WASHINGTON — The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has received more than 14,500 individual comments on its model mortgage disclosure forms.
Last month, the agency unveiled two prototypes for a single, streamlined disclosure form designed to reconcile the requirements established by the Truth in Lending Act and Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act.
The bureau held an initial 10-day comment period on the new prototype forms that ended Friday. Visitors and participants from every state in the nation, including the District of Columbia, submitted comments on the forms, according to the CFPB.
It plans to test the prototypes with focus groups — it began testing in Baltimore last month — before beginning a formal rulemaking process. It will conduct four more rounds of evaluation and revision through September 2011 to select a single draft disclosure and then refine it. The bureau has until July 2012 to issue the final version.
The forms have won high marks form the banking industry and consumer advocates, who described the prototype as a good first step toward meeting the requirement under the Dodd-Frank Act to merge the two disclosure forms.
