Brickman agreed that he doesn't think the fundamental economics of housing are catching up. “People will stay in rental housing a little longer. There is also a special/urban component to it. We are getting to the limits of a lot of the urban areas. The overarching issue is that things look very positive for housing in general in terms of the economics of it but not so much in terms of the affordability.”

Sandra Thompson, deputy director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, agreed, noting that the affordability issue is real in both the singlefamily and multifamily business lines. “Both enterprises, Fannie and Freddie, perform very well during a crisis. The purpose of the enterprises is to be there through the cycles.”

There has also been advances in technology and digitization for singlefamily, explained Brickman. Things like automated collateral assessment, for example, really helps streamline the process. “It will take some time, but it will migrate over to multifamily and perhaps we will be able to leverage that.”

Frater agreed, pointing out that if you think about every situation today where you have a human entering data manually and another human looking at data manually and doing something with it, it isn't very efficient. “I think that the kinds of things where people are entering data into a system today, for us, it is about turning that around as quickly as possible. The idea would be to get faster and faster and faster… Say yes to the right things faster.”

Thompson agreed with panelists, noting that it would be very helpful to see some of the data standardization move over to the multifamily side. “Data standardization would be very helpful.”