The new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is working on a real estate issue that gets to the core of the agency’s purpose: Bringing clarity and better disclosures about the often opaque and costly fees that homebuyers, sellers and refinancers are hit with at closings.

One of the disclosures now under review might surprise you: appraisal charges. Why do they need clarifying? Doesn’t just about everybody who applies for a mortgage, whether it’s to buy a house or refinance, have to pay $450 to $600 — sometimes more — to find out what the property is worth? [more]

Got a beef with your mortgage lender? Is your bank unresponsive when you complain that your escrow account is fouled up and making your monthly payments needlessly high?

Did your loan officer bait-and-switch you into a more costly home loan than you were originally promised? Or worse yet: Did your home loan servicer ignore you when you told him you’ve had an unexpected drop in income and needed a modification to avoid missing payments?

If any of these situations sound familiar, here’s a heads-up about the newest and least-publicized source of federal help: the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s home mortgage complaint and dispute resolution hotline. [more]

Disagreements are underway in Washington over how much to punish the banks involved in mortgage fraud abuse and over who should benefit from a settlement, the New York Times reported. The newly created Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is pushing for $20 billion or more in penalties, a measure which is supported by the attorneys general and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. But other regulators, including the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, which oversees national banks, and the Federal Reserve, do not favor such a large fine, contending that a small number of people were the victims of flawed foreclosure procedures. Comments

The financial reform bill signed into law by President Obama may look like a giant cornucopia of helpful changes for homebuyers and loan applicants — not the least of which will be the creation of a powerful Consumer Financial Protection Burea [more]