Questions About Health Care Reform

By Brian Summerfield, Online Editor, REALTOR® Magazine

As many of you have probably heard, Whole Foods CEO John Mackey recently caught some flak for writing an op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal opposing any new health care entitlements on the grounds that they would have to be financed with major deficit spending.

Mackey’s article sparked a wave of outrage among political progressives, many of them Whole Foods customers. His arguments even instigated an organized boycott of the grocer that currently numbers in the tens of thousands. This is just one instance that demonstrates how high emotions run in this debate, and some claim the intense passions we’re seeing expressed on both sides of the political spectrum are about more than just health care.

Is that true? In a sense, yes. Emotions aside, the health care debate boils down to distinct philosophies concerning the proper role of government and the private sector, as well as conceptions of rights. Read more

More Closing Time, Less Courtroom Time

By Robert Freedman, Senior Editor, REALTOR® Magazine

It’s a tough market and you’re trying to put bread on the table, but don’t cut corners on disclosures to get a deal done—it will come back to haunt you.

That’s the message a real estate legal expert left with me yesterday after a conversation about something no one wants to talk about: the increase in lawsuits as unhappy buyers look for someone to blame.

The legal expert also sells real estate. Her sales are down this year, as you would expect, but her time spent in the courtroom is up—not because she’s being sued. She’s frequently called upon by courts to be an expert witness. It’s these calls that have shot up, and what she’s seeing in the courtroom is a jump in cases in which sales associates are charged with insuffiently ensuring all property conditions are disclosed. Read more

The Long Road to a New Fannie and Freddie

By Robert Freedman, Senior Editor, REALTOR® Magazine

Given consumers’ nervousness about getting a home loan today, it’s fitting that the attention of Congress has been focused on short-term financing availability, but this week lawmakers will start looking at long-term changes to the secondary mortgage market, and that means looking at the structure of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

An NAR representative, Frances Martinez Myers of Fox & Roach/Trident, based in Philadelphia, will be testifying tomorrow before the capital markets subcommittee of the House Financial Services Committee. Although you can never tell the direction a congressional hearing is going to take, we can be sure she’ll share with the committee the basic principles that REALTOR® leaders agreed to last year on what the secondary mortgage market should look like. Read more

Lender Logic Meltdown

By Wendy Cole, Senior Editor,  REALTOR® Magazine

Thought I would share this mind-boggling post from one of my REALTOR® friends on Facebook. Jennifer Bunker is the savvy broker-owner at Coldwater Creek Properties, an environmentally-conscious brokerage in Ogden, Utah: 

“Today Wells Fargo made a buyer prove that she has a fiancee before they would fund her loan (WTH?). So, she took a picture of her hand w/ the ring on it and emailed it as proof and … they took it! Seriously, what are bank people ingesting these days? Can it get any more bazaar?”

If this really happened, it shows that anxiety has overtaken reasonableness at a major lending institution. Since when is having a fiance a factor in qualifying for a mortgage?  And how could a photo be considered proof of anything? Anyone else come up against lending tales that defy logic, even in these cautious times?

A Monument to Fair Housing

By Brian Summerfield, Online Editor, REALTOR® Magazine

Many of today’s REALTORS® might not realize it, but 1968 was a tough year. Dr. Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy were assassinated, the Tet Offensive was launched against U.S. forces in Vietnam, and the Soviet Union crushed the Prague Spring liberalization movement in Czechoslovakia.

Yet it was also a year of hope. One bright spot was the passage of the Fair Housing Act, which outlaws discrimination against home buyers on the basis of their background.

Now, more than four decades later, the NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF REALTORS® will commemorate Fair Housing with a monument located in a park adjacent to its Washington D.C. offices at 500 New Jersey Ave., NW. Read more

Helping Homeowners Stay Put

By Stacey Moncrieff, Editor in Chief, REALTOR® Magazine

Tucson, Ariz., practitioner Frances Flynn Thorsen is fighting mad — and she’s not sparing any punches. She wants the NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF REALTORS® and state REALTOR® organizations to do more to help homeowners with underwater mortgages keep their homes.

“All the education programs and certifications that exist today are sales centric,” she says, “not a single word about loan modifications.”

Frances has taken her crusade to the airwaves with “Truth in Housing Matters,” a weekly show on Access Tucson. She’s also written an education program on home retention and has applied for CE credit through the state of Arizona.

Read more

Build Your Own Home Buyer Tax Credit

Brian Summerfield, Online Editor, REALTOR® Magazine

Perhaps unsurprisingly, discussions about the $8,000 First-Time Home Buyer Tax Credit dominated the Federal Taxation Committee’s assembly at NAR’s 2009 Midyear Meetings. While most of the people present were very happy with the fact that they could use this as a promotional tool, and many welcomed HUD Secretary Donovan’s announcement about monetizing the tax credit, they didn’t think the measure went far enough.

Specifically, their criticism of the tax credit related to two things: Read more

Bridging the Divide on Health Care

By Wendy Cole, Senior Editor, REALTOR® Magazine

Health care reform is on the way. And with 28% of REALTORS® currently uninsured, the time is ripe for a major fix. President Obama has put insurance reform at the top of his legislative agenda, and heated debates in Congress are sure to follow. But what will reform look like and who will pay for it? Most Americans — and REALTORS® — agree that the current system demands an overhaul. Real estate practitioners. however, are much more divided about what the federal government’s role should be in developing a new system that makes insurance available and affordable for all.

A recent poll sponsored by NAR has found that 53% of REALTORS® are concerned that Congress won’t do enough to reform the health care system, while 47% shared the opposite concern: that Congress may go too far. The pros and cons of government-mandated health insurance were the subject of rich debate today during NAR’s Midyear Legislative Meetings.

What’s your view? How should the government address the insurance gap?