Warren warns CFPB on its 'half-baked idea' for mortgage-rate data

Senate Democrats are warning the Trump administration not to cut an arcane but critical function of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau that underpins the housing market as officials move to dismantle the agency. 

At issue is the CFPB's weekly publication of Average Prime Offer Rate tables, a key benchmark enabling the smooth operation of the $13 trillion residential mortgage market. 

The consumer bureau said in a court filing last month that it would run out of funds in "early 2026" and would not be able to replenish them under the administration's legal theory about agency funding. Lawmakers led by Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren, the top Democrat on the Senate Banking Committee, on Wednesday urged CFPB Acting Director Russ Vought to maintain funding for the agency staff who calculate the APOR. 

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The APOR sets the permissible interest rate boundaries for "qualified" mortgages, which are considered compliant with certain ability-to-repay requirements imposed by the Dodd-Frank law. Critically, the CFPB's Qualified Mortgage rule shields lenders from legal liability if those loans go bad, while protecting the market from the proliferation of riskier loan products. 

"If the CFPB stops publishing standardized APOR tables, lenders might not make loans to lower-income borrowers," the Democrats wrote in a letter to Vought. "Or, they might raise interest rates on loans to compensate for the increased risk the market will price in without the liability shield that comes with making" a qualified mortgage loan, thus "skewing the cost of homeownership and cutting off credit access for borrowers."

In response to a request for comment, a bureau spokesperson pointed to a story in the trade publication Capitol Account. That report said the CFPB "intends to publicly spell out a different way to calculate APOR" so lenders can determine it themselves. "The bureau also plans to underscore that using the alternative method won't expose firms to enforcement actions," according to the report, which cited a bureau spokesperson.

The Democrats in their letter called that a "half-baked idea."

'Safe Harbor'

The CFPB calculates and publishes the APOR each week, drawing on survey data from eight mortgage products. Lenders have relied on the Qualified Mortgage rule to originate millions of loans, the Mortgage Bankers Association and other industry groups told the Supreme Court in a 2023 amicus brief in a case challenging the legitimacy of the CFPB. 

"Without this safe harbor, the legal-risk profile of many loans would change, creating challenges for lenders and purchasers in originating certain loans or selling them on the secondary market — challenges that could dry up the supply of financing for the housing market and hurt consumers," the groups said in the brief. 

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Calling the CFPB's mortgage rules into question "could lead to immediate and intense disruption to the housing market, harming both consumers and the broader economy," they wrote.

The Democrats noted that the Trump administration acknowledged the importance of the APOR tables earlier this year, when it exempted their weekly publication as a "necessary function" of the bureau after Vought ordered employees to stop all work and shuttered agency headquarters in February. 

Their Wednesday letter declared the efforts to close down the agency "short-sighted" and said such a move "would harm not only the millions of American homebuyers who rely on the availability of mortgages to afford homes but every single American who depends on the stability of our economy for their own financial security."