The Qualified Mortgage, or QM as it is known, is likely to shape the future of housing finance for years to come. The QM comes from the "ability to repay" anti-predatory lending provisions of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2010. The QM is a loan that on its face would meet the ability to repay standards and have certain features associated with "safe" lending. Thus the QM rule is designed to protect consumers from risky loans whereas its sister rule, the Qualified Residential Mortgage (QRM) is a rule designed to protect investors in mortgage backed securities (MBS) by setting standards and requiring financial risk is retained by issuers of MBS.

The original QM rule proposal was issued by the Federal Reserve in the summer of 2011. However, responsibility for the rule transferred to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) whose final rule was issued in January of 2013 and became effective in January of 2014. A revised QM rule was finalized in December of 2020 that kept the product requirements of the initial QM rule in place, eliminated the 43% DTI cap, and maintained the pricing spread of 150 basis points over average prime offer (APOR) to define the legal safe harbor of compliance.
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