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In a speech in Ohio, on Wednesday afternoon President Obama announced that he would install Richard Cordrey as the head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) through a recess appointment. Last summer the president selected Cordray, a former Ohio attorney general, to direct the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, but Senate Republicans have continued to block a vote on his nomination. GOP lawmakers have argued that the bureau should be accountable to Congress. Republicans are […]

The Alternate Mortgage Transaction Parity Act (AMTPA) was enacted by Congress in 1982 to stimulate consumer access to credit and increase parity between state and federal creditors during an era of unusually high interest rates. In Senate hearings held in 1981, mortgage bankers testified that laws in 26 states either barred state housing creditors from originating alternative mortgage loans or imposed significantly greater restrictions on such loans than those that applied to federal housing creditors […]

Lenders reporting HMDA data must complete the “Property Type” field on the Loan Application Register (LAR) to identify the type of property. Options include one-to-four family dwelling (other than manufactured housing), manufactured housing, or multifamily dwelling. The “multifamily dwelling” property type is often misreported due to a lack of understanding of the definition of multifamily dwelling. For HMDA reporting, a multifamily dwelling is a residential structure that houses five or more families. Even though condominium […]

The Home Mortgage Disclosure Act requires most mortgage lenders located in metropolitan areas to collect data about their housing-related lending activity. Annually, lenders must report those data to the appropriate Federal agencies and make the data available to the public. Historically, HMDA has been implemented by the Federal Reserve’s Regulation C. In addition to various substantive amendments, the Dodd-Frank Act transferred rulemaking authority for HMDA to the Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection (CFPB), effective July […]

The Equal Credit Opportunity Act (ECOA) makes it unlawful for creditors to discriminate in any aspect of a credit transaction on the basis of sex, race, color, religion, national origin, marital status, or age (provided the applicant has the capacity to contract), because all or part of an applicant’s income derives from public assistance, or because an applicant has in good faith exercised any right under the Consumer Credit Protection Act. Historically, ECOA has been […]