All Posts Tagged With: "brokers"
Real Estate: Why Do We License Brokers & Agents?
Across the country we license many professions, everyone from barbers to lawyers. There are several basic reasons for such licensure:
To protect the public against unethical and incompetent practitioners.
To assure that practitioners have certain minimum levels of education and experience.
To assure that consumers receive certain minimum levels of service.
To define what is and what is [...]
Mortgage Brokers Must Disclose Secret Fees, Says Judge
Figuring out how much you pay for a mortgage is like trying to determine the real cost of a new car, a lot of what you pay is hidden and unclear.
Now James Robertson, a federal district judge based in Washington, DC, has decided that mortgage brokers will have to disclose their secret fees under new [...]
Should Borrowers Be Represented In Washington?
There are so many lobbyists in Washington that you can hardly find a parking space. It’s great to have competing interests, but one interest with no real or effective representation are those who borrow.
We have lobbyists for real estate brokers, mortgage bankers, mortgage brokers and banks, but name the organization that represents you? Where are [...]
Since When Are Appraisal Conflicts Okay?
On RealTalk, a listserve with some 30,000+ agents and brokers, several relate that they have had bad experiences under the new Home Valuation Code of Conduct (HVCC) concept, something which only began May 1st.
Why is anyone amazed? Combine a new and different program with a huge number of interactions and there are certain to be [...]
Can 11,000 Appraisers Be Wrong?
Gee, golly, mention the idea of pressuring appraisers to come up with the “right” valuation numbers and you’re hardly alone. There seem to be a large number of appraisers who have encountered efforts to distort their valuations. Say 11,000 of them.
That’s how many signed on at AppraisersPetition.com. And what, exactly, is their beef? As the [...]
How To Pick On Appraisers
Many in the real estate community are upset with the newly implemented Home Valuation Code of Conduct (HVCC) and want it suspended or revoked so we can go back to the good-old-says when it was okay to threaten and pressure appraisers.
The HVCC was an agreement worked out between New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, Fannie [...]
Can You Trust Your Lender?
There is something new in the marketplace, what is being called the Fair Market Collaborative. As someone who has been looking for fairness in the mortgage marketplace since the 1970s you can bet that I welcome any effort to create a level playing field for borrowers.
But will the new collaborative really change marketplace [...]
Hiring A Real Estate Broker? Should You Expect Less?
There’s little doubt that one of the hottest topics in the world of real estate regulation concerns the matter of minimum service requirements for brokers: Do they protect the public or are they simply a way to hold down competition from low-priced firms and new business models?
During the past few years many states have [...]
Right Math, Debatable Conclusions
“You cannot completely trust the advice your broker gives you,” said Christopher J. Mayer, a professor of real estate at Columbia Business School. “You have to become more educated as a buyer.” (See: Why a Real Estate Agent May Skip the Extra Mile, The New York Times, February 20, 2005)
I’m not sure that buyers [...]
10 Tips For First-Time Sellers
At first the task seems daunting: You haven’t sold a home before, the market looks complex, and what worked for owners 10 or 20 years ago seems inappropriate today.
What steps should you take? Here’s a baseline list to get you started.
You Can Do It. Some 5,652,000 existing homes were sold in 2007 according [...]
16Sep2008 | Peter G. Miller | 0 comments | Continued
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