Popular Press
It's Time to Expand The Credit Box for American Homebuyers
The Hill
(2016)
Abstract
The dark, dark days of the mortgage market are far behind us. The early 2000s were marked by a set of practices that can only be described as abusive: teaser interest rates that morphed into unaffordable rates soon thereafter; high fees that were foisted upon borrowers at the closing table; loans packed with unnecessary and costly products like credit insurance.
After the financial crisis hit, Congress enacted the Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act in 2010. Dodd-Frank included provisions intended to protect both borrowers and lenders from the craziness of the previous decade, when no one was sufficiently focused on whether loans would be repaid or not.
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau promulgated the rules that Dodd-Frank had called for, like the Ability-To-Repay and Qualified Mortgages rules. These rules achieved their desired effect – predatory mortgage loans all but disappeared from the market.
But there were consequences, and they were not wholly unexpected.
Keywords
- housing finance,
- Dodd-Frank,
- CFPB,
- mortgage,
- ability-to-repay,
- qualified mortgage
Disciplines
Publication Date
December 27, 2016
Citation Information
David J Reiss. "It's Time to Expand The Credit Box for American Homebuyers" The Hill (2016) Available at: http://works.bepress.com/david_reiss/94/
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons CC_BY International License.