TRID Is Back on the Operating Table—and Someone Brought a Chainsaw: What Title Agents Need to Know
The CFPB says it wants to reduce unnecessary mortgage delays and costs. Depending on what it cuts, the result could be a cleaner closing process—or a version of “Know Before You Owe” where borrowers k
TRID has never been beloved.
Nobody has ever curled up by the fire with a Closing Disclosure and whispered, “At last, federal mortgage forms that understand me.”
Title agents have spent more than a decade juggling preliminary figures, changed circumstances, tolerance buckets, revised disclosures, lender portals, delivery deadlines and the occasional closing that must be rescheduled because a number moved in a way that Regulation Z found spiritually significant.
There are legitimate reasons to fix parts of this system.
But the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is now considering something much larger than a few repaired instructions and a less ridiculous title-premium calculation. Its new request for information reaches the timing rules, fee tolerances, waiver standards and refinance rescission rights that give TRID much of its consumer-protection value.
The forms are just the window dressing.
Change those rules far enough and the Loan Estimate and Closing Disclosure may remain on everyone’s screens while “Know Before You Owe” quietly becomes “You’ll Know When We’re Done. And You’ll Like It.”
Quick Facts about the CFPB TRID Request for Information
On July 9, 2026, the CFPB published a request for information seeking comments on possible changes to:
The TILA-RESPA Integrated Disclosure Rule;
The right of rescission for certain mortgage transactions; and
Reverse-mortgage disclosures.
The request follows a March executive order directing the agency to consider tailoring TRID requirements for smaller lenders, replacing fixed timing rules with a materiality-based standard and exempting refinance transactions—including cash-out refinances—from rescission rights.
This is not a proposed rule. There is no regulatory text to implement, no new workflow to build and no reason to start rewriting closing procedures. Yet.
But, it is a very clear look at what the CFPB is willing to reconsider. And that’s the point. There is still time to add your comments, have a voice, and make sure good changes are implemented and bad ones are avoided.
Comments are due August 10, 2026. Read the complete CFPB request for information and submit comments here ->
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What the CFPB Is Actually Asking About TRID
The request contains 22 questions. Buried beneath the polite regulatory language are several ideas capable of rearranging the closing process.
The CFPB wants input on whether:
TRID’s disclosure deadlines restrict mortgage access or increase costs;
Certain transactions are unnecessarily complicated by the timing rules;
Loan Estimates and Closing Disclosures could be delivered earlier;
Revised disclosures could be issued less frequently;
Consumers should receive more help waiving waiting periods;
A materiality standard could replace or supplement fixed timing requirements;
The pre-closing disclosure period and post-closing rescission period unnecessarily delay refinance funding;
Fee-tolerance thresholds should be changed;
Transfer taxes should remain subject to zero tolerance;
Changed-circumstance rules need to become more flexible;
The forms themselves should be redesigned;
Electronic forms and signatures need additional guidance;
Construction loans should receive tailored requirements;
Small banks and credit unions should receive exemptions or alternate rules; and
Reverse mortgages should receive an entirely different integrated disclosure system.
Some of those ideas are overdue housekeeping.
Others go directly to whether borrowers receive meaningful advance notice of the transaction they are about to sign.
TRID’s Consumer Protection Is Not Just a Stack of Forms
It is easy to look at TRID from inside the industry and see nothing but procedural friction.
The title company needs final lender figures.
The lender needs final title figures.
The real estate agents are still negotiating a credit.
The payoff changed.
Someone remembered the HOA.
The transfer tax was calculated using the wrong consideration.
The borrower is already driving to the closing.
Everyone is emailing everyone else with the emotional restraint of people defusing a bomb in matching company polos.
That friction is real. It costs money. It can delay closings for reasons that do not meaningfully protect anyone.
But TRID also changed where surprises are supposed to happen.
Before TRID, borrowers were more likely to encounter important loan terms and settlement costs at closing—when the moving truck was packed, the seller expected money and walking away was theoretically possible in the same way that abandoning your car on the interstate while moving 80 miles an hour is theoretically possible.
TRID attempts to move that information earlier. It does so through several connected protections:
The Loan Estimate gives the borrower standardized loan terms and estimated settlement costs.
Fee tolerances limit how much certain charges may later increase.
Changed-circumstance rules restrict when a lender may reset those estimates.
The Closing Disclosure presents the final transaction before consummation.
The three-business-day review period gives the borrower time to identify major changes.
Rescission rights give consumers an additional period to cancel certain credit transactions secured by their principal dwelling.
The CFPB’s own five-year TRID assessment found that TRID improved consumers’ ability to find important information, compare initial and final costs and compare competing mortgage offers. The evidence on whether consumers understood everything better was mixed, but leaned positive.
In its post-TRID supervisory sample, the CFPB found that approximately 57% of consumers received more than one Closing Disclosure and about 13% experienced an APR change between the first and last Closing Disclosure. Those numbers demonstrate that loan information frequently changes before consummation
TRID did not make mortgages simple. Mortgages remain mortgages.
It did make certain surprises more expensive for the lender delivering them.
Read the CFPB request and submit comments by August 10 →
A Materiality Standard Could Fix Nonsense—or Create New Nonsense
One of the biggest questions is whether a materiality-based standard should replace or supplement fixed timing rules.
At first glance, this sounds reasonable.
A $12 recording adjustment should not necessarily be treated like a changed interest rate. Correcting a misspelled street name should not threaten the closing date. A consumer-favorable change should not require everyone to spend another three days admiring it from a respectful distance.
Current TRID rules already recognize some of this. Not every change to the Closing Disclosure restarts the three-business-day review period. A new waiting period is generally triggered when:
The disclosed APR becomes inaccurate;
The loan product changes; or
A prepayment penalty is added.
Other changes can ordinarily be disclosed on a corrected Closing Disclosure without restarting the clock.
The real question, then, is how much further a materiality standard would go.
A carefully written standard could distinguish technical corrections from changes that alter the consumer’s financial decision. It could prevent harmless errors from turning into avoidable moving-truck disasters.
A vague standard could produce a different definition of “material” for every lender. And materiality is a lovely concept right up until six lenders send six different closing instructions explaining what it means.
Would materiality be measured by a dollar amount, a percentage, the effect on cash to close or the effect on the total cost of credit? Would several individually small changes become material when combined? Would a $500 increase be immaterial on a million-dollar purchase but devastating to a first-time buyer arriving with exactly the amount shown on the previous disclosure?
Most importantly, who decides?
If the creditor trying to preserve the closing date also decides whether a last-minute change is important enough to delay it, the standard needs objective limits. Otherwise, the consumer’s guaranteed review period becomes a judgment call made inside the transaction’s deadline pressure.
Easier Waiting-Period Waivers Could Become Routine Very Quickly
The CFPB is also asking what guidance or model forms could help consumers waive the waiting period for a bona fide personal financial emergency.
The current standard is intentionally narrow. Wanting to close sooner is not enough. An impatient seller is not a personal financial emergency. Neither is an expiring rate lock created by ordinary transaction management. Nor is a moving company with a tight schedule. By try telling that to Sheila while she’s having her fifth entitlement meltdown.
There are real emergencies in which waiting harms the consumer. A borrower may face foreclosure, displacement or another urgent financial consequence. A workable waiver process is appropriate in those cases.
But a standardized waiver can become a standard closing document with impressive speed.
Anyone who has watched an “optional” authorization migrate into every file knows exactly how this happens. The exception gets a form. The form gets a checkbox. The checkbox gets preselected. Eventually, the consumer signs it between the address certification and the document nobody remembers why they added it in 2018.
If waivers become easier, the rules need to prevent them from becoming a condition of receiving the loan or a decision based on convenience by people who don’t fully understand the more serious consequences of their choices.
Otherwise, the consumer technically chooses to waive the review period while surrounded by professionals explaining how inconvenient it would be not to.
Read the CFPB request and submit comments by August 10 →
Fee Tolerances Are Annoying Because They Have Teeth
TRID requires estimated charges to be disclosed in good faith. Depending on the charge and who selects the provider, a fee may be subject to:
Zero tolerance;
A 10% cumulative tolerance; or
No specific percentage limitation, provided the original estimate was based on the best information reasonably available.
The CFPB asks whether adjusting these thresholds could improve loan execution and reduce costs. It specifically identifies transfer taxes, which may be difficult to calculate accurately within three business days after application.
That is a fair problem to examine.
Transfer-tax calculations can depend on information that is unsettled early in the transaction. Seller-paid charges may still be under negotiation. Credits change. Exemptions appear. Inspections result in compensation. Consideration is revised. Local practice adds its own little decorative flourish.
But tolerance reform can travel much farther than fixing transfer taxes.
Tolerances force lenders to seek reliable figures early because an unjustified increase may result in a cure paid to the borrower. They turn inaccurate estimates into someone’s financial problem.
Loosen the tolerance system broadly and the lender has less incentive to obtain accurate title, settlement, recording and tax figures at the beginning of the transaction. The Loan Estimate may become easier to produce—but less useful to the person relying on it.
And when the final number changes, the lender is rarely sitting across the table from the unhappy buyer.
The title agent is.
The consumer sees a title-company employee, a settlement statement and a total that does not match the amount previously disclosed. Now the title agent gets to explain calculations they did not create, timing they did not control and a federal disclosure system that labels some title charges in ways no normal person would invent.
A true privilege.
TRID Reform Could Finally Fix the Title-Insurance Math
The CFPB’s request is not entirely ominous for title.
Its questions about form design create an opportunity to fix one of TRID’s longest-running absurdities: the way title insurance premiums are displayed when an owner’s policy and lender’s policy receive a simultaneous-issue discount.
The Closing Disclosure may show the lender’s policy at the full standalone rate and the owner’s policy at the difference between the total package price and that artificially inflated lender’s premium. The figures may comply with the federal formula while failing to resemble the charges produced by the state-filed title rate.
In particularly elegant cases, the owner’s premium can appear extremely low creating an impression of irrelevance.
Nothing says consumer clarity like arithmetic requiring a separate fact sheet to explain why the accurate price is not the price shown.
TRID also labels owner’s title insurance “optional.” Technically, it usually is. But the form does little to explain that the lender’s required policy protects the lender, while the optional owner’s policy protects the person purchasing the property and supplying the money.
A redesigned form could:
Display the actual filed or promulgated premiums;
Explain the simultaneous-issue discount without rearranging the prices;
Clearly distinguish the insured parties;
Preserve the consumer’s choice; and
Explain what declining owner’s coverage means without turning the disclosure into a sales brochure.
If the CFPB wants clearer forms, title professionals have more than ten years of confused-buyer conversations available as research material.
Different Rules for Small Lenders Mean Different Rules for Title Agents
The CFPB is considering exemptions or alternative TRID requirements for small banks and credit unions.
This could lower compliance costs for community lenders and encourage some institutions to originate mortgages they currently avoid. More lenders and more mortgage availability could mean additional purchase, refinance and construction volume.
It could also create a tiered closing system.
A title agency might need one process for national lenders, another for qualifying community banks and another for credit unions using alternate disclosure forms. The documents could look similar while following different rules for:
Delivery;
Corrections;
Fee tolerances;
Waiting periods;
Waivers;
Closing authorization; and
Post-closing cures.
The title production system must know which rules apply. The closer must know. The processor must know. The person covering someone else’s vacation must also know.
“Small-lender flexibility” may be a lender benefit that arrives at the settlement desk disguised as another complex compliance matrix where we have no control but carry most of the responsibility.
If tailored rules are adopted, title agents will need unambiguous lender instructions and machine-readable identifiers—not a scavenger hunt through a 200 page closing package to determine which version of TRID showed up. Or, you just click on the comment button and tell the CFPB why this might be a bad idea.
Read the CFPB request and submit comments by August 10 →
Removing Rescission Would Make Refinances Faster—and Less Forgiving
For certain transactions secured by a consumer’s principal dwelling, TILA gives the consumer three business days after consummation to rescind. Funds generally are not disbursed until that period expires.
The executive order behind the CFPB’s request directs the agency to consider exemptions for refinance transactions, including cash-out refinances. The CFPB consequently asks whether the pre-closing TRID period and post-closing rescission period create an unnecessary combined delay.
From an operational perspective, elimination is attractive.
The title company could fund and disburse sooner. Staff would spend less time holding completed files in rescission limbo. Borrowers needing proceeds would receive them faster. Payoffs could be sent earlier.
But rescission is not redundant merely because the borrower received a Closing Disclosure before signing.
The pre-closing period allows the consumer to review expected terms.
Rescission allows the consumer to cancel after signing the actual legal obligation. Those are different moments, especially in a cash-out refinance involving the borrower’s home and a new debt structure.
Personally, out of the thousands and thousands of refinance transactions I’ve done in my career, I think I’ve seen 1 recission occur and that was pre-TRID early disclosure requirements. Now perhaps my experience is not the norm. I’d love to see some statistical data from the lenders on how often buyers are rescinding both pre and post TRID, but I was unable to find any.
So, perhaps, having early disclosure rules and recission is an over complication. My greater fear would be that as a result of this request for information, the early disclosure requirements would be eased while simultaneously removing the recission period and that I think would be disastrous for consumers.
Reverse-Mortgage Disclosure Reform May Be the Least Controversial Opportunity
Reverse mortgages remain outside the ordinary TRID framework. Borrowers receive a mixture of RESPA and TILA disclosures, including the Good Faith Estimate, HUD-1 and Total Annual Loan Cost disclosure.
The CFPB is asking whether consumers would benefit from:
Integrated reverse-mortgage disclosures;
More realistic TALC assumptions;
A table showing projected loan-balance growth in dollars; and
Educational material designed specifically for reverse mortgages.
This part of the request could produce a genuine improvement.
A reverse mortgage has unusual terms, future balance growth and risks that do not fit comfortably into generic forward-mortgage disclosures. Replacing annualized cost scenarios with a clear dollar-based illustration may help borrowers understand what happens to the balance over time.
For title agencies, an integrated process could standardize closing documents and reduce confusion. The tradeoff would be another round of software development, lender coordination, procedure changes and training.
The industry has already paid dearly to implement TRID once. According to the CFPB assessment, the typical implementation cost was approximately $146 per mortgage for lenders and $39 per closing for closing companies in 2015.
Let’s not redesign everything, but maybe we could pull it into closer alignment with a few minor tweaks.
Read the CFPB request and submit comments by August 10 →
Would TRID Reform Be Good or Bad for Title Agents?
The honest answer is: it depends on whether the CFPB repairs the machinery or removes the brakes.
A focused reform package could be good for title if it:
Fixes the title-insurance premium presentation;
Clarifies genuine changed circumstances;
Adjusts treatment of charges that cannot reasonably be known early;
Prevents immaterial corrections from delaying a closing;
Preserves review periods for changes affecting the borrower’s bargain;
Creates better construction and reverse-mortgage disclosures;
Supports secure electronic delivery and signatures; and
Establishes clear, uniform standards that title software can actually implement.
A broad rollback could be bad for title if it:
Makes early estimates less reliable;
Allows more last-minute fee increases;
Turns materiality into a lender-by-lender judgment;
Makes waiting-period waivers routine;
Creates different workflows for different lender classes;
Pressures title agents to balance and disburse faster without receiving information sooner;
Reduces cures while increasing closing-table disputes; or
Removes consumer protections
Much of the apparent compliance relief would accrue to lenders. Much of the cleanup would land with title.
Again.
Title Agents Have Something Useful to Say Before August 10
The CFPB has requested information about both the advantages and disadvantages of potential changes. Title agencies possess operational evidence the Bureau will not get from studying lender compliance costs alone.
A useful title-industry comment could address:
How frequently incomplete lender information delays the Closing Disclosure;
Which title and settlement charges cannot reasonably be known at application;
Which corrections currently delay closings without benefiting consumers;
Which late changes materially affect cash to close;
How tolerance rules influence the lender’s effort to obtain accurate title figures;
How often consumers question the current title-insurance calculation;
Whether borrowers understand the difference between owner’s and lender’s coverage;
What title agencies spend maintaining different lender workflows;
Whether a small-lender exemption would create additional settlement costs;
What would be required to safely support same-day refinance funding; and
Which reverse-mortgage disclosures create confusion at signing.
Specific examples will be more useful than “TRID is burdensome,” which is true but approximately as informative as reporting that closings involve paperwork.
To help you back up comments you may want to leave, you can gather cited industry data here:
Comments should identify Docket No. CFPB-2026-0018 and may address only the relevant numbered questions. They can be submitted through the Federal eRulemaking Portal or by email using the instructions in the official request.
Read the CFPB request and submit comments by August 10 →
TRID Does Not Need to Remain Miserable to Remain Meaningful
There is no reason to preserve a bad calculation, an unnecessary redisclosure or a closing delay that gives the consumer nothing useful.
There is also no reason to pretend every rule described as “streamlining” will make the title agent’s job easier—or leave the borrower equally protected.
The best reform would preserve what TRID does well: early information, comparable costs, meaningful review and consequences for unjustified surprises. It would then remove the parts that generate work without generating clarity.
The worst reform would keep the forms, loosen the numbers, shorten the time, remove consumer protections, push lender responsibility and complexity onto small title agencies, and call the result efficiency.
Title professionals should not have to choose between consumer protection and a closing process that functions. But if the industry stays quiet, the people designing the next version may never hear where the current process actually breaks—or who gets handed the pieces when it does.
Stay Wicked,
Cheryl
Contact Me (or hit reply)
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