HUD has set the FHA debenture rate for the first half of 2026 at the statutory ceiling, and the first half of 2026 ended seven weeks ago

Four and three quarters. That is the rate the Department of Housing and Urban Development has just set on debentures issued against loans insured by the Federal Housing Administration, for loans committed or endorsed in the six months that began on 1 January 2026. Those six months ended on 30 June.

The notice went on public inspection at the Federal Register on the morning of 20 August and publishes on 21 August. It carries two rates. Debentures issued under any provision of the National Housing Act other than section 221(g)(4), where the insurance commitment or the endorsement fell inside that period, bear 4.75 percent. Debentures issued under section 221(g)(4), which covers the assignment of an insured mortgage to the Secretary, bear 4 percent.

HUD did not choose 4.75 percent out of a range. Section 224 of the Act, at 12 U.S.C. 1715o, lets the Secretary of HUD set the rate with the approval of the Secretary of the Treasury, and caps it at a figure Treasury derives from the average yield on all outstanding marketable Treasury obligations maturing in 15 years or more. Treasury put that ceiling for the period beginning 1 January 2026 at 4.75 percent, and approved HUD setting the rate at 4.75 percent. The rate is the ceiling.

The calendar is the story

HUD's own regulations, at 24 CFR 203.405, 203.479, 207.259(e)(6) and 220.830, provide that the applicable rates will be published twice each year as a notice in the Federal Register. This one covers January to June and lands in the third week of August. The chart of historical rates the notice reprints runs back to January 1980 and ends on a single row: 4.75 percent, on or after 1 January 2026 and prior to 1 July 2026. No row exists yet for the half year now running.

The notice offers no reason for the timing, and none is supplied here.

Where the number actually bites

It bites in a narrower place than it once did. Since section 215 of HUD's 2004 appropriations act amended section 224, a claim paid in cash on a single family mortgage insured under section 203 or 234 and endorsed after 23 January 2004 is calculated on a different figure entirely, the monthly average yield on Treasury securities at a constant maturity of 10 years for the month in which the default occurred, as published in the Federal Reserve's H.15 release. That carve-out sits at 24 CFR 203.405(b) and 203.479(b). What is left to the published debenture rate is the multifamily book, where 24 CFR 207.259(e)(1) and (e)(6) read together pay a cash claim from the date of default at the debenture rate in effect at commitment or endorsement, whichever is higher, and the older single family paper the amendment did not reach.

Set against the chart, 4.75 percent is high by the standards of the past two decades. No half year since the one that began in July 2007 has carried a rate above it, and only one since then has matched it, the six months from July 2024.

The notice is signed by Joseph M. Gormley, President of the Government National Mortgage Association, performing the delegable duties of the Assistant Secretary for Housing and Federal Housing Commissioner.