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The Federal Housing Administration announced changes Wednesday that will make it more expensive for homebuyers to secure agency-backed mortgages while some consumers will be priced out of the housing market.

The proposals, intended to shore up the agency's loan portfolio, formalize a multipronged strategy it outlined last month and are designed to protect both homeowners from obtaining unaffordable loans and the agency from dealing with the resulting losses from bad mortgages.

"Homeownership is important to the sustainability of communities," FHA Commissioner David Stevens said in a conference call with reporters. "But we've also learned that not everybody should own a home. Putting responsible guidelines in place is a way to insure sustainability for homeowners."

Stevens said the agency was mindful that it didn't want to overly disrupt the housing finance market and the mission of the FHA to serve first-time homebuyers. Last year, the FHA backed 1.9 million mortgages, compared with 1.1 million loans in 2008. FHA-backed mortgages for new home purchases and refinancing now constitute 30 percent of the total housing finance system, and 50 percent of first-time buyers go through the FHA.

To be able to make a down payment of just 3.5 percent on an FHA-insured loan, homebuyers would have to have a minimum FICO credit score of 580, rather than the current 500 FICO outlined in FHA guidelines. New borrowers with less than a 580 score would have to put down 10 percent on a home purchase.

However, that change is unlikely to affect many homebuyers because most participating lenders require borrowers to have a score of 620 or higher. Some legislators had called for all FHA-backed mortgages to require a 10 percent down payment.

Stevens acknowledged the stricter origination criteria of most lenders in 2009 and said in determining the new minimum credit score, the agency looked at mortgage performance records of the past several years, including when mortgages were much easier to obtain.

The FHA also will increase the upfront mortgage insurance premium to 2.25 percent of the total loan amount, from 1.75 percent. The agency also will ask Congress for permission to boost the maximum annual mortgage insurance premium it can charge. If that authority is granted, some of the premium increase would be shifted from the upfront premium to an annual one.

As disclosed last month, the FHA also said that sellers would be able to pay closing costs of up to only 3 percent of a home's sales price, rather than the current 6 percent.

Stevens also outlined several steps to increase enforcement of FHA lenders, including plans to publicly report lender performance rankings. The policy changes are aimed at the small minority of "rogue performers," FHA-approved lenders who the agency believes operate outside its rules, he said.

The increased upfront mortgage-insurance requirement will take effect in the spring. The new FICO score requirement and the change in seller-contributed closing costs will take effect in early summer, the agency said.

BUY YOUR HOME IN THE NEXT 90 DAYS TO AVOID THESE FHA CHANGES AND ALSO BE RECEIVE YOUR GOVERNMENT TAX CREDIT