White House Pushing for RESPA Proposal

The Bush administration is pressuring the Department of Housing and Urban Development to speed up the issuance of a Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act proposal to improve good-faith estimate disclosures of mortgage broker fees and settlement costs.HUD officials were planning to issue the proposal in January after completing the required Office of Management and Budget review, which can take up to 90 days. But Treasury Under Secretary Robert Steel testified Wednesday on Capitol Hill that HUD will issue the RESPA proposal "later this fall." It appears that the administration wants HUD to send the proposal to the OMB by Oct. 1, according to one source. Meanwhile, HUD has published the results of the consumer testing conducted on a revamped GFE form the department was working on back in 2003 and 2004. "[T]he new GFE to be proposed will reflect improvements to the prior form," HUD said.