Overview
- The final rule lowers single‑family benchmarks to 21% of purchase loans for borrowers under 80% of AMI, 3.5% for very‑low‑income purchases, and 21% for low‑income refinances, with a 16% low‑income areas purchase subgoal.
- Multifamily goals remain unchanged at 61% for units affordable to households under 80% of AMI, 14% under 50% of AMI, and a 2% benchmark for small multifamily affordable units.
- FHFA is eliminating temporary measurement buffers and consolidating two area‑based subgoals into a single low‑income areas subgoal.
- The agency projects roughly 201,000 additional goal‑eligible loans in 2026–2028, about $72 billion in financing, with an anticipated 16% drop in minority‑census‑tract acquisitions offset by gains in low‑income census tracts.
- The rule takes effect 60 days after Federal Register publication, with the new acquisition mix scheduled to begin on February 23, 2026, and industry groups like the MBA have welcomed the changes.