The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) approved rues on August 5, 2016, to help prevent wrongful home foreclosures.
Mortgage servicers will be required to promptly notify borrowers when loss mitigation applications are complete. Many mortgage servicers never considered an application complete and repeatedly demanded information and documents that the borrower had already provided. Many borrowers complained that the servicers often demanded federal income tax returns over and over. Borrowers were required to make adjusted monthly payments while the applications were pending. The repeated stalling benefited the banks and servicers. Many borrowers reported that when their applications were finally refused, the interim payments were never credited to their accounts. Servicers are also prohibited from dual tracking – pursuing both a modification and a foreclosure simultaneously.