Hi Everyone,
Here’s the follow up from class.
Here’s information about Fannie Mae’s program to allow homeowners to rent back from Fannie after foreclosure. The program is called Deed for Lease.
There was a question about the Realtor Code of Ethics: Is there anything in the Realtor Code that says Realtors cannot represent sellers when the seller’s needs (short sale) is outside their area of expertise? Since short sales have morphed into complex transactions, this is a good question. Here is what Article 11 says:
The services which REALTORS® provide to their clients and customers shall conform to the standards of practice and competence which are reasonably expected in the specific real estate disciplines in which they engage; specifically, residential real estate brokerage, real property management, commercial and industrial real estate brokerage, real estate appraisal, real estate counseling, real estate syndication, real estate auction, and international real estate. REALTORS® shall not undertake to provide specialized professional services concerning a type of property or service that is outside their field of competence unless they engage the assistance of one who is competent on such types of property or service, or unless the facts are fully disclosed to the client. Any persons engaged to provide such assistance shall be so identified to the client and their contribution to the assignment should be set forth.
Emphasis mine. It is up to the Realtors to decide if they would like to further define what the word “specialized” means in further updates to the Code. I bet if we lined up 100 Realtors and asked them if listing short sales is a specialized area of real estate, the vast majority would say yes. I also suppose that depending on the market, short sales may be so common in a market area that the majority of Realtors routinely list short sales and it might not seem so “specialized” to them. I sincerely hope that short sales don’t spill over to reach this much of our markets.
After talking with several people in loan servicing over the last few days, I’ve been told that yes, even though a seller’s first mortgage may be held by Fannie Mae and we know that Fannie won’t ask for commission reductions, indeed second mortgage holders on tha same home are asking for commission reductions
Here is the latest Unofficial Problem Bank List from my favorite Finance and Econ blogger, CR.