California courts have held since 1979 that a mortgage broker owes a fiduciary duty to a borrower.  But lenders do not.  The mortgage transaction between the borrower and lender is at "arms length" much like buying a used car from a car lot salesman.  The law expects the buyer not to trust the lender and to understand that the lender's interests are counter to the borrowers: the worse the loan is for the borrower, the more money the bank makes.  This assumption is supported by the statistics: about 60 percent of "subprime" borrowers qualified for prime loans