My understanding of mortgage banking is minimal. There are a few others here (and here) and around the blogosphere who understand this much better than I do. But this I get: the mortgage industry lobby is winning in its fight to turn around strong legislation that would have prohibited the payment of "yield spread premiums" to mortgage brokers.

That would have saved a lot of you a lot of money.

What's a yield spread premium? Basically, if you go to a mortgage broker and ask him to get you a good mortgage deal, he takes your financial information and goes out on the market to see what he can get for you. You go merrily along, thinking your broker is working for you, trying to get you the best deal he can.

Meanwhile, he talks to lenders and gets you the best rate he can get based on what you qualify for, only get this: he's under no obligation to actually tell you what the best deal he can get really is. Instead, he can tack on some extra points to your mortgage rate and just tell you that was the deal instead. And if you agree to take it, guess who gets paid the extra money?

That's right. The mortgage broker you thought was working to get you the best rate available. If a lender says you qualify for a loan at 5%, but your mortgage broker thinks you'll accept 5.25% and he turns out to be right, part of that extra .25% goes to him, and you're none the wiser.

Sound fair to you?

Well, the House Financial Services Committee, in its consideration of H.R. 3915, is under tremendous pressure to let it slide.

What do you think about that?

Want to tell 'em?