CFPB pulls complaint narratives as rates ease a third day

The biggest item on Friday's tape is a compliance one. The CFPB announced it will cease its discretionary publication of consumer complaint narratives and the associated data visualizations in the public Consumer Complaint Database, saying one-sided narratives carry unverified allegations that do not always describe violations of law. Read the scope carefully before you tell anyone the database is gone: the Bureau is still collecting complaints, still monitoring them, and still sharing them with other regulators. What changes is the public-facing narrative text and the visualizations built on it. Previously published narratives are treated as being in the public domain for FOIA purposes and move to the FOIA Reading Room. No effective date, statutory citation, or comment period was given — this is framed as an exercise of existing discretion, not a rulemaking. Practical read for a lender: the free reputational-risk feed that competitors, plaintiffs' counsel, and journalists have been mining for a decade gets narrower, but your own complaint-handling obligations and the Bureau's visibility into them do not change at all.

Yesterday's edition led with rates breaking a six-week climb after a cooler PPI print, with the 10-year closing near 4.64%. Friday partially unwound that. Retail sales landed and bonds essentially shrugged — MND's read was that fuel-price swings and Prime Day timing distorted the series enough that traders discounted it, choosing instead to book profits into the weekend and keep steepening the curve. The 10-year drifted back to roughly 4.69% during Friday's session, giving back most of Thursday's move.

The consumer-facing number held up better than the bond move suggests. Bankrate's 30-year printed 6.69% today, its third straight daily decline (6.74% Wednesday, 6.71% Thursday), and Freddie's weekly survey came in at 6.67%. But be precise with borrowers about the timeframe: the 30-year is essentially flat over seven days (-0.02) and still 12 bps higher than it was a month ago. Rates have stabilized in the high-6s, not started falling. Separately, both GSEs posted their annual Dodd-Frank severely adverse stress test results Friday — Fannie and Freddie on the same day, as usual. It is a disclosure event rather than a policy event, but it is the kind of thing that lands in an investor's inbox and gets a question forwarded to you.

For pipeline decisions, next week is the calendar that matters. Housing starts and permits land Aug 16–18, jobless claims and the next Freddie survey on Aug 20. Nothing there is a rate-regime changer. The real fulcrum is the Sept 15–16 FOMC, which publishes a Summary of Economic Projections — the dot plot. That means anyone floating a long-dated lock is carrying event risk into mid-September with a full projections release attached to it. Borrowers closing before Labor Day have little reason to gamble on a rally that has not shown up in the 30-day data.

Elsewhere on the regulatory and industry side: NRMLA formally asked the CFPB to modernize reverse mortgage disclosures, pushing for dollar-based TALC illustrations and a single integrated form — worth watching if you originate HECMs, since dollar-denominated disclosures change how you present the product. UWM drew a shareholder suit alleging executives misled investors about the hedging strategy tied to the Two Harbors deal, arriving the same week public filings put its derivatives losses under analyst scrutiny. Zillow's cut of roughly 500 roles, about 7% of staff, came with severance details of up to 21 weeks. Radian closed the sale of its real estate services unit to PLACE and agreed to sell its title business, with that leg expected to close in Q4. Real and REMAX shareholders both approved their merger, with closing anticipated within about two weeks. And a group of Wyoming MLSs objected to the third-party data-sharing notice under the NAR settlement, asking the court for specific subpoenas and protections first.