The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau today finalized amendments to the TILA-RESPA integrated disclosure rule. The 500-page final rule sets forth guidance, clarifications and technical corrections on a broad range of topics, and will take effect 60 days after publication in the Federal Register, with a mandatory compliance date of Oct. 1, 2018.
Included in the amendments are tolerance provisions for the disclosed total of payments, making the treatment consistent with pre-TRID practices and paralleling the TRID tolerances for disclosures of finance charges. The amendments also clarify exemptions from TRID requirements for certain housing assistance loans and extend the rule’s coverage to all cooperative units. Additionally, the rule expands the CFPB’s commentary to facilitate the sharing of disclosures with third parties, such as sellers and real estate brokers.
The rule also makes extensive technical corrections and clarifications on topics including affiliate charges, calculating cash-to-close table, construction loan instructions, placement of decimal places and rounding, escrow account disclosures, escrow cancellation notices, expiration dates for the closing costs disclosed on the loan estimate, treatment of gift funds, payment ranges on the projected payments table and informational updates to the loan estimate.
ABA has been supportive of the bureau’s efforts to revise the TRID regulations and noted that the final rule will generally benefit consumers and the industry by providing greater clarity. The association has called for additional changes to the rule — including a full exemption from TRID for temporary financing, such as construction loans — and will continue to work with regulators to help facilitate compliance.
The bureau also issued a separate proposal today to re-open comments on when a creditor may use a closing disclosure instead of a loan estimate to determine if an estimated closing cost was disclosed in good faith. The proposal addresses the “black hole” problem identified by ABA in earlier comments and would allow creditors to use either initial or corrected closing disclosures to reflect changes in costs for purposes of determining if an estimated closing cost was disclosed in good faith, regardless of when the closing disclosure is provided relative to consummation. Comments on the proposal will be due 60 days after publication in the Federal Register.
