RESPA
The Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act ("RESPA") is codified at 12 U.S.C.A. section 2601 et seq. Congress authorized the United States Housing Department.
There are certain regulations that your lender must follow when they do a loan for you. These regulations are outlined in RESPA. RESPA provides for statutory damages when your lender fails to perform your loan according to federal law.
The objective of RESPA was to make changes in the settlement process for residential real estate: (1) to ensure advance disclosure of settlement costs to home buyers and seller; (2) to eliminate kickbacks or referral fees that inflate settlement costs; (3) to reduce the amounts home buyers are required to place in escrow accounts established to insure the payment of real estate taxes and insurance; and (4) to reform and modernize land title record keeping on a local level.
We are attorneys here in Utah that understand RESPA. We can help guide you through RESPA and all the things that are required and how you can recover from those violations. We have provided this service to clients in Federal and District Court and can help you with your mortgage.
Some outcomes that can come from RESPA violations include money damages, loan modifications, servicing modifications, and lower interest rates.
RESPA requires such things as:
*Special Information Booklet
*Good Faith Estimate (GFE)
*HUD-1 or HUD-1A settlement statements
*Aggregate accounting at settlement
*Disclosure of affiliated business arrangement (AfBA)
*Servicing Disclosure
*Notice of Mortgage Service Transfer
*Escrow Account Analysis
*Escrow Account surplus shortgage and deficiency responses
*Initial escrow statement
*Short-year escrow statement
*Escrow requirements
Understanding such things as your HUD 1 statements is very important. We have found many violations including such things as Broker to Broker transactions, excessive fees, and wrong closing costs. Some clients don't even realize that they have paid for such things as title insurance. We can help you read through your docs and see the violations. We then can tell you how to proceed filing a lawsuit concerning those violations. It is and can be complicated, and that is why you need an attorney that understands these federal regulations to look at your loan documents.
Federal Truth in Lending Act (TILA)
We are attorneys here in Utah that handle TILA litigation. TILA can be very confusing and can be frustrating to understand. We have filed civil litigation involving TILA and have the team needed to litigate a case that involves TILA.
The Truth in Lending Simplification and Reform Act ("TILA") is codified at 15 USCA section 1600 et seq. The administrative rules an dregulations which TILA authorizes the Federal Reserve Board (FRB) to promulgate under the Act are gathered together as "Regulation Z" through Official Staff Commentaries. The stated Congressional purpose for enacting TILA is "to assure a meaningful disclosure of credit terms so that the consumer will be able to compare more readily the various credit terms available to him and avoid the uninformed use of credit and to protect the consumer against inaccurate and unfair credit billing and credit card practices."
Such things that are looked at when determining if there is a TILA claim are:
*Disclosures and what has been disclosed
*Timing of the Disclosures
*Contents of the Disclosures
*What the finance charge is and if it is violation of TILA
*If there was a Pre-Paid Finance Charge
*Annual Percentage Rate (APR)
*Right of Rescission
*Advertising
Call us today to look over your original loan documents to see if your lender had committed any of these violations. These violations can help you recover money damages, mortgage modifications, and other such damages that can be beneficial to you. If you are in foreclosure this may be another way to help negotiate a better result than to lose your home.