Melvin Watt: “The bill, as currently constructed, caps damages at the amount of three times the broker or lender fees for steering.…”

“The bill, as currently constructed, caps damages at the amount of three times the broker or lender fees for steering. It's crucial to increase the remedies for steering so that a limited remedy does not simply get figured into the cost of doing business. A more effective way of changing broker behavior would be to provide a remedy that provides for the greater of actual damages, or three times the broker or lender fees, because it is unlikely that we will incentivize people not to steer unless we make the penalties sufficiently onerous. We want to eliminate the possibility that a lender will simply treat the remedy in the bill as a cost of doing business, and we believe that making the damages alternatively three times the broker's fees or actual damages will have more impact on reducing this bad kind of conduct. That's what the amendment does.”