Connecticut Local Politics

Noted left-wing water-carrier for the Democrats, the New York Post, explains why the Realtors have pumped more than $800,000 into CT-04:

The riskiest type of government-backed mortgages could soon return to haunt the country.

Rep. Christopher Shays, the embattled lawmaker in a close race for his seat in tony Fairfield County, Conn., is quietly pushing to overturn a recently implemented White House ban on Federal Housing Administration mortgages made with seller-financed down payments to buyers who don’t have the cash for a down payment.
…
…Shays’ support of [the Shays-sponsored bill that would repeal the ban] 6694 has raised a few eyebrows in his district.

For starters, the National Association of Realtors, whose members stand to benefit greatly from the commissions they will earn on the SFDPA mortgages, had its political action committee pump a staggering $804,371.69 into Shays’ campaign so far this year for direct mailings, TV time and other items, federal filings show.

The first NAR-PAC pro-Shays TV spot aired the same week he helped get his Financial Services Committee to approve 6694.

Even that well-known Community Organization, the Bush Administration, thinks SFDPA (Self-Financed Down Payment Assistance) loans are a disaster, noting that they fail at three times the rate of non-SFDPA loans and account for most of the $4,600,000,000 lost on Federal Housing Administration loans.

None of this is particularly surprising for the guy who said, “I can’t imagine helping people who should not have gotten a loan in the first place.” He went on to add, “It’s not as if the mortgage companies had any culpability; it’s not like they had the power to run credit checks and then decide which borrowers were good risks and which ones weren’t.”*

*Note: He did not actually say the last bit. That was me.