The CFPB recently issued a technical rule to reinstate the closed-end loan reporting threshold under the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA) of 25 originated covered loans in each of the prior two calendar years that was adopted in an October 2015 rule. The technical rule will be effective on the date that it is published in the Federal Register.

As previously reported in September 2022 the federal district court for the District of Columbia invalidated the change in the threshold from 25 to 100 covered loans in each of the prior two calendar years that was made in an April 2020 CFPB rule.  (The court let stand the increase in the permanent threshold for reporting open-end lines of credit made by the April 2020 rule from 100 covered lines of credit in each of the two prior years to 200 covered lines of credit in each of the two prior years.) 

More recently, in blog post the CFPB advised that it was reinstating the 25 closed-end loan threshold for the 2023 reporting year, with the result being that institutions that originated at least 25 covered closed-end mortgage loans in both 2021 and 2022 are subject to HMDA requirements for closed-end loans for calendar year 2023.

In the preamble to the technical rule, the CFPB states as follows:

“This action is not a rule under the Administrative Procedure Act (APA), because the Bureau is not interpreting, implementing, or prescribing law or policy. Instead, the Bureau is updating the published Code of Federal Regulations so that it accurately reflects the court’s vacatur of part of the underlying 2020 HMDA Rule. In the alternative, if this action were a rule, the Bureau finds that notice and comment would be unnecessary under the APA, because there is no basis for disagreement that the court’s ruling vacates the relevant portion of the 2020 HMDA Rule.”

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