Some of the consumer choices Macey is concerned about reducing are empirically limited to very few people. Restricting loan modification fees is not a big deal particularly given the difficulty in actually getting a loan modified. Unless your bank owns and services and hasn’t packaged your loan, you cannot get one done period (without some sort of governmental assistance or mandate). I have tried to negotiate interest rate adjustments to market in return for fees several times over the last 30 years and instead have always had to exercise my zero cost call option to refinance. The swap products that are sometimes offered are a sucker’s product of hidden costs and fees. That’s a dead weight loss. Similarly restricting interest-only products (because virtually no such products contractually obligate balloon payments except for structured products that cannot be packaged) affect only a very small (and rich) group of borrowers whose loans will be held by their underwriters to maturity.

Finally APR. Reducing all the cost factors of a mortgage to a single factor was always an exercise in absurdity for different mortgage products. APR simplifies the calculations so much as to be virtually worthless. Focusing on the various components of the loan product is exactly what consumers need to do and allow individual preferences to choose the product that best suits them particularly when optionality and risk management is so important for individual household decisions.