The effect of loose lending during the last housing boom was abundantly clear: Nearly 8 million U.S. homes fell into foreclosure. The response was a slew of new lending rules under the Dodd-Frank financial reform law, and the result was a credit lockdown that continues today, nearly five years after the legislation was enacted.
“For lenders this is all about paperwork, verification and doing a lot of the grunt work that was ignored or passed over before the crisis,” said Jaret Seiberg, a managing director at financing firm Guggenheim Securities.