Get ready for housing crash 2.0. Families are being targeted once more with predatory mortgages. But this time the agency once charged with protecting borrowers has lessened restrictions on lenders and limited the period during which consumers can defend against foreclosures.

As most of the Trump administration is heading out the door, a holdout regime at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has rushed out two rules that will strait-jacket borrowers and protect lenders.

“Combined, the new CFPB rules likely will lead to more foreclosures while letting mortgage lenders off the hook for peddling loans that people cannot afford to pay over the long term,” said a National Consumer Law Center attorney, Alys Cohen.

The bureau is making it easier for lenders to push costly loans onto homebuyers while severely limiting the time financially troubled borrowers have to fight foreclosures.

The CFPB rewrote a requirement that loan payments not exceed 43% of a household’s income with a much looser “ability-to-pay” requirement for new “qualified mortgage” loans. The bureau also created a new category of “seasoned” qualified mortgages, which […]