InfoBytes Blog
CFPB releases complaint snapshot on mortgages
On January 29, the CFPB released a report on mortgage complaints, and a corresponding blog post, which provide a high-level overview of the mortgage complaints received by the Bureau during the last 24 months. According to the report, mortgage complaints accounted for 11 percent, or approximately 71,000 complaints, of the total complaints the Bureau received from November 2016 through October 2018. An analysis of the complaints indicated that 42 percent of them had to do with issues concerning the payment process, while 36 percent had to do with difficulties in paying off the mortgage. Consumer complaints regarding payment process problems describe a variety of issues, including misapplied payments and escrow analysis inaccuracies. The CFPB notes that complaints from consumers struggling to pay their mortgages often state they have difficulty receiving assistance after a financial hardship, illness, or a natural disaster.
Additional highlights of the report include: (i) the number of mortgage complaints received between August 2018 and October 2018 was 15 percent lower than the number of mortgage complaints received during the same time period in 2017; (iii) 50 percent of mortgage complaints relate to conventional mortgages; and (iii) adjusted for population, the largest mortgage complaint volumes came from the District of Columbia, Maryland and New Jersey.