AFR Backs House Members’ Appeal for a New FHFA Director
Americans for Financial Reform applauds today’s letter from 45 House members calling on the White House to nominate a permanent director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency.
Americans for Financial Reform applauds today’s letter from 45 House members calling on the White House to nominate a permanent director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency.
“Mortgage servicers will face greater limits on their ability to foreclose on a borrower while simultaneously negotiating a loan modification under new rules issued by the U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau,” Bloomberg’s Carter Dougherty reports. The new rules “go further” than the bureau’s first proposal
“[W]hile the final rule is an improvement over the proposed rule, it does not go far enough to ensure fair treatment of borrowers. We urge the CFPB to immediately consider improvements, both on its own and through the interagency guidance process.”
AFR Executive Director Lisa Donner talks to NPR about the importance of holding mortgage lenders accountable for unaffordable loans.
A new report from the National Consumer Law Center analyzes the record of the government’s main mortgage modification initiative, and where we go from here.
“[P]ortions of today’s rule should have been stronger, and the CFPB has put one very important question on the table for further comment, creating a risk of further slippage.”
The rules… are “likely to resemble” an October draft that “extended a legal safe harbor to loans issued at prime interest rates to borrowers whose total debt-to-income ratio doesn’t exceed 43 percent.”
With new rules for mortgage lending and servicing due to be issued soon, the Bureau faces an important opportunity to make the housing market work better for families and communities.
AFR joins 10 housing groups in asking OCC to downgrade Wells Fargo for its harmful mortgage and loan servicing practices.
FHFA’s proposal to charge more in states with consumer protections has elicited letters of strong opposition from housing and consumer advocates, members of Congress, legal and policy experts, Attorneys General, state legislators, and others.