Mortgage Reform and Anti-Predatory Lending Act of 2007

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Mrs. CAPITO. I would like to thank the gentleman from Alabama for recognizing me and yielding me the time, and I greatly appreciate the leadership of the chairman and ranking member on the Committee of Financial Services for bringing this important legislation before the House today.

The legislation before us is a bipartisan response to a problem that is affecting every congressional district across this Nation, the rising number of foreclosures and a large number of impending alternative mortgage resets, combined with a large number of delinquencies in mortgage payments. It is very important for Members to look at this legislation in its entirety.

When combined on the whole, the components of this legislation will provide consumers with the necessary tools and protections to hopefully avoid another housing crisis like we are experiencing, but also realize the importance of not clamping down so hard, and we have heard some folks express concern about this, that we still have the innovations and we still have the ability of subprime mortgages for those who are now living because of the benefits that subprime benefits allows them.

In this bill, we require the registration of all originators under a national registry will be established by the Conference of State Bank Supervisors and the American Association of Residential Mortgage Regulators. These new licensing requirements, coupled with the national registry, will make it much more difficult for fraudulent originators to bounce from State to State. This is a problem my State of West Virginia has expressed concern about.

Another component that Mrs. Biggert talked about in her statement is to provide consumers with greater access to housing counseling. The availability of counseling will help individuals learn and understand the complicated financial disclosures, all of the paperwork and technical languages that come along with securing and purchasing a mortgage.

Another important reform that was adopted during our committee markup is the inclusion of a one-page estimate outlining the total cost and potential changes in the cost for the consumer over the life of the mortgage product. I have been lucky enough to be a homeowner, and I know when we go in to close at the time to secure our mortgage, the amount of paper and signatures that you have to go through to try to figure out what you are doing is very intimidating. So to have this one-page disclosure I think gives the consumer the ability to have this information right in front of them so they can know what they are getting into and making this process easier.

This legislation also provides more certainty and clarity for the liability of the entities that purchase mortgages on the secondary market.

I would like to particularly thank the chairman of the committee for helping me work through the technicalities of this language to explain to my local newspaper and my local consumer advocates what this language means in the bill. We live in a national economy and must recognize the need for consistency across the board.

In addition to the bipartisan underlying legislation, we will also be considering I think a very important addition to this bill, an amendment I have worked on with Mr. Kanjorski and Mrs. Biggert that will provide additional protection for consumers. This amendment will now require escrow accounts for some mortgages and will provide borrowers with the budgeting tools necessary to properly manage taxes and insurances on their property. This amendment will also include Federal appraisal standards with serious penalties.

I fully support this bill and thank the chairman and the ranking member.

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