InfoBytes Blog
CFPB Issues Guidance on Housing Counselor Requirement
On April 15, the CFPB issued an interpretive rule clarifying requirements for providing a list of housing counselors to mortgage borrowers, as required under the Bureau’s 2013 Home Ownership and Equity Protection Act final rule. Among other things, the interpretive rule expounds upon how to provide applicants living abroad with homeownership counseling lists, permissible geolocation tools, conditions under which the homeownership counseling list may be combined with other disclosures, and determining which of the borrower’s addresses (e.g. current address, mailing address, or the address of the property securing the mortgage) should serve as the loan applicant’s location for purposes of generating the list. In addition to clarifying counselor qualifications for high-cost mortgage counseling and parameters, the interpretive rule also provides guidance regarding lender participation during the borrower’s housing counseling sessions to ensure that counselor independence and impartiality is preserved and to prevent violation of anti-steering provisions.