The recently enacted Tax Cuts and Jobs Act was pitched as a simplification of the tax code. And while the bill could ultimately reduce some tax-related complexities, lenders are facing sweeping changes this year.
The House Financial Services Committee this week was advancing more than a dozen and a half regulatory relief measures as Inside Mortgage Finance was going to press, including some mortgage-related legislation that would expand the qualified-mortgage box for smaller entities and exempt many institutions from the rules and regulations issued by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
The game-changing ability-to-repay mortgage lending rule from the Consumer Financial Protec-tion Bureau took effect four years ago this month. At that time, regulators said there would be plenty of mortgage lending outside the parameters of the qualified-mortgage box. So far, however, that ex-pectation has yet to be realized.
The Federal Reserve Board last week wrapped up enforcement actions against 10 banks and im-posed fines against five of them after “sustainable improvements” in their servicing operations.
The Trump White House was slated to nominate mortgage banker David Kittle to head the agency but back in November he grew tired of waiting and withdrew his name from consideration.
Galante is a former FHA commissioner who presently serves as faculty director of the Terner Center for Housing Innovation at the University of California Berkeley. She also sits on the board of Ocwen Financial.
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