The U. S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) designed the Good Faith Estimate for home buyers partly as a tool to use for comparison shopping.
Except they don't. Oh, sure, HUD said the Good Faith Estimate was to make transparent the costs of a loan. It was supposed to be easier for the borrower to understand how much the borrower would be paying to obtain financing. But instead it is more complicated and convoluted. When buyers get confused, they stuff that document into a file and don't look it until they go to closing. At closing, they sign a huge pile of documents which, if they don't sign, they don't get the loan. And they have little idea what they are signing. I don't think this was the government's intent.
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At the time of writing, Elizabeth Weintraub, DRE # 00697006, is a Broker-Associate at Lyon Real Estate in Sacramento, California.
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