As both President Donald Trump and Congress currently deliberating the fate of the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau (CFPB), consumer real estate portal website Trulia last week issued a report analyzing the CFPB’s impact on the mortgage market.
“The borrowers don’t always win, but the CFPB offers the much-needed guidance and consumer protection that was sorely lacking a decade ago,” the report concluded.
Nationally the CFPB has handled 224,796 home loan complaints, or about 42,000 a year, since the bureau started tracking complaints on Dec. 1, 2011. This represents 0.46 percent of all outstanding mortgages as reported by the U.S. Census Bureau. It also found that complaint rates for VA, FHA and reverse mortgages have more than doubled since 2012.
The report found that complaint rates in some of the country’s most expensive markets, like San Francisco and New York City, were much higher than the national average.
Older Americans (62 and older) and military service members combined make up 15 percent of all complaints. Broken down, service members made 5 percent of the complaints, while Americans aged 62 or older made up roughly 10 percent of all complaints – a high rate given just 35 percent of seniors who own a home have a mortgage.
Read the full report here.