6 easy ethical slip-ups

CHICAGO – May 11, 2011 – Bruce Aydt, Realtor® Magazine columnist and real estate ethics instructor, receives hundreds of questions a year from Realtors confronting various ethical dilemmas. Here are some of the most prevalent problems he’s encountered in the past year.

1. Not revealing your state of licensure. On your website, you need to include a note disclosing the state in which you hold your real estate license. The note could say something like “Licensed in Illinois,” “Illinois Licensee” or “Illinois Broker.”

2. Blogging or tweeting without making company affiliation evident. In any real estate-related communications on Facebook, Twitter or other social media sites, you must include your company name in the posting or make it accessible via a link back to your company name (like your username’s link to a profile page). Your company name also must appear in all advertisements.

3. Failing to disclose a short sale. You have an obligation to know your MLS and state license law rules on short sales and to disclose a potential short sale when it’s required in those rules.

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Items 4-6 at

http://www.floridarealtors.org/NewsAndEvents/article.cfm?p=1&id=259834

1 in 4 homes with mortgages underwater

SEATTLE – May 11, 2011 – Home values in the United States fell faster in the first quarter of 2011 than they have in any quarter since 2008, according to Zillow’s first quarter Real Estate Market Reports. The Home Value Index fell 3 percent from the fourth quarter of 2010 to the first quarter of 2011, and declined 8.2 percent year-over-year to $169,600. Home values have fallen 29.5 percent since a peak in June 2006.

About 28.4 percent of single-family homeowners with mortgages were underwater at the end of the first quarter, up from 27 percent in fourth quarter 2010. A homeowner is underwater when they owe more on their mortgage than their home is worth.

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More information including Fl at

http://www.floridarealtors.org/NewsAndEvents/article.cfm?p=5&id=259846

NAR: creditworthy homebuyers need help

WASHINGTON – May 11, 2011 – The pendulum on mortgage credit has swung too far in the other direction after the recent housing downturn, says a panel of industry experts. Tighter standards are putting an unnecessary burden on creditworthy consumers, impeding the economic and housing market recoveries.

The panel addressed several thousand Realtors® gathered at a symposium, “Ensuring Mortgage Availability for Creditworthy Homebuyers,” during the Realtors 2011 Midyear Legislative Meetings & Trade Expo in Washington, D.C., this week.

“As the leading advocate for homeownership, the National Association of Realtors (NAR) believes that we cannot have a viable housing or economic recovery until creditworthy homebuyers are able to obtain mortgage financing,” said NAR President Ron Phipps. “Reforms were needed to get rid of the harmful products that led to the housing meltdown, but continuing to curtail access to affordable credit for qualified home buyers affects the entire economy.”

Panelists offered their perspectives on the current state of the industry and identified challenges.

David H. Stevens – former assistant secretary of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, former Federal Housing Administration commissioner and incoming president and chief executive officer for the Mortgage Bankers Association of America – told attendees the entire financial industry made bad decisions regarding risky loan products, and there is no doubt that reforms are needed to get back to a level of sustainable access where qualified consumers are able to achieve homeownership.

According to the 2011 NAR Member Profile, 34 percent of Realtors say that the most important factor in limiting their clients’ ability to buy a home was difficulty in obtaining a mortgage.



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Lend More at

http://www.floridarealtors.org/NewsAndEvents/article.cfm?p=4&id=259862

Listing data not from MLS has more errors

NEW YORK – May 11, 2011 – Listing data that doesn’t come directly from multiple listing service (MLS) data is more likely to have inaccurate price and status information, according to research by Trulia.


Trulia found that third-party syndicators of listing data that didn’t come directly from an MLS posted a 21.3 percent error rate regarding the listing’s price or status. Trulia says the problem is that real estate professionals submit the data to these syndication sites but often fail to return to the site to update the listing when information changes, which causes a “significant increase of disparate data sources resulting in less accurate data online,” according to Trulia.


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More Data at

http://www.floridarealtors.org/NewsAndEvents/article.cfm?p=3&id=259850

Mortgage fraud reaches record high

MIAMI – May 11, 2011 – Scammers are changing their schemes to take advantage of a distressed real estate market. Reports of mortgage fraud in 2010 reached the highest level on record, the Treasury Department reports.

Suspected mortgage fraud activity increased nearly 5 percent to 70,472 “suspicious activity reports,” according to the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network. That’s up from 67,507 in 2009 – and a dramatic increase compared to 37,000 mortgage fraud reports in 2006 during the housing boom. The agency estimates more than $1.5 billion in losses from mortgage fraud in 2010.

Mortgage fraud reports include everything from borrowers falsifying information on loan documents, fraudulent appraisals, to elaborate schemes that target homeowners underwater on their mortgage.
Reports of suspected mortgage fraud have continued to rise since the housing boom.

However, while the number of reports of mortgage fraud continues to rise, the number of new fraud cases has actually decreased, the LexisNexis Mortgage Asset Research Institute reports. Mortgage fraud cases dropped 41 percent between 2009 and 2010, the biggest drop since the institute began to track reports. The drop was attributed to a decrease in home loans from banks tightening lending standards.

“We’ve got lower originations, less loan volume, less attention being paid to in terms of what’s happening to those loans and tighter credit scrutiny,” says Denise James, who co-authored the report.
Where fraud is the most prevalent

The states with the highest incidence of mortgage fraud are:

1. Florida (which also led the nation in 2009)

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There is no reason to commit fraud.  Be honest.   Dont even try to work in grey areas.  If a mortgage person want a buyer to work a gray area then that buyer should RUN!   Its not worth it.

See the other citties

http://www.floridarealtors.org/NewsAndEvents/article.cfm?p=2&id=259858

Lenders now own 872,000 homes

WASHINGTON – May 24, 2011 – U.S. banks and money lenders now own 872,000 homes, a number that could more than double in the coming years, real estate research firm RealtyTrac said.

The current number of properties owned by banks and lenders is nearly double what they owned in 2007, before the housing market began to collapse, The New York Times reported Monday.

Lenders frequently sell homes at a substantial discount and economists expect it will take three years for lenders to sell the properties they have taken over.

That means for the next three years at least, the sale of so-called distressed homes will continue to slow a recovery in the housing market.

“It remains a heavy weight on the banking system. Housing prices are falling, and they are going to fall some more,” said Mark Zandi, chief economist of Moody’s Analytics.

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Thats alot of homes.    VACANT!  

Reason?  Most Banks are very slow to Sell to CA$H Buyers.  Especially for short sales.


Read more at

http://www.floridarealtors.org/NewsAndEvents/article.cfm?p=4&id=260334

More paying zero taxes

TAMPA, Fla. – May 24, 2011 – Florida’s turbulent housing market has had an unintended consequence: Thousands of homeowners don’t pay a dollar in property tax.

No, this isn’t a real estate scam. Blame higher homestead exemptions and falling home prices that essentially removed houses from the tax rolls.

“It’s a basic fundamental in American society and tax policy that everybody should pay something,” said Warren Weathers, chief deputy for the Hillsborough County property appraiser’s office. “Some of these (exemptions) were created for people who barely have anything, and that’s not bad. But there are people ... that have the ability to pay that don’t pay some of their fair share.”

It couldn’t have come at a worse time for budget-conscious municipalities. The exemptions cost the county millions in property tax revenue, and that’s on top of millions lost because of falling values. Hillsborough County saw property taxes owed go from $1.9 billion in 2008 to $1.7 billion in 2009 to $1.5 billion in 2010.

For many of those with tax bills of zero, their properties are valued less by county property appraisers than their qualified homestead exemption, usually $25,000. For properties worth more, a $50,000 exemption brings the tax bill down to almost nothing.

In Hillsborough, more than 7,000 homeowners didn’t pay property taxes last year, according to data from the property appraiser’s office. That’s up from 4,920 in 2008.

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Yea theres more at


http://www.floridarealtors.org/NewsAndEvents/article.cfm?p=3&id=260338