COMING SOON: Exciting New Regulations

The Division issued its quarterly news letter and I found the message from Deanna Sabey quite sobering.  Here is a breakdown of changes that are coming to the real estate industry due to laws passed by our ever benevolent Federal government:

• TILA and RESPA disclosures will be changing again sometime in the next 12 months.  Look for more mortgage officers to be pulling whatever hair they have left out of their heads. 
• Yield Spread Premiums will be banned.  Any loan officer receiving a YSP will be fined treble damages (3 times damages) plus court costs.
• Communication between mortgage originators, underwriters, and processors will be stymied in an effort to make it appear underwriters are doing a good job.  
• New additional disclosure requirements, anti-steering provisions, restrictions on high-cost mortgages, a ban on pre-payment penalties...and more!
• BPO's are banned for use as a valuation tool on new loans.
• HVCC will sunset for appraisers. Hooray!
• Appraisal Management Companies will be required to pay "reasonable and fair" fees to appraisers.  So who determines what is reasonable and fair? The market?  The government?
• Agents, Loan Officers and Appraisers will all be put into an honor code system of being required to report bad players when they know about them.

Looks like we have lots of fun coming down the pipeline.  The only good thing I can see in all this is the sunseting of the HVCC program which made appraisals a nightmare for the last two years.  Lets hope they don't replace it with something even more ridiculous.