Mortgage Market Share Report- November 2010

“We’ll take the best ones, test them on consumers, and then soon be able to unveil a new, easy-to-understand, federal disclosure form,”

~Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner speaking about combining the TILA and GFE forms

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I?ve suggested here on occasion that Compliance Officer might be the hot career track in mortgage finance. This past year left no doubt about that. If dealing with the Home Valuation Code of Conduct, RESPA, TILA, and endless new loan guidelines from Fannie, Freddie and FHA weren?t enough, we enter 2011 riding the wave of Robo-signer-gate to where Dodd-Frank Financial Reform awaits.

According to the New York Times, the newly created Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection (just the name alone makes me feel safer!) will oversee the writing of 243 financial rules and conduct 67 studies that I?m sure will find the necessity for even more rules. We?re going to need a compliance army, not just an officer. And politicians wonder why everyone is afraid to buy, borrow or lend.

Although many believe the regulation and compliance emphasis is going overboard, it?s awfully hard to argue against it when the banks, loan servicers and foreclosure attorneys can?t stay out of their own way in the foreclosure mess. Each week seems to bring a new revelation; lost promissory notes, foreclosing on the wrong property, waltzing home owners around the mortgage modification dance floor only to pull the rug out by foreclosing, “technical error? is the new legal term for falsified affidavit. Each disclosed bungle is naturally followed by politicians convening televised hearings and calling for even more regulation.

All we can do is get ready for more of the same. We?re destined for more regulations to ensure that the age of irresponsible borrowing never occurs again. And if responsible borrowing is a casualty, as our local originations clearly show, then so be it.

And to Secretary Geithner I have but four words. Good luck with that!

~John Bethell