The U.S. Department of Agriculture wants to begin charging lenders a fee on each guaranteed rural-housing home loan beginning Jan. 2, 2019, to fund future information-technology upgrades. In a notice published in the July 13 Federal Register, the agency said it expects to levy a $25 user fee for using the Rural Housing Service’s automated loan-guarantee systems. Comments are due Sept. 11, 2018The fee collection is authorized under the 2016 Housing Opportunity Through Modernization Act as a “technology fee” to improve program delivery and “reduce burden to the public.” The authorized fee can be up to $50 per loan. It will be collected at closing. The Department of Housing and Urban Development has been trying unsuccessfully to obtain authority from Congress to charge a similar fee to modernize its aging information technology. The USDA said it would notify lenders before the ...