FHFA Announces New Initiative for Limited English Proficient Borrowers

On October 15, 2018, the FHFA, along with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, announced the launch of a centralized clearinghouse of online resources intended to help lenders, servicers, housing counselors, and other real estate professionals serve limited English proficient (LEP) borrowers.

This initiative, called “Mortgage Translations,” creates an online clearinghouse, hosted by the FHFA, of mortgage-related resources, such as translated mortgage documents (e.g., the Uniform Residential Loan Application and Your Home Loan Toolkit), in-language mortgage-term glossaries produced by the BCFP, and other educational mortgage materials. Ultimately, the initiative also intends to develop and implement a language access line, which is meant to use a call center to help connect LEP borrowers with housing counselors or other resources to provide assistance in their own language (provided among the five most common non-English languages spoken by LEP households in the United States – Spanish, Vietnamese, Korean, Chinese, and Tagalog).

Initially, the Mortgage Translations website will offer its mortgage-related resources only in Spanish, since, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, primarily Spanish-language speakers represent more than 60% of the LEP population. However, the FHFA plans to grow the clearinghouse and add documents in Chinese, Vietnamese, Korean, and Tagalog, the four next languages most commonly spoken by LEP households in the United States other than English, by 2020.