The Department of Housing and Urban Development has issued a proposed rule establishing standards that FHA loans would have to meet to be considered “qualified mortgages,” varying slightly from the QM rule approved earlier this year by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. According to HUD, the proposal is aligned with the ability-to-repay criteria set out in the Dodd-Frank Act and the CFPB’s QM rule. The key difference is in the pricing threshold that puts QM loans in the safe harbor, rather than the less desirable rebuttable assumption category that exposes lenders to more legal risk. Under the CFPB rule, safe harbor QM loans must have...