The House of Representatives on Thursday passed legislation that takes strong aim at the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, essentially netting banks and financial institutions with a perceived win over regulators. Drafted and supported by the House Financial Services Committee, the The Financial CHOICE Act — Creating Hope and Opportunity for Investors, Consumers […]
Category: Legislation
The Connecticut State Senate passed a bill last week requiring reverse mortgage lenders to ensure that prospective borrowers receive counseling — despite the fact that, as some lawmakers pointed out, that’s already a federally mandated part of the Home Equity Conversion Mortgage program. The law would prevent reverse mortgage lenders from accepting an application until they […]
The number of complaints filed with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau increased by 19% from the first quarter of 2016 to the same span this year, but older consumers reported fewer issues over that period. The CFPB received an average of 2,181 complaints from consumers aged 62 and older each month from January to March […]
Work with financial planners to legitimize the reverse mortgage in the mind of the skeptical consumer. Use planners as key sources of referrals. Reverse mortgages can be the cornerstone of a smart retirement blueprint. It’s a refrain that many lenders and originators have been hearing for years now, and it contains a decent amount of […]
Longtime followers of reverse mortgage fraud likely know the name Mark Diamond. The former originator has been accused of bilking elderly Chicago homeowners out of their reverse mortgage proceeds as far back as 2003, and his origination license has been suspended since 2010. Just last June, an Illinois judge ordered him to pay $2.4 million […]
Move over, death and taxes: It’s probably time to add “threat of a government shutdown” to Benjamin Franklin’s list of absolute certainties in life. Long considered a last-ditch nuclear option, the threat of government shutdown has loomed large in this era of intense partisanship, with both Democrats and Republicans using the specter of lost services […]
The numbers coming out of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau were striking: Disputes over reverse mortgages spiked by 172% from 2012, the first full year that the CFPB opened its virtual doors to such complaints, to 2016. Over that same period, the CFPB saw a 102% increase in all Federal Housing Administration-related loans, while Americans […]
In a wide-ranging talk to the audience at the National Reverse Mortgage Lenders Association’s eastern regional conference in New York City earlier in April, tax professor Jamie Hopkins preached patience in a financial world fraught with legislative uncertainty. “Financial services have been in a really big flux for about a year,” said Hopkins, tracing the […]
NEW YORK — The Home Equity Conversion Mortgage final rule won’t be implemented until September 19, but the groundwork for its rollout will begin much sooner. Department of Housing and Urban Development official Cheryl Walker told an audience at the National Reverse Mortgage Lenders Association’s eastern meeting and exhibition in New York City that the […]
Thanks to the abrupt enforcement of a decades-old regulation that the Federal Housing Administration had seemingly ignored, consumers looking to buy homes or take out reverse mortgages in some 55+ communities have had their FHA loan applications rejected at the last minute in recent months. Starting this past fall, applicants in the Sun City and […]
