Pulte vows action against ‘abusive monopolies’ in mortgage market

Bill Pulte, the director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA), said Monday he will not tolerate “abusive monopolies” dominating the mortgage market .

“Abusive monopolies will not be allowed to take advantage of consumers anywhere in the mortgage market,” Pulte wrote Monday on social platform X .

Pulte said last month that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were adopting the VantageScore credit index for mortgage pricing.

An individual’s VantageScore — which was jointly created by credit bureaus Experian, Equifax and TransUnion — is now juxtaposed against their Classic FICO score, the mortgage industry standard for decades.

“We are Simplifying Mortgage Pricing following feedback from lenders and consumers,” Pulte wrote on X in September. “Instead of two separate pricing grids, which makes zero sense, Fannie and Freddie are hereby moving to ONE PRICING GRID with VantageScore joining the existing FICO Classic pricing grid.”

Pulte, whose agency regulates Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, had directed the government-backed enterprises to update their selling guides with the VantageScore and FICO Score 10T indexes in April.

The FHFA director has sought to ease FICO’s grip on the credit score market, as mortgage rates soar above 7 percent.

“Since 2020, FICO has increased the price per a person’s credit score by 1,800%. FICO has enjoyed a monopoly. No more,” he wrote on X in early September.

The average 30-year fixed mortgage rate declined last week, falling from 7.4 percent to 7.32 percent, according to data from Freddie Mac. Mortgage rates have otherwise risen amid higher bond yields and oil prices due to the Iran war.

The Trump administration has taken multiple actions to ease access to homes ahead of the midterms, as Republicans face economic headwinds at the ballot box.

President Trump on Thursday directed Pulte to create a pilot program to cancel insurance premiums for government-backed mortgages once a borrower has satisfied equity requirements.

Also on Thursday, the Treasury Department moved to ban Wall Street investors from purchasing single-family homes — part of a bipartisan housing law Congress passed in June.