WASHINGTON — Bethany and Karl Schreiber are hunting for a nice big house in the pricey Washington, D.C., suburbs and they are facing a deadline: In just a few months their third child will be born, and the tiny two-bedroom they’ve been inhabiting will officially get too small.

But there’s a second deadline looming for them as well. Beginning on Oct. 1, the government will dial back on the size of mortgages it guarantees in high-cost areas like San Francisco, New York and Washington.

After that, the maximum loan amount that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac will back is scheduled to drop from $729,750 to $625,500. And that may make mortgages more expensive or harder to get for buyers like the Schreibers, who are shopping in the $700,000 range and would prefer to make a downpayment of 10 percent or less.

“If we wait a year, we may not be able to afford as big a house,” Bethany said in an interview. “Rates and housing prices are probably going to go up.”

The Schreibers concede their timing is mainly inspired by their own family circumstances. But others may be motivated to act now because of reduced government-backed loan assistance, housing experts say. Those programs were put in force as part of the stimulus package after the housing collapse.

“For people planning on exiting the market altogether (such as retirees), that is a compelling proposition,” says Stan Humphries, chief economist at Zillow. Home sellers may have to be patient to get the price they want. The curbs on government-backed loans could, at the margin, reduce the available pool of buyers, he said.

Anybody who wants a government-backed mortgage for a $1-million home after Oct. 1 may have to come up with a $370,000 downpayment instead of $270,000, says Rob Chrisman, an independent mortgage banking consultant from San Rafael, California.

The deadline will mean most to upper-middle-class buyers and sellers in costly real estate markets where $1 million buys a nice house, but not a mansion.

To be sure, that part of the market is picking up. Real estate agents operating in tonier neighborhoods are reporting brisker business this spring than in recent years.

Sotheby’s, which specializes in luxury homes, reports sales making double-digit gains for the first quarter of this year over last year. The National Association of Realtors reported that the sale of homes over $1 million were up 5.1 percent in March over the same month last year.

“We are seeing a normal recovery,” said Jed Smith, managing director of quantitative research. “I’m sure somebody will accelerate their activity (because of the expected drop in government-backed loan limits), but I doubt you’ll see a lot of acceleration because of that.”

“That really isn’t on anybody’s radar,” agreed Linda Chaletzky, the Schreiber’s agent, and a specialist on Washington’s tonier suburbs. “But things are hopping.”

She said she is not worried about the loan clampdown,

“The mortgage industry will find a way around it, because they will have to. If they don’t, they will go out of business,” Chaletzky said. She expects private mortgage lenders to step in and fill that space when the government backs down.

It was only in recent years that the loan limits went so high. Mortgages that are too big to be sold to Fannie and Freddie are termed jumbo loans and are backed privately. Until 2008, all home loans over $418,000 were considered jumbo loans. In that year, a stimulus-focused Congress twice raised the limit on loans the government would back in high cost areas, first to $625,500 permanently, and then to $729,750, temporarily.

Since then, Fannie and Freddie have backed an increasing share of that market. In 2010, so-called “jumbo conforming” loans, those over $417,000 and government-backed, made up 6.73 percent of loan originations, according to CoreLogic.

That top temporary limit was extended twice, but is expected to expire at the end of September.

When that happens, lenders who want to make loans over $625,500 will have to hold onto the mortgage themselves or find private investors to buy them. And while an active and hungry secondary market for these jumbo loans has yet to materialize in the post-crash world, there’s some evidence that lenders are preparing to move into that space and pick up any slack that the government leaves.

“There’s plenty of money out there,” said Steve Hopps, chairman of the California Mortgage Bankers Association.

Private lenders are preparing to step in, according to Guy Cecala of Inside Mortgage Finance, a research firm. In the last quarter of 2010, private lenders originated more loans over $417,000 (the traditional jumbo market) than did government agencies, he said.

The lower loan limits will leave about $10 billion more in loans for private lenders to handle, reckons Cecala, and he expects lenders to go after the market aggressively.

Investors like the fact that jumbo loans tend to be safer and more profitable than smaller ones. The privately-backed mortgages require bigger downpayments (currently about 30 percent of the home’s value, instead of the 20 percent more typical in less expensive loans), which adds security.

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Also adding to their allure, the loans carry higher interest payments; the spread between the so-called conforming loans backed by Freddie and Fannie and jumbo loans is running about 0.5 percentage points higher, said Cecala. Furthermore, a higher proportion of jumbo loans are made on a variable rate basis, which is less of burden for holders, Cecala said.

Going still higher in the homes market, there will be less impact from the shrinking jumbo. Many buyers of multi-million dollar homes do all-cash deals and are relying on cash more than ever before, according to Stan Smith, a real estate agent who works in Beverly Hills area.

The biggest impact might be limited to that space and those neighborhoods occupied by people like the Schreibers — folks who see themselves as middle class but in very expensive areas.

“I see borrowers, if they want that kind of loan, paying a little more,” says Chrisman. “But it’s not going to be a life changing event for a couple of orthopedic surgeons in Beverly Hills.”

Copyright 2011 Thomson Reuters. Click for restrictions.

By DAN FITZPATRICK, DAMIAN PALETTA And ROBIN SIDEL

Bank of America Corp. imposed a nationwide moratorium on foreclosures and the sale of foreclosed homes after it came under intense pressure from a government-run housing-finance giant worried about documentation problems, people familiar with the situation said.

The bank called the halt as concern mounted from legislators and state prosecutors about procedures used by lenders to foreclose on homes. Many banks use so-called robo signers, employees who sign hundreds of documents a day, without carefully reviewing their contents, when foreclosing on homes. Critics say that could result in improper foreclosures.

Freddie Mac, the government-run mortgage-finance company that along with Fannie Mae owns many of the mortgages serviced by banks, pressed Bank of America to expand its search for problems with the foreclosure documentation process, said the people familiar with the situation.

On a call Thursday with several banks that included Bank of America, a Freddie official said the mortgage company wanted the institutions to look at foreclosure documentation across all 50 states, and asked them to consider putting a stop to the entire foreclosure process, say people familiar with the call.

Bank of America has decided to halt all foreclosure sales. So will other banks follow BofA’s lead and what impact will the move have on the housing market? Rick Brooks and Brett Arends discuss. Plus, the Dow tops 11,000 and the $2.8 million car.

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• Heard: Banks Boxed In on Foreclosures
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• Mortgage Investors Are Set for More Pain
• Foreclosure? Not So Fast
• SmartMoney: Signs the Mortgage Market Has Hit Bottom
• Real Time Econ: Which Cities Face Biggest Housing Risks?

Many in the banking industry fear that the widening paperwork problem could cause further delay on foreclosures and threaten an already weak housing market, which in turn is stalling the broader U.S. economic recovery. On the other hand, it could provide a brief financial respite to people who have defaulted on their mortgages and are still occupying their homes.

As of August, there were more than 4.4 million home loans that were either in the foreclosure process or 90 days past due, according to mortgage research firm LPS Analytics. Since 2006, about 6.4 million homes have been lost through the foreclosure process.

Edward DeMarco, who heads the Federal Housing Finance Agency, which regulates Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, said in an interview that officials were working to find a “tailored” response to the foreclosure problem that won’t cause broader problems for the fragile housing market. “We are trying to be quick but measured in the approach and the response taken,” he said. “We’re concerned about the whole housing market, and we’re concerned about what this means for taxpayers and other market participants.”

Last week Bank of America, J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. and Ally Financial Inc. agreed to more closely examine documents used in 23 states where a court’s approval is required to foreclose on a home. J.P. Morgan said its review suspended nearly 56,000 foreclosures.

In conversations with Bank of America, Freddie said financial penalties or litigation could result if the bank did not take additional steps, said a person familiar with the conversations. Bank of America told Freddie that an audit of procedures in the 23 states uncovered no errors, this person said.

But Freddie said the work didn’t go far enough and asked for a review in all 50 states, as well a stop to any foreclosure sales, said people familiar with the situation. Freddie Mac declined to comment.

Bank of America Chief Executive Brian Moynihan said Friday that the bank hasn’t found problems in its foreclosure process, but opted to temporarily halt all foreclosures to “clear the air.” He said the bank wants to “go back and check our work one more time.”

Its decision is expected to stop “a couple of thousand” foreclosure sales scheduled for the next week, according to one person familiar with the matter said. The bank declined to specify how many homes it has in the foreclosure pipeline.

So far, Bank of America is the only lender to expand its foreclosure freeze, but others may be forced to begin or broaden a review, banking executives say. Wells Fargo & Co., one of the nation’s largest mortgage lenders, says it hasn’t stopped foreclosing on any properties.

At this point, J.P. Morgan isn’t expanding its foreclosure moratorium, but is widening its document review beyond the 23 states where it has frozen foreclosures, according to a person close to the bank.

Bank of America services 14 million mortgages, or one out of every five in the U.S., and its loan-servicing portfolio exceeds $2.1 trillion in size. Of its mortgages, 10 million came from its 2008 acquisition of troubled California lender Countrywide Financial Corp. More than 80% of its delinquent loans were acquired through Countrywide.

A push over the last week from politicians and law-enforcement officials troubled by reports of foreclosure problems only intensified the pressure on Bank of America, which has been working to improve its relations in Washington. It concluded that reviews in just 23 states wouldn’t cut it with elected officials in the other states, a person close to the bank said.

“In this intense political season we are in, it didn’t play well to say do it in some states but not your state,” this person said.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D., Nev.), whose state has been hit hard by foreclosures, and House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Edolphus Towns (D., N.Y.), both said Friday they welcomed Bank of America’s move and called on other banks to follow.

Cassandra Toroian, chief investment officer at Bell Rock Capital LLC, a money-management firm, says the additional reviews are unlikely to significantly impact the outcome for homeowners who are facing foreclosure. “It’s just delaying the inevitable,” she says.

—Robbie Whelan contributed to this article.

Write to Dan Fitzpatrick at dan.fitzpatrick@wsj.com and Damian Paletta at damian.paletta@wsj.com

How low do you think they’ll go?

How low do you think they’ll go?