Federal regulators have finally given bankers something to cheer about.
After sending bankers a train load of new regulations in the rule writing that followed the 2010 passage of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, government officials in late October lifted a down payment requirement that had been proposed as a key component of so-called “Qualified Residential Mortgages.”
Frank Keating, president and CEO of the American Bankers Association, hailed elimination of the down payment rule as a way “to ensure that the largest number of credit-worthy borrowers are able to access safe, quality loan products at competitive prices.”
Borrowers had been faced with having to put down up to 20 percent of a home’s purchase price, a requirement regulators had seen as necessary to ensure loans sold on the secondary markets do not turn toxic as the ones sold in the banking and real estate crisis of the last decade did.
