An interesting bill was introduced in the House of Representatives this week that could drastically change the way mortgage brokers do business. H.R. 3915 was brought forth by Chairman Barney Frank and included language to restrict brokers in MANY different ways. I could probably go into all points of the bill but suffice it to say, I don’t know of anyone who is looking to read the 10 or 20 pages it would take me to SUMMARIZE the bill. So, I want to just touch on a few things I observed from hearing a webcast of the House hearings on the bill yesterday.
There was quite a bit of opposition to the bill as it was written. Numerous Congress people proposed several amendments, and it was interesting to listen to Congressman Frank get frustrated with people questioning his bill. Honestly, the mortgage brokers PERCEPTION of the bill was that its main intention was to take away a main component of how we are paid, and when it rolled out to the floor I cannot say that my thought had changed any. However, by the end of the day’s session, as the bill moved toward ratification, it became apparent that Congressman Frank was backing off of that part of the bill. Believe me, we breathed a little easier yesterday because of that. I heard numerous times that “hey, the system is broken” and we agree with that, but this bill in its’ current form will not fix it, and in fact will make it worse! We are all in favor of some reform because this business does need a “cleansing” in some regards, but when you are one of the good ones who could potentially be punished because of the bad ones, it tends to make you a little uneasy.
The other thing I noticed (and I am not picking on anyone here, I just wanted to “observe”) is that some of the people in these discussions oftentimes have NO idea what they are talking about. There were several times that we heard remarks that were completely out of left field. Two instances that come to mind are when they were discussing a portion of the bill that dealt with a refinance transaction, a Congressman stood up and for several minutes, made his case about the topic. However, he was making his points from a PURCHASE standpoint. He was quickly corrected, but showed a bit of ignorance nonetheless. The second instance that comes to mind happened AFTER an amendment to the bill had been approved (meaning a vote had ALREADY been taken). All of a sudden, as if she had been sleeping, a Congresswoman piped up with “is that the GFE or the TILA we were discussing?”
Again, I am not here to throw stones or even pick on anyone, I just wanted to point out that here they are, discussing our business and our livelihood, and there were several instances of people making the law being COMPLETELY misinformed. Kind of scary isn’t it? What are your thoughts on this subject?
Craig Pollard is a mortgage professional and owner of Texas Mortgage Team. He specializes in the Dallas Fort Worth area and is a frequent voice on Texas Home Central’s blog. Craig can be reached at CPollard@Texasmt.com or 972-317-9900
This entry was posted on Saturday, November 10th, 2007 at 6:26 am and is filed under Money Matters, Mortgage. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.