The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) today announced a correction to a portion of its TILA-RESPA Integrated Disclosures rule, or TRID — but it’s probably not the sort of fix some real estate and settlement service industry professionals were hoping to see.
The bureau has corrected a “typo” in the text of the TRID rule, also known as Know Before You Owe, regarding tolerances for property taxes and certain other property-related costs.
The specific passage is found in the Supplementary Information section of the behemoth, 1,800-page rule that was released in November 2013 and took effect in October.
The passage in the final rule states that “property insurance premiums, property taxes, homeowner’s association dues, condominium fees and cooperative fees … are subject to tolerances,” but according to the CFPB, it should read, “are not subject to tolerances.”
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The CFPB said the erroneous passage was inconsistent with the sentence preceding it, which states, “Property insurance premiums are included in the category of settlement charges not subject to a tolerance, whether or not the insurance provider is a lender affiliate.”
In addition, other lines of the rule’s text will be changed from “are subject to tolerances whether or not they are placed into an escrow, impound, reserve or similar account” to “are not subject to tolerances whether or not they are placed into an escrow, impound, reserve or similar account.”
The CFPB published its notice of the correction in the Federal Register. The correction is effective as of Feb. 10.
The minor correction is not exactly the kind of guidance the real estate industry has been hoping to see from the CFPB.
Yet to be determined is exactly how much leniency the CFPB will grant to industry professionals who make a good-faith attempt to comply with the rule, but somehow make a mistake, and how real estate agents can gain access to the new disclosure forms without running afoul of laws that provide for the safeguarding of consumers’ nonpublic personal information.
A host of other issues and concerns are up in the air and many industry trade groups are attempting to work with the bureau to resolve them.
