This statement from the article matches my experience: >How­ever, for much of the post­cri­sis pe­riod, jumbo loans have been priced bet­ter than con­form­ing

This statement from the article matches my experience: >How­ever, for much of the post­cri­sis pe­riod, jumbo loans have been priced bet­ter than con­form­ing loans partly be­cause banks see them as valu­able for at­tract­ing wealthy cus­tomers who they can do other busi­ness with, in­dus­try of­fi­cials say. My mortgage is in the ballpark where I could choose whether to get a conforming or jumbo loan. Whenever I’ve shopped for a mortgage, I never was offered a lower rate for a conforming loan. In other words, private funders are willing to finance mortgages more cheaply than the government-backed agencies. For that reason, some of the language in the article criticizing the change doesn’t make a lot of sense to me, eg: >Crit­ics of Fan­nie and Fred­die’s large role say bor­row­ers who can af­ford mil­lion-dol­lar mort­gages should be able to fi­nance a home with­out gov­ern­ment-backed fi­nanc­ing. This rule change is presumably meaningful to bond traders because it will change the characteristics of bonds that come on the market and who can buy them. Maybe that has some downstream effect on the interest rates offered to consumers?