[Alice] Onto the legislative update with my short bit here. We have been using up a lot of time on special segments today, but I’m going to add just one quick one to the mix, and that is what Adam Desinct has talked about with the House bill that is now gone through different amendments to fix some of the things that we’ve talked about on previous shows, that MBA has been very vocal about. So they did manage to get lots of things corrected in the House bill, as Adam alluded to, and you can find lots of those kind of… If you care about different sections of the law, it’s too much to go through in this short segment, but there were two quick things I wanted to still bring up that could still stall this. And keep in mind, we’re coming into summer. There are summer recesses. Then if things change in the midterm elections, there could be challenges through the rest of the year. So is it still possible that this makes it way through committee to get everything reconciled and actually passed in 2026? Some would still rate it as high. But two still big things in, from our vantage point as mortgage lenders is this institutional investor piece is still in the Senate version. It’s been the House amendment does pull back on that, does not have the seven-year sale requirement, doesn’t limit how many properties an institutional investor can hold. It just has more reporting and monitoring in it. So we’d love to see that in this next round of negotiation between reconciling the bills, that clause that’s in the Senate bill just completely goes away and they just accept the House version. But the second one is, in my opinion, a big one, and Marc Helm with all your servicing background, this 30-day counseling requirement is still in there, that if a borrower becomes 30-day delinquent, that there would be potentially HUD-approved counseling required for somebody if they became 30 days delinquent. Now, any of you who’ve ever been in servicing, you know that there can be a lot of first time payments that are just hit that 30-day mark for a variety of reasons, of communication, customers getting their feet under their- We make calls to them, five times a day . And, we get that payment sometimes by the 30th, sometimes a couple of days later. And so these, this arbitrary requirement would be very egregious, I think, very difficult to enforce. And what borrower wants to go through counseling after 30 days, try and get them there, because maybe something didn’t go right on one particular payment. So this is a big one that I think we still have to get rid of out of the Senate version of the bill. I didn’t see MBA point that out because it’s a little more nuanced. MBA’s list is very focused on the things that are more at the thousand-foot level. But Marc, your thoughts on this 30-day counseling requirement that’s still in there- Well- … in the Senate version?
[Marc] I’m gonna compare it to something that exists today. Most of you are probably aware that in a reverse mortgage, you gotta have HUD-approved counseling … before you have a reverse mortgage, okay? But putting that in the default process, as volatile as it is, you have somebody that’s 30 days delinquent, reinstate, 30 days delinquent, again reinstate, 30 days delinquent. Oh, and you keep going on that. It’s hard enough to collect these people from the mortgage environment. Building a referral process and a required HUD counseling in there is a disaster waiting to happen. I cannot endorse that. I can’t see the value of it. There’s not enough HUD counselors out there in the country, approved HUD counselors. So you’ll end up approving people, HUD’ll end up approving people to do it that really don’t have the right kinda background. They’re not gonna have them certified and all. This is a disaster waiting to happen that’s basically gonna elongate the default process. If you got a person in collections that does their job, and then they work through loss mitigation, they put repayment plans and all together, that’s the best you’re gonna get. And HUD counseling, to me, is letting the bureaucracy again get inside our business, and I think it’s a bad idea, and I hope everybody on the phone call listening agrees with me.
[Alice] Absolutely agree. And really want to encourage our folks to get out there and let your congressman know. Go ahead, Bill.
[Bill] It’s a Ronald Reagan quote, “What are the scariest nine words in the English language?” ” Hi, I’m here from the government to help you.” Yeah.
[Alice] That’s not good. And Marc, you brought up a great point on the repeated 30s. And, I, to everybody out there, when you’re a servicer, you’re trying already to get them to make the payment. It’s not like we’ve ignored them. I’ve never understood where an outside counselor, once someone’s already in the loan is someone that’s gonna be the right person to help them. Unless someone’s really become very delinquent, is very deep into some other financial issues where they could use somewhat help. But most 30-day delinquencies are not at that level yet. All right. Thanks everyone. That is my report for today. Keep in mind that FinCEN’s proposed rule is still open for comment until June 8th. Please get out there and comment on this. There are big changes for lenders in this proposed rule. I know the short headline, to Bill’s point earlier, the short headline about this is supposedly making it easier. But when I’ve made a table comparing the current FinCEN anti-money laundering bill rules, I’m sorry, to what the new proposal is, there are some big changes for lenders. You will have to have written procedures. You will have to have a process that is actually functioning and working and being able to document it. So in many areas, this proposal will make things much more challenging for you to document, and no one is exempt. If you’re a small two-person broker shop, you have to make sure you comply with this. Check it out and make sure you respond by June 8th. So thank you everyone, and that’s my segment for today.
Alice Alvey, Master CMB
She handles development of their World Class Training program designed to support UHM partners and organizational effectiveness.
Prior to UHM, Alice served as Senior Vice President at Indecomm leading the Indecomm-Mortgage U division, Internal QA and Compliance and SaaS technologies. Indecomm acquired Mortgage U in 2013, where Alice was President/Co-founder, providing training and consulting since 1996. Prior to MU she served as SVP of Operations at a national bank overseeing operations for wholesale, retail and correspondent from underwriting through servicing, and compliance.
She has been in the trenches of mortgage lending operations from application through servicing for over 30 years. Her authoring work in training content, policies and procedures and the FHA/VA Practical guides illustrates her ability to bridge regulatory requirements with day-to-day operations.
Alice has been a weekly contributor to the Lykken on Lending show since its beginning in April 2009 and has made her weekly contributions to 450+ episodes!