Political Quotes

“as the leading Democratic supporter of H.R. 1025, I rise today in strong support of the Mortgage Servicing Clarification Act. It is a good piece of legislation that will fix a technical problem under existing law. Under the current Fair Debt Collections Practices Act, when a mortgage servicer acquires the rights to service a loan portfolio it is generally exempt from complying with the law's requirements because the act extends the creditor's exemption to the new servicer. In a typical loan servicing transfer, however, a certain percentage of loans will be delinquent or in default at the time of the transfer. These loans are therefore technically covered by the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act, even though the new servicer has a fundamentally different relationship with the borrower than a true debt collector. H.R. 1025 would resolve this problem by establishing a very narrow exemption for servicers of first lien mortgages from the notice requirements of the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act. All other substantive borrower protections provided by the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act would remain in full force. Additionally, the exemption is available only to servicers that are primarily engaged servicing current loans. We worked for several years to narrow the exemption created by this bill in order to address the concerns of all interested parties.”