TILA disclosures include the number of payments, the monthly payment, late fees, whether a borrower can prepay the loan without penalty and other important terms.
Disclosure of good faith estimate of costs must be made no later than 3 days after application. This means that a creditor must deliver or mail the early disclosures for all mortgage loans subject to RESPA no later than 3 business days (general definition) after the creditor receives a consumer's application.
RESPA requires a Buyers Disclosure form and a Sellers Disclosure Form. These forms were developed to prevent predatory lending and more. These documents set forth all of the charges that apply to both the buyer and seller at the time of closing.
Disclosures after settlement
Besides the Annual Escrow Statement, RESPA requires a Servicing Transfer Statement to be sent to the consumer if the loan servicer sells or assigns the servicing rights to a borrower's loan to another loan servicer.
The Act requires lenders, mortgage brokers, or servicers of home loans to provide borrowers with pertinent and timely disclosures regarding the nature and costs of the real estate settlement process. The Act also prohibits specific practices, such as kickbacks, and places limitations upon the use of escrow accounts.
The Home Mortgage Disclosure Act
HMDA requires many financial institutions to maintain, report, and publicly disclose information about mortgages. The Bureau has released the 2025 Online FIG and Online Supplemental Guide for Quarterly Filers for 2025, which are available here.
NAR's Legal Affairs staff explains the Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act (RESPA) and how it affects REALTORS®. RESPA generally prohibits kickbacks and offering a thing of value in exchange for the referral of business to a settlement service provider.
Key Takeaways
RESPA prohibits loan servicers from demanding excessively large escrow accounts and restricts sellers from mandating title insurance companies. A plaintiff has up to one year to bring a lawsuit to enforce violations where kickbacks or other improper behavior occurred during the settlement process.
The new rules, which would modify RESPA and Regulation X's existing mortgage servicing framework, are designed to streamline the process for obtaining mortgage assistance, and incentivize servicers to prioritize borrower aid over foreclosure.
The receiving party or its representatives may be required by oral questions (i.e., testimony), interrogatories, or other requests for documents in legal proceedings, subpoenas, civil investigative demands, or similar processes, to disclose confidential information.
For loans that require a Loan Estimate and that proceed to closing, creditors must provide a new final disclosure reflecting the actual terms of the transaction called the Closing Disclosure. The form integrates and replaces the existing HUD-1 and the final TIL disclosure for these transactions.
'Disclosure Requirement' refers to the mandatory rules and regulations that dictate the full reporting of financial transactions, including contributions and expenditures, related to political campaigns or organizations.
The Loan Estimate must be provided to consumers no later than three business days after they submit a loan application. The second form (Closing Disclosure) is designed to provide disclosures that will be helpful to consumers in understanding all of the costs of the transaction.
Lenders have to provide borrowers a Truth in Lending disclosure statement. It has handy information like the loan amount, the annual percentage rate (APR), finance charges, late fees, prepayment penalties, payment schedule and the total amount you'll pay.
An application is defined as the submission of six pieces of information: (1) the consumer's name, (2) the consumer's income, (3) the consumer's Social Security number to obtain a credit report (or other unique identifier if the consumer has no Social Security number), (4) the property address, (5) an estimate of the ...
SERVICING DISCLOSURE STATEMENT
RESPA requires the lender or mortgage broker to tell you in writing, when you apply for a loan or within the next three business days, whether it expects that someone else will be servicing your loan (collecting your payments).
It “prohibits kickbacks for business referrals related to or part of settlement services involving federally related mortgage loans,” according to the CFPB. It also prohibits splitting charges “made or received from” settlement services, except for “services actually performed” for federally related mortgages.
The act requires lenders, mortgage brokers, or servicers of home loans to provide borrowers with pertinent and timely disclosures regarding the nature and costs of the real estate settlement process. The act also prohibits specific practices, such as kickbacks, and places limitations upon the use of escrow accounts.
“And all five of those elements need to be present in a fact pattern in order for there to be a Section 8 violation.” Those elements are a federally related mortgage loan, settlement service business, a referral, a Thing of value, and an agreement or understanding.
Read together, giving or receiving a fee or a thing of value in exchange for the referral of settlement business often a kickback under RESPA as is receiving fees that are not tied to work actually performed.
The Closing Disclosure is a five-page form that describes the critical aspects of your mortgage loan, including purchase price, loan fees, interest rate, estimated real estate taxes, insurance, closing costs and other expenses.
The Truth in Lending Act (TILA) protects you against inaccurate and unfair credit billing and credit card practices. It requires lenders to provide you with loan cost information so that you can comparison shop for certain types of loans.
Mortgage lenders require you to provide them with recent statements from your account with readily available funds, such as a checking or savings account. In fact, they'll likely ask for documentation of any accounts that hold monetary assets.