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America’s Community Bankers and its members condemn predatory mortgage lending, especially practices that target minority, low-income and elderly communities. We are committed to working with the Office of Thrift Supervision to address those unscrupulous lenders, the overwhelming majority of which are unregulated entities outside of the banking industry.

However, it is important to distinguish between egregious loan terms and rates and legitimate prime and subprime mortgage lending. It is unfortunate for community bankers and consumers that the OTS’s advance notice of proposed rulemaking and the accompanying OTS press release lumped together predatory and subprime lending, blurring their obvious and important differences.

We believe the tone expressed in both the ANPR and the press release could have a chilling effect on responsible lenders making subprime loans to serve the mortgage needs of first time homebuyers, persons with impaired credit and those who desire to enjoy the benefits of the equity they have built up in their homes „Ÿ ironically the very consumers that OTS wants to help.

ACB urges the OTS to work closely with the other federal banking regulators and the banking industry to carefully determine what is predatory lending, and how to identify and eliminate the bad actors. At the same time, we must preserve the ability of community banks to continue to provide a diversity of safe and sound loan products that meet their customers’ needs.