The summer has barely started, but the fight is on against changes to loan limits that don’t take place until the first of October.

Today the National Association of Home Builders released its own study claiming that lowering the loan limits at Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and the Federal Housing Administration (FHA), “will reduce housing demand and place downward pressure on home prices in major housing markets.”

The loan limits were raised when the mortgage market crashed, investors in mortgage backed securities ran for the hills, and the government-owned entities were the only ones left writing mortgages. Originally at $417,000 for a so-called “conforming loan,” they rose to as high as $729,000 in the nation’s higher-cost markets, in order to keep mortgages moving. That will drop to $625,000 in October in those markets, with the base limit remaining at $417,000.

The builders say that homes above those limits “would likely require financing with higher mortgage interest rates and other less favorable loan terms, such as higher required down payments and more stringent credit history thresholds.”

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