Project 2025 Tracker / What’s done, what’s next

15. Department of Housing and Urban Development · Minor · Needs Congress

Move the HECM program back to its own special risk insurance fund

Not started

510 15. Department of Housing and Urban Development

“Moving the Home Equity Conversion Mortgages (HECM) program once again to its own special risk insurance fund.”

What has happened

  1. Not started

    HECM is still insured out of the Mutual Mortgage Insurance Fund, where the Housing and Economic Recovery Act of 2008 put it. The phrase "special risk insurance fund" returns no Federal Register document at all since 2025-01-20, and no bill of the 119th Congress would separate the fund. HUD is reviewing the program: its Request for Information of 2025-10-02, reopened for comment on 2025-12-10, asks what role HECM and HECM mortgage-backed securities should play and whether their features "present emerging risks or costs to the MMIF or Ginnie Mae" — but the RFI treats the MMIF as the covering fund throughout and floats no separate fund, so it is a live review rather than a step toward this ask. The record moved nearby again on 2026-09-23: HUD announced a competitive sale of about 4,200 Secretary-held HECM loans with a balance of roughly $1.3 billion, secured by vacant properties where every borrower has died, and gave its reason as "HUD's continued efforts to reduce financial risk to the Mutual Mortgage Insurance Fund". It is the seventeenth sale of its type, the loans are sold without FHA insurance, and bids are due 2026-10-27. That is HUD managing HECM's losses *inside* the MMI Fund and saying so, nearly a year after the review opened — real, dated action on this ask's object that satisfies neither limb of it. The sale does not touch the fund structure, which only Congress can change.

Research log

What was searched, and what didn’t count as evidence

Research notes

  • The comment period was reopened by a further notice of 2025-12-10 (https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2025/12/10/2025-22409/future-of-the-hecm-and-hmbs-programs-and-opportunities-for-innovation-in-accessing-home-equity). Nothing has been proposed off the back of it inside the window.
  • The RFI cites FHA’s FY2024 Annual Report to Congress at https://www.hud.gov/sites/dfiles/Housing/documents/2024FHAAnnualReportMMIFund.pdf; the report predates the evidence window and is a lead only.
  • Reviewed 2026-09-24. The vacant loan sale notice was the strongest candidate among the new federal records reviewed that day, and one of the few that earned it: the notice names the HECM program and the MMI Fund together, which is exactly the pairing this Quote is about. It is recorded as Evidence on the not started event, with the note saying which of the two cases it is — moved nearby, rather than moved the other way. Events at not started do not appear on the site’s front page. It was first read from the Federal Register record’s abstract; the full notice was then read at govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-2026-09-23/html/2026-19458.htm (docket FR-6568-N-06) and it holds: the quoted phrase is the summary’s own, the pool is due-and-payable Secretary-held HECMs on vacant properties where the borrower and any co-borrowing spouse are deceased, and nothing in it proposes a separate fund. The one thing the abstract did not make plain is that this is the seventeenth sale offering of its type — a standing disposal program, not a new policy — which is why it is moved-nearby context and not a step, and why a later HVLS notice of the same kind would be context too.
Action
transfer
Object
Home Equity Conversion Mortgages (HECM) program
ID
1426