Election Day is just over a month away and some mortgage bankers are hoping that Mitt Romney wins for the simple reason they believe a Republican in the White House will ease the regulatory nightmare that has hit the residential finance sector. Many lending professionals I’ve interviewed this year have all concluded the same thing: the regulatory pendulum has swung much too far in the wrong direction. The housing crisis was caused, in part, by lax regulatory oversight but what we’re dealing with now is oversight suffocation. But there is also a legislative reality to be dealt with. Even hardcore Republicans in the mortgage industry feel that if Romney prevails, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau will not be legislated away very easily – or at all.
