One part of our proposed rule to improve the disclosures consumers receive when applying for and closing on a mortgage was a change to the current definition of “finance charge.” The finance charge is intended to reflect the cost of credit for consumers as a dollar amount. It’s used to calculate the Annual Percentage Rate [...]
Author archive: The CFPB Mortgage Disclosure Team
Explainer: Why did it take 1,099 pages to propose a three-page mortgage disclosure?
Dear CFPB, Recently, I saw your notice of proposed rulemaking to combine and simplify existing mortgage disclosures. It’s 1,099 pages long! Why does it take so many pages to create something that’s supposed to be easy to use and understand? Sincerely, Interested in your regulations Dear Interested, This is a great question, one you’re not [...]
Know Before You Owe: Introducing our proposed mortgage disclosure forms
With something as important as a mortgage, you ought to be able to get up-front, easy-to-understand information that lets you compare different offers and find the one that’s best for you. The Dodd-Frank Act requires us to combine the disclosures that present this information into newer, simpler disclosures. After more than a year of research, testing, writing, and review, we’re proposing a rule to create new, easier-to-use mortgage disclosures.
Know Before You Owe: How we learned to build a better mortgage disclosure
This is the post second in a series. Yesterday, we looked at the origins of the Know Before You Owe project for simplifying mortgages. Today, we look back at how the project unfolded. Very soon, we’ll issue a new proposed rule to make mortgage disclosure more effective and easier to use. Hear from us when [...]
Preparing for new mortgage disclosures: A look back at Know Before You Owe
The idea behind Know Before You Owe is simple: we believe in making disclosures simpler and more effective, and doing so with the input of the people who will actually use them. Over the past year, we’ve heard from thousands of people with insights into how to use, design, and regulate mortgage disclosure. Soon, we’ll propose a new rule to combine the disclosures you get when you apply for and close on a mortgage into a single, and ideally simpler, set of forms.
Learn more and sign up to hear from us when we do.
SBREFA, Small Providers, and Mortgage Disclosure
The CFPB is mindful that new statutory requirements we are implementing can burden as well as benefit small financial services providers. We use many methods to reach out to small providers to find out if any of these burdens are unnecessary and, if so, how we may be able to reduce them (within the limits [...]