maintain a program for multifamily borrowers to seek resident consent to report positive rental payments directly to consumer reporting agencies identified in FCRA section 603(p). Reports may include up to 24 months of prior positive rent payments where available, and the enterprises must bear administrative costs.
Who It Affects
Multifamily borrowers with federally backed loans (properties with five or more units), their residents who may consent to reporting, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, consumer reporting agencies, and mortgage insurers and underwriters who evaluate FHA-insured mortgage applications.
Why It Matters
By channeling rent-payment data from federally backed properties into credit files, the bill creates a government-facilitated alternative data stream that can help thin-file and credit-invisible renters build credit histories—potentially changing underwriting profiles and mortgage access while imposing new compliance, privacy, and operational burdens.
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What This Bill Actually Does
The bill adds a focused new requirement into the statutory framework that governs the housing enterprises. It defines the covered loans broadly enough to capture most permanent multifamily financing tied to properties designed for occupancy by five or more families, and it expressly excludes short-term construction financing.
That definition determines which property owners and borrowers must participate in the reporting program the enterprises create.
Implementation is delegated to the FHFA Director, who must issue an order or regulation directing the enterprises to create a program under which multifamily borrowers request resident consent to report positive rent payments. Reporting is explicitly consent-based: borrowers report only when a resident agrees.
The bill also says enterprises should include up to 24 months of prior positive rent payments if those records exist, creating an incentive for owners and managers to maintain historical payment records and to integrate them with CRA reporting systems.On the downstream side, reported rent payments are not merely informational: the bill requires that positive rent payments be considered in FHA Section 203 mortgage insurance applications. That gives lenders and insurers permission to include rent payment history when assessing creditworthiness.
To reduce immediate cost barriers to adoption, the enterprises must cover administrative costs for collecting consent and transmitting payment data, and the FHFA Director must produce a report to Congress every five years on program operation. Finally, the statute authorizes such sums as necessary to implement the program, though it does not specify a funding level or implementation timeline.Operationally this creates several new tasks: owners and servicers (the multifamily borrowers) will need consent workflows, recordkeeping and data feeds compatible with CRAs; enterprises will need to design standards and cover costs; consumer reporting agencies will need to ingest and integrate rent-payment records; and lenders and insurers will need underwriting guidance on how to weigh rent payment data.
The bill does not prescribe data formats, dispute-resolution procedures beyond existing FCRA protections, or enforcement penalties tied to failures to report, leaving those implementation choices to the FHFA and the enterprises.
The Five Things You Need to Know
The program applies to loans secured by residential multifamily property intended for occupancy by five or more families and excludes temporary financing such as construction loans.
The FHFA Director must order enterprises to require multifamily borrowers to request resident consent before reporting positive rent payments; reporting is conditional on that consent.
Enterprises must include up to 24 months of prior positive rent payments in reports if those historical records are available.
Positive rent payments reported under the program must be considered in applications for mortgage insurance under Section 203 of the National Housing Act (FHA mortgage insurance).
The enterprises are responsible for covering administrative costs of reporting, and the FHFA Director must submit a program report to Congress every five years; the statute also authorizes appropriations to implement the section.
Section-by-Section Breakdown
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Short title
Names the bill the "Access to Homeownership Act." This is purely nominal but signals the legislative purpose: expanding pathways from rental histories to homeownership credit consideration.
Scope: which multifamily loans are covered
Defines "federally backed multifamily mortgage loan" to include non‑temporary loans secured by properties designed for five or more families and loans made, insured, guaranteed or purchased/securitized by federal housing programs or the enterprises. Practically, this ties the rule to properties and loans already in the government‑supported system—so large multifamily borrowers on conventional commercial loans outside GSE/HUD programs are outside the mandate.
FHFA-directed enterprise program and consent-based reporting
Directs the FHFA Director to issue an order or regulation compelling each enterprise to set up and maintain a program requiring multifamily borrowers to request resident consent to report positive rent payments. The statute points to consumer reporting agencies as defined in FCRA section 603(p) and mandates inclusion of up to 24 months of prior payments if available. This subsection establishes the high-level legal hook but leaves the details—data standards, consent language, timing, and enforcement—to FHFA rulemaking and enterprise program design.
Rent payments become admissible in FHA insurance applications
Requires that any positive rent payment reported under the new program be "considered" in an application for mortgage insurance under FHA Section 203. The statute creates a statutory floor (must be considered) but does not prescribe how weighty those payments must be in underwriting models, which preserves discretion for insurers and lenders while ensuring rent history cannot be summarily excluded.
Who pays, oversight, and appropriations
Makes enterprises responsible for administrative costs associated with reporting, requires the FHFA Director to produce a congressional report every five years on program operations, and authorizes appropriations to carry out the section. The provision shifts operational costs to the GSEs rather than to tenants or individual owners, but it does not specify internal GSE budget treatment or whether costs may be passed indirectly to borrowers through fees or loan pricing.
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Explore Housing in Codify Search →Who Benefits and Who Bears the Cost
Every bill creates winners and losers. Here's who stands to gain and who bears the cost.
Who Benefits
- Credit-thin or credit-invisible renters and residents who opt in — they can build documented payment histories that may improve credit scores or underwriting assessments for mortgage applications.
- First-time homebuyers moving from renting to owning — documented rent payment histories become a legal input for FHA-insured mortgage consideration, potentially lowering barriers to mortgage approval.
- Community lenders and alternative-data underwriters — access to standardized rent-payment data can improve risk models for borrowers lacking traditional credit files and expand pools of creditworthy applicants.
- Housing advocates and policymakers focused on financial inclusion — the program creates a federal mechanism to operationalize rent as credit-relevant data, strengthening advocacy and program alignment across federal housing policies.
Who Bears the Cost
- Multifamily borrowers (owners and servicers of federally backed properties) — they must implement consent collection, recordkeeping, and reporting processes, and coordinate with tenants and CRAs.
- The enterprises (Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac) — required to establish and run the program and cover administrative costs, which could affect their operating budgets or lead to internal cost-allocation decisions.
- Tenants who do not consent or who have irregular payment records — they may be left out of the benefit, and in some markets landlords might alter leasing or screening practices in response to reporting incentives.
- Consumer reporting agencies and IT vendors — they must ingest new data types and may invest in mapping, validation, and dispute-handling workflows to accommodate rent-payment feeds.
Key Issues
The Core Tension
The central dilemma is balancing financial inclusion against operational complexity and consumer risk: the bill seeks to broaden credit access by turning rent payments into recognized credit data, but doing so requires standardizing data flows, protecting tenant consent and privacy, and allocating costs—choices that can either enable widespread benefit or create new compliance burdens, privacy exposures, and uneven adoption that undermine the equity goals.
The bill creates a consent-based pathway for rental payments to enter credit files but leaves many critical implementation choices unspecified. It does not set technical standards for data fields, file formats, reporting cadence, or dispute-resolution workflows; it delegates those decisions to the FHFA and the enterprises.
Without standardization, CRAs and enterprises may adopt divergent practices that limit data portability or create inconsistent treatment across models and products.
Consent mechanics and tenant protections are thin. The statute requires borrower requests for consent but does not prescribe consent language, opt-out rules, timing relative to tenancy, or safeguards against coercive landlord practices.
That gap raises enforcement and consumer‑protection questions—particularly for vulnerable tenants who may feel pressured to consent. The bill also provides no explicit remediation or penalty regime for inaccurate rent reports beyond existing FCRA pathways, leaving potential liability and compliance risk with property owners, servicers, CRAs, and the enterprises.
Finally, the fiscal and market effects are uncertain. Enterprises must pay administrative costs, but the bill is silent on whether those costs can be recovered indirectly or how they affect enterprise operations.
Because the mandate applies only to federally backed multifamily loans, rent-reporting adoption could be uneven across the market, producing patchy benefits for renters and competitive distortions among owners depending on their loan backing and operational capacity.
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