One significant change to the RESPA rule adopted in November 2008 and implemented in January 2010 was the introduction of “roll up” lines and aggregate line item totals on the HUD-1 Settlement Statement. This concept was designed to help consumers shop for settlement services by making it simpler to aggregate classes of charges. While HUD’s stated goal was improving consumer understanding of charges, roll ups have not been an effective tool for achieving this transparency and simplicity, and itemization of charges is a more logical solution, ALTA’s RESPA Task Force wrote in a paper addressing RESPA reform.

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