Director Bill Pulte is the new head of the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHA), tasked with rooting out mortgage fraud in the U.S. mortgage industry. In this episode, we talk about the FHA's efforts to combat mortgage fraud, and why no one should be above the law.
00:06:23.000Hey guys, and welcome to another huge episode of Triggered.
00:06:27.000Today, we have director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, Bill Pulte, who is off to a great start in supporting homeowners and homebuyers, great, hardworking, middle-class Americans so they have the ability to live their American dream.
00:06:44.000And he's also rooting out the fraud in the mortgage industry.
00:06:48.000The FHFA is one of those agencies you don't hear.
00:06:52.000But it actually has a huge role to play in delivering the America First agenda.
00:07:34.000If you are committing mortgage fraud, you are a risk to the system, and we are going to take the appropriate steps within our statutory capability.
00:07:41.000Now, speaking of this, you actually referred Letitia James.
00:07:46.000For criminal activity to the Department of Justice.
00:07:52.000I don't want to comment on any specific case, but I will say that people claiming that they live in certain states that they don't live in, people claiming other representations that are maybe not necessarily true, these are very big concerns to the mortgage market.
00:08:05.000It doesn't matter whether you're a welder, a plumber, a politician, an attorney.
00:08:11.000If you commit mortgage fraud, you are a risk to the system.
00:08:13.000And if we see it, we're going to have to say something.
00:08:15.000And I encourage everybody, if they see mortgage fraud, say something.
00:08:20.000Well, do you think that the DOJ is going to take that recommendation?
00:08:25.000You referred her for criminal activity, Letitia James.
00:08:28.000Well, I would refer you to the DOJ, and again, the letter speaks for itself.
00:08:32.000I would just say, as I said, that, you know, occupancy fraud is a huge issue in the country where people are basically getting loans based on certain down payments and certain interest rates based on saying that they live in one area and not another, as well as saying that they should qualify for loans that maybe they shouldn't have.
00:08:47.000So, you know, just generally speaking, my thought is that mortgage fraud is rampant, and we are doing everything we can.
00:08:53.000We've made a number of criminal referrals, not just the one that you mentioned, and we will continue to prosecute.
00:08:58.000You know, within the confines of our statutory capability.
00:09:02.000Bill, this is a very important and informative interview.
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00:12:18.000You've been off to a great start to use your position to really enact change and root out fraud and abuse, which is something that's just been so rampant in so many of these agencies.
00:12:29.000But when you talk about your agency, I mean, that's literally trillions of dollars.
00:12:33.000Could you first just talk about the scope and parameters of your job?
00:12:37.000Because I don't think people understand the magnitude of it.
00:12:40.000I mean, you make a major bank seem like a little itty-bitty baby bank.
00:12:45.000And what you're really trying to accomplish over there.
00:12:58.000But yes, we oversee about $7.8 trillion, if you can believe that here, in form of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which are the two mortgage giants.
00:13:05.000And so I oversee federal housing, which oversees those two entities.
00:13:09.000And then we have about another trillion dollars at a bank called the Federal Home Loan Banks.
00:13:14.000And I'm very grateful to you, very grateful to the president.
00:13:18.000And, you know, look, we're doing a phenomenal job, and it's thankfully due to the president.
00:13:22.000The president empowers us to get done what needs to get done.
00:13:26.000Also, Elon Musk, they give us a lot of air support, as you know, to enact the change, and we're taking costs out.
00:13:31.000And, Don, we've saved hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars just in a short seven weeks being here.
00:13:38.000Yeah, I know you said when you first basically showed up, I saw something go pretty viral online where you did one of these videos, you know, walking through buildings full of empty offices.
00:13:48.000And when you're imagining seven-plus trillion dollars, I imagine there should be a pretty significant workforce.
00:14:18.000And look, we can't lower what has happened in the last four years with this Biden inflation if we have people working from home and not writing mortgages every day.
00:14:27.000You know, inflation has gotten out of control.
00:15:28.000He's actually done these things in the real world.
00:15:30.000He's actually signed the front of a paycheck, not just the back.
00:15:34.000He's had people's livelihoods and their well-being and their families dependent on their success each and every day.
00:15:40.000And that's something that's so lacking in government.
00:15:43.000Talk a little bit about just your family's background, because I think it's so important that a guy that actually understands not just the mortgage industry, but the housing industry, selling to regular people around the world for generations.
00:15:57.000It's probably important to have any $7 trillion agency that does exactly that.
00:16:03.000And, you know, our family founded Pulte Homes, as you had mentioned, which went on to be a Fortune 500 home builder, the largest home builder in the country.
00:16:09.000But I made my money, actually, interestingly, in air conditioning, of all things, buying, growing, and selling air conditioning companies.
00:16:15.000And so we're taking that same business-type approach to these companies.
00:16:19.000And, Don, one of the things that was interesting was that these companies could get around the president's executive orders.
00:16:24.000Because they're technically in conservatorship, which is almost like some people call it like a bankruptcy trustee almost.
00:16:30.000And so what we did was we came in and executed the president's vision, even though they're in conservatorship and are running these things like businesses.
00:16:37.000The president hired a businessman and we're going to run these things like businesses for the benefit of the American taxpayer.
00:16:43.000And Don, these were once great American icons in the 60s, 70s, 80s.
00:16:48.000One of them was founded in the 1930s by FDR.
00:16:51.000We're going to make these great American icons once again.
00:16:54.000Talk a little bit more in detail about the conservatorship standpoint, because it does seem like so much of this show is focused on the government intentionally or figuring out ways to get around the whole, hey, you report to the president, but no, no, no, you report to the unelected bureaucrats who are probably all enriching themselves along the way and have side deals with their buddies or whatever it may be in government.
00:17:17.000You know, again, $7 trillion, you know, the lending arm of the U.S. government.
00:17:23.000I mean, it feels like it should be in control of the president or who the people elect to fix the problems that are very real in the housing industry.
00:17:29.000I think that's probably a big part of why they elected Trump, because he gets it like your family.
00:17:33.000Talk a little bit about that, because, again, so much of what we see these days seems to be the end run to avoid any real accountability to report to an elected official and just have the bureaucrats running the show.
00:18:39.000I left my day job for this, and there's nobody I'd rather serve than the president.
00:18:43.000So you mentioned the waste, the fraud, the abuse, China being in there, taking advantage of these things at the expense, probably, of the American taxpayer.
00:18:56.000Known but overlooked because either people were in on it or it was part of the swamp or whatever it may be.
00:19:01.000I know you've done a real deep dive into all of these things to actually discover these things.
00:19:05.000And there's no reason that the agency has to spend as much as it has or employ as many as it has when so much of this stuff seems to be literally only there for the benefit of either the deep state, the Democrat Party apparatus, or the swamp in general.
00:20:31.000People who are going either through Fannie Mae, homebuyers, you know, again, by rooting out the fraud, restoring integrity to the industry, and actually holding those who abuse that power accountable.
00:20:43.000Just how much mortgage fraud is really out there?
00:21:08.000They can't afford until President Trump got in their groceries.
00:21:11.000And so we've got a lot of work to reverse everything that's gone on these last four years.
00:21:17.000And so to answer your question for the homeowner, we want to get the title insurance costs, the closing costs, the mortgage insurance costs.
00:21:24.000We want to get all of these things down.
00:21:34.000And so we need to restore housing in this country.
00:21:37.000The American dream is what America was built on.
00:21:40.000In the last four years, we haven't had it, and I'm very confident that your dad and our president is going to get it turned around.
00:21:46.000Yeah, I mean, you mentioned whether it's title insurance or closing costs or all of these things.
00:22:27.000So you have these costs, and then you go and you borrow money to pay for these costs, and then you have to pay for it every month when you go to pay your mortgage.
00:22:38.000And to your point, you have the 10-year note, you have the 30-year note, but then on top of it, you have these closing costs, and they can be significant.
00:22:45.000And also what can be significant are the down payments.
00:23:43.000Because it does seem, when you're talking about the money that you're talking about, you know, if you're going to save points on something, I want to save points on trillions of dollars, not, you know, I want to save points across the board no matter where it is.
00:23:55.000You know, what's the effect of that today?
00:23:57.000Well, the good news is I think we have a president who understands how much money is in this agency and how much money are in these companies.
00:24:04.000I don't think that, certainly the last president, but I don't think a lot of presidents fully understood it.
00:24:10.000One of the things I've observed about this president is that there's hundreds of billions, if not trillions of dollars involved.
00:24:15.000Now, Franklin Delano Roosevelt set out this path for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac back in the 1930s, to answer your question.
00:24:22.000And what he decided to do is basically with the GI Bill and otherwise, over the decades, was be able to get people liquidity.
00:24:30.000Be able to get people, which is a fancy word for money, get people money to be able to buy mortgages.
00:24:35.000What happened was, over the years, you know, classic swamp behavior, right?
00:24:39.000If you work for a Democrat or you work for some crooked politician, you could get put on Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac's roles.
00:24:45.000It blew up in 08. These guys, they were committing fraud, from what I understand, and they were doing a lot of other bad things, okay?
00:24:53.000So this thing blew up, and it wasn't supposed to be in conservatorship forever.
00:24:56.000It shouldn't be in conservatorship forever.
00:24:59.000However, what we're focused now is trying to get it back more towards its original roots, providing liquidity, stability, and affordability.
00:25:06.000And they veered away from all this with all this DEI stuff, lending people money, And we're going to keep going.
00:25:26.000And as I said, we're doing a full-scale review of...
00:27:08.000I mean, when you're dealing with someone who's actually passionate about doing that, actually passionate about helping Americans, that's a much bigger deal than a bureaucrat that shows up there.
00:27:15.000They're pushing paper across the desk.
00:27:18.000So, you know, I think that's really important.
00:27:20.000In places like California, though, I'd ask, you know, where homelessness is out of control, where prices are insane.
00:27:29.000What role can your agency play in that?
00:27:32.000Can you do more to hold the states themselves accountable to make sure that, again, these kind of benefits are actually available to the people they're intended to benefit?
00:27:42.000I actually have an important meeting tomorrow on some of this stuff.
00:27:46.000Eventually, it's an administration-wide decision in terms of how do we make sure that when we're giving all this money...
00:27:53.000That we are not enabling some of these municipalities, both from a federal financing standpoint, and some of that would fall under the jurisdiction of HUD, not us.
00:28:01.000But in the case of mortgages, I think you're dead on in terms of it needs to be looked at.
00:28:14.000These municipalities don't engage in nonsense, whether that's DEI stuff, whether that's being racist and discriminating based on race, or whether it's, frankly, mortgage fraud.
00:28:24.000Because we see a lot of people thinking, I don't know if you saw this, but the Maryland prosecutor, Baltimore prosecutor, was charged with mortgage fraud.
00:28:32.000And she actually, as I understood it, got convicted of...
00:28:35.000Some level of fraud and ended up having to do some work.
00:28:39.000She had to stay at home in terms of being in prison.
00:28:42.000So my point being is just like, the stuff needs to stop.
00:29:00.000How do you track and audit all of this?
00:29:02.000I mean, obviously, you know, it's trillions of dollars.
00:29:05.000How do you conduct that oversight and get those mechanisms in place to make sure that it's done right and that, you know, as little as possible, you know, sort of slips by the wayside?
00:29:13.000Well, first things first is we got to track it exactly like you're talking about.
00:29:17.000It wasn't tracked from my perspective with the FHFA director.
00:29:20.000Don, I showed up and I said to the team, I said, I want to see how much mortgage issuance we're doing every day.
00:29:25.000Now, Don, we're doing like $750 million a day.
00:29:29.000Two and a half billion dollars of mortgage issuance a day.
00:29:42.000So my point being is, because it's a long story, but Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac actually own a company called Common Securitization Platform, which is this modern technology platform.
00:29:52.000It's actually a very well-run business.
00:30:35.000We know we've only been in this for like seven weeks.
00:30:38.000So, you know, Bill, obviously, you know, politics is cyclical and everything.
00:30:41.000How do you make sure that whatever implementations you put in there actually last?
00:30:46.000Because I think once the American people, a big part of all of this was the transparency, once American people see exactly what's going on in these places, it's a lot harder for them to say, hey, you know, there's a new president, let's just revert back to the old ways.
00:30:59.000How do you codify some of this stuff so it stays in place after your tenure?
00:31:06.000It's like a lot of the other Trump policies.
00:31:07.000How do we make sure that it stays intact, right?
00:31:09.000Because you get these politicians like Biden, they came in, and in many ways, I think that they did some illegal stuff in terms of giving aid to people based on race or areas where they were only of a certain race.
00:31:50.000I'd like to codify these things into law with Congress, or at least, you know, make it so transparent that if it ever slips back, people have a way of seeing it.
00:32:23.000If we just get these numbers out there, a lot of people will audit these numbers and we won't have all this crime and grift that's going on in the mortgage market.
00:32:30.000So you mentioned HUD earlier, housing and urban development.
00:32:33.000That's going to be sort of, you know, demographically, you know, the lowest income tier in that.
00:32:40.000And then, you know, what are the different roles?
00:32:43.000And how do they overlap so you can work together?
00:32:45.000Because, again, I think we've got to create affordable housing or ability for people to get housing across all spectrums.
00:32:53.000Obviously, your focus is probably going to be more middle class just because of the nature of where you're lending.
00:32:59.000But I imagine that's trillions as well.
00:33:02.000And there could probably be a lot of synergies to make this affordable for everyone.
00:33:05.000Yeah, so interestingly, HUD is about a $74 billion agency.
00:33:10.000So in terms of the numbers that we're talking about, you know, its annual budget is $74 billion.
00:33:14.000They do have about a trillion at Ginnie Mae and FHA, which is essentially like government subsidized, government guaranteed version of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
00:33:24.000So think about it in terms of, you know, we've got about $8 trillion.
00:33:30.000But what's interesting about HUD and us, To your point, you have different tiers of pricing in homes, but we together, along with the president, can say, hey, look, this is what we want to do in terms of housing supply.
00:33:45.000This is what we want to do in terms of mortgage lending on some of the things that HUD controls.
00:33:50.000For instance, HUD controls a certification called the HUD certification.
00:33:57.000Very, very important HUD certification.
00:33:59.000You may know this from your days in construction.
00:34:02.000If we can do that, give more HUD certification to these manufactured homes and provide a mortgage, right, you could see a boom in this housing market like we haven't seen in a long time.
00:34:42.000What about foreign ownership or foreign beneficiaries of these mortgages?
00:34:48.000We've covered a lot about farmland in America and sort of the subversive ways Chinese government's trying to either buy up farmland for their food production at the expense of ours or around military bases.
00:35:19.000And, you know, it's something that, and I got to be careful with what I say, but, you know, this morning I was actually looking at this, specifically the amount of foreign buying of mortgage-backed securities.
00:35:31.000So without saying too much about what we have going on there, everything's fine.
00:35:35.000But it's something that we need to keep a close eye on.
00:35:38.000We are keeping a close eye on, both with the mortgage-backed securities as well as with regard to the land, the land that people are buying.
00:35:46.000The mortgage-backed securities, Don, you know, these are good instruments.
00:35:49.000People are – we've been underwriting since the crash in 2008 pretty good mortgages in this country.
00:35:54.000And the Chinese, as well as some other – Areas are coming in and they're buying some of these mortgage-backed securities.
00:36:01.000So, you know, I don't want to get too far out of my skis.
00:36:04.000Some of this has to do with tariffs and stuff with the MBS purchases.
00:36:07.000But, you know, we're looking at all of it and we want Americans buying American homes and we're doing everything we can to lower the cost after these last four years of devastation.
00:36:17.000Yeah, I mean, talk about sort of, you said, you know, since 08, obviously, I think the world knows the world had sort of hit a wall, the banks were playing all sorts of games.
00:36:26.000You know, I think a lot of people were upset there wasn't full accountability to that.
00:36:29.000No one knew what was going on, but everyone sort of knew what they were going on with some of the, you know, the junk bonds or, you know, the subprime loans and lending.
00:36:38.000Was that something that, you know, was also going on at HUD and sort of ignored?
00:36:42.000You know, I know a lot of this stuff sort of...
00:36:44.000Bush got blamed for a lot of that, but it really started under Clinton, where everyone should be in a million-dollar home.
00:36:49.000It's like, well, that's wonderful, but if you're getting a million-dollar home and you're already extending yourself and you're doing so at all-time low interest rates, if anything changed, people were then very surprised they could no longer afford our mortgages.
00:37:00.000What was going on at HUD, since I think people understand the story of what was going on in sort of the regular banking side?
00:37:05.000Well, at HUD, it wasn't as prevalent as maybe it was at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
00:37:10.000I mean, HUD definitely has it, but because we exist outside of HUD and because people were in charge of these two entities away from government control, they were able to get away with underwriting these loans, to your point, that almost blew up the entire economy, essentially almost did.
00:37:28.000And so that's why they're in conservatorship now.
00:37:30.000So I hope one day, you know, we can have a great company that does not have to be governed and in conservatorship.
00:37:36.000And, you know, we're working hard to keep all of our options on the table.
00:37:39.000But first things first is we can never have a mortgage market and under President, we can never have a mortgage market have that type of problem.
00:37:46.000And under President Trump, we won't let that happen.
00:37:49.000So, I mean, it feels like a part of that may be AI.
00:37:52.000I know there's a new story about how you're actually using AI.
00:37:58.000Because, you know, one of the things that I've, you know, sort of always voiced my frustrations for and I understood as a real estate guy, you know, we talked about points in and out and everything.
00:38:05.000But, you know, you're literally paying points for someone to look at a piece of paper, pass it across the desk, title insurance or otherwise.
00:38:10.000You know, what's the latest on the use of AI to streamline, to speed up some of these processes, you know, to carve out sort of these middlemen who are middlemen and maybe they're gainfully employed, but they don't really add any value in the process.
00:39:32.000I mean, I think that can streamline so much.
00:39:34.000And so many of the things that I saw and was frustrated with as a real estate professional when that was my primary focus, that's a really big deal.
00:41:42.000It's funny, I was spending time with your father recently, and I called up my dad, who's a great guy.
00:41:47.000And I said, Dad, I said, You know, the president reminds me so much of grandpa, you know, and it's just that work ethic.
00:41:53.000It's just, you know, how to make things simple, the persistence.
00:41:58.000You know, your father, my grandfather, they just had, you know, your dad wasn't a Depression-era guy, but just the resilience of the American.
00:42:04.000Well, my grandfather was, so he sort of, he got it and understood.
00:42:30.000And in fact, I've talked with your dad about Trump Homes, I believe they called it at one point, or your grandfather called it Trump Homes at one point when he was first starting out.
00:42:37.000So the similarities are pretty amazing.
00:43:05.000I understand you may be limited in terms of what you can say about it because it's an ongoing investigation, but you started talking about rooting out the fraud from politicians or people who are able to manipulate these things.
00:43:16.000I saw that you guys were the ones that found the potential Letitia James.
00:43:23.000Fraud, the mortgage fraud, where she's the resident, so she got favorable interest rates.
00:43:27.000She's married to her dad to get favorable interest rates.
00:43:31.000She has the number of units slated different than what's actually on the certificate of occupancy so that you can get favorable interest rates.
00:43:40.000I don't know if you can talk about that much, but I know I'd get killed if I didn't ask, because I know that originated from you guys, because some of those were loans from your organization.
00:43:48.000Can you tell us what's going on there?
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