A multifamily man: Michael F. Petrie, president of P/R Mortgage & Investment Corporation, is the incoming chair of the Mortgage Bankers Association. He is the first leader of the trade group to come from the multifamily side of the business

Mortgage Banking, Oct, 2004 by Janet Reilley Hewitt

Petrie clearly likes the approach. It provides for management continuity, something a practical small-businessman can appreciate. Petrie says Rob Couch, outgoing MBA chair and president and chief executive officer of New South Federal Savings Bank, Birmingham, Alabama, has owned the issue of predatory lending along with Regina Lowrie, now MBA chair-elect. Lowrie is also president and chief executive officer of Gateway Funding Diversified Mortgage Services, Fort Washington, Pennsylvania. Lowrie will also work the FHA issue with Petrie.

Technology has been the traditional assignment for the MBA vice chair for the last few years. But the always touchy and always controversial issue of the GSEs will be Petrie's.

He has run the task force deliberations on the new Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD)-proposed affordable-housing goals for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and that is an issue he loves to dissect like the true policy wonk that he is. But more important, he knows the folks at HUD who are working the rule.

When the current Bush administration first came in and started discussing who to pick for FHA commissioner, they were looking to the industry groups to send supportive letters to Capitol Hill endorsing their nominee. There was some concern about the ultimate choice of John Weicher for the FHA job because when he served at HUD during the Reagan administration he had voiced concerns about the viability of the FHA multifamily program. So, Mike Petrie said he wanted to meet with Weicher. According to one source, "Mike met with him and realized the man had integrity and had a position, but would listen to numbers and to people who knew what they were talking about. That has proven very true."

The Weicher relationship was instrumental in solving what had been a chronic problem for the FHA multlifamily program. The program would periodically just shut down because it would run out of its appropriated credit subsidy and would have to wait for Congress to act on an increase to restart the program. Multifamily lenders would be left in the lurch on deals until Congress acted. Petrie was instrumental in working with Weicher to get HUD to revise the credit subsidy formula and fix the problem. Malloy says, "He did that almost single-handedly."

But today there is another HUD issue of importance to the mortgage banking business--both single-family and multi-family. It deals with the affordable-housing goals that HUD is setting for Fannie and Freddie. HUD issued a proposed rule in May that would substantially hike the goals the two companies would have to meet during 2005-2008. MBA and the two GSEs have raised serious concerns about the proposed rule.

At press time it was unknown whether HUD would meet a deadline of publication in the Federal Register by Nov. 1, 2004, in order to make the rule effective Jan. 1, 2005. MBA and many other groups filed comment letters on the proposed rule, which contained very aggressive targets for the GSEs to meet. The proposed rule contained the following goals: 1) the Low and Moderate Income goal was raised in yearly steps from the current 50 percent to 57 percent by 2008; 2) the Underserved Areas goal was raised in steps from the current 31 percent to 40 percent by 2008; and 3) the Special Affordable Housing goal was raised in steps from the current 20 percent to 28 percent by 2008.