Intermediate Information: September 2007 Archives

Every so often, I write about professional responsibility.

Every month I get a couple of magazines because I'm a Realtor. In one of this months, was a letter from someone who was proud of the fact that he had never asked someone if they could afford the property, despite having been in the business for decades. Essentially, this reduces to, "I'm in this for the commission check, and what happens after that is none of my business."

Contrast this with investing in the stock and bond markets, where the SEC and NASD have mandated an entire slew of regulations and practices. Before any financial licensee accepts your money, he or she is obligated to ask enough questions about your situation to have a reasonable basis to believe the investment they recommend is appropriate. A large proportion of financial licensees breach this, but the requirements are there, and upon those occasions where the investment turns out not to have been so well advised, they are both civilly and criminally liable. They are supposed to question you about reserves, and a will, and life insurance. Occupation, income, necessary expenses. They're supposed to encourage disability insurance and long term care insurance, where appropriate. The list of questions goes on and on, and if the questions don't get asked, those advisers who fail to ask are going to hear about it. The penalties start with fines that are larger than whatever loss the client may have taken, and include permanent loss of license, jail time, and being a convicted felon for the rest of your life. Among the regulations is a very stiff requirement that the money being invested cannot be borrowed except under strictly circumscribed situations (Margin accounts being the only example I'm aware of).

The idea that you can encourage someone to make a half million dollar investment with borrowed money, get paid thousands to tens of thousands of dollars for it, and have less responsibility than the guy who makes $1.25 signing someone up for mutual funds with $100 they saved out of their pay this month, is preposterous. It's wishful thinking, and lying to the The Guy In The Glass. It is completely unacceptable if those in my profession want to be treated as anything other than snake oil salespersons. Every time someone makes an easy property sale, or an easy loan sale, without ascertaining that they are, in fact, putting the person into a better situation, the fall-out down the line hurts every single one of us in the profession. In fact, the prevalence of discount solutions in real estate can largely be attributed to those unethical members of the profession who have failed to take the real interests of the consumer into account. When someone figures that they likely won't get the sort of real advantages that accrue from using someone knowledgeable and ethical anyway, they don't see themselves as having given up anything when they go the cheaper route.

The absolute worst case from someone investing $1000 in mutual funds is they lose that $1000, which hurts their ego and their pocketbook, but if they had to have that money to live on, they shouldn't have invested it, and the person who solicited that investment will need to answer to the SEC, the NASD, and the criminal prosecutors for their area. As many people are finding out first hand now, that isn't close to the worst case for someone put into a property they couldn't afford. Those people are finding themselves with their credit ruined, owing thousands of dollars in taxes, in many cases homeless, and without anyone willing to rent from them. Life savings may have been completely depleted in a vain attempt to keep the property, and in many cases, there are deficiency judgments against them. In some cases, where a Realtor or loan officer had to exaggerate income in order to qualify them for the loan, they may even face criminal prosecution for fraud. It's like the difference between having your TV stolen, and having your life ruined.

Thirty years or so in the past, the listing services were reserved to Realtors, and so if you wanted access to MLS, you had to hire a Realtor. These days, due to restraint of trade suits, that's not the case. Not only are those days gone, they're not coming back (and that's a good thing, in my opinion). If all you are is MLS access and transaction facilitator, prospects are correct to pass you by in favor of the discount options that accomplish those same services far more cheaply. Every time some Realtor pleads that they're only a transaction coordinator, everyone who hears about that is driven straight into the office of the discount service providers. It's only by being more than that, and being willing to stand up in court and say that you're responsible for more than that, that you earn the additional money over what a discounter will charge. Most lawyers and all of the big chains tell their member agents not to be present for the inspection. My question is, "If you're claiming to provide knowledge or experience that the average person does not have, how can that possibly be anything other than gross and intentional negligence?" I'm there with a notepad, every time - lawyers be damned. As I have said, I'm perfectly willing to do discounter work for discounter pay - I make more money, more quickly, by limiting my responsibility and involvement to running the paperwork, even if I only make half or less of a full service commission. I never try to "upsell" those people who want discounter service. Truth be told, it's easy for someone is used to providing full service to provide better discount service than the discounters. But if you want a client to happily pay a full service commission, you've got to convince them you've earned that money, by providing something real that they would not otherwise have.

One of the most basic of those services is as a check of their ability to afford the property. This is a major psychological stumbling block for a lot of property purchasers. Many very qualified buyers don't understand that they are qualified. Part of this is simple anxiety, part of it is so many loan officers telling people what difficult loans they are to discourage them shopping around to different providers. If you're willing to go over the numbers and tell them what kind of property they can and cannot afford, many people may buy who otherwise would not trust their ability to afford the property. If they tell me to butt out when I ask, that's their prerogative - I tried to do my duty and they absolved me of that portion of it. It's not acceptable if they want me to do the loan (a loan officer has to have the information to do the loan), but I can't force anyone to do their loan with me. Nonetheless, even the most jealous guardian of personal information will concede it was a professional necessity for me to ask. What actually reassures a lot of people, particularly in this market environment, about what they can afford is being told what they cannot afford - information I cover with everyone who'll let me. This information has lost me more than one prospect, but it reassures and solidifies the commitments of most.

If you cannot agree to find them something they want within a certain budget - purchase price budget, not monthly payment - you need to sit down and have a frank discussion about where the market is, and what their budget will actually buy. If their budget won't stretch to what they want, where they want to live, it's part of earning that full service commission to inform them of that fact. If they're going to have to settle for a fixer, a lesser property, or whatever in order to live within that budget, well, managing client expectations is part of every job that has clients. Unless you're personally going to extend them a loan they can really afford in order to buy the property, this means working within what they can afford with a sustainable loans at current market rates that they can actually qualify for, and explaining what they can afford if their eyes are bigger than their wallet. If I ask and they tell me that they don't want to share the information with me, it's a free country and that is their right. It may be hurting themselves by dismantling one of the checkpoints which is there to keep them out of trouble, but it remains their right. I'm fine with them refusing because it means I don't have to do some of the work I have to do for other clients, and have less legal responsibility, to boot. It still doesn't completely absolve me - I've still got to pay attention to any other clues that may be present - but it greatly lessens what I'm responsible for. Failure to ask about their budget and financial situation is prima facie evidence of gross negligence.

Putting clients into property you know they cannot afford, or can afford only with the aid of temporary and unsustainable financing arrangements, is a violation of fiduciary duty, and willful ignorance is not an excuse. If you don't want to be responsible to a client's best interest, find another line of work, like cell phone sales, where you'll fit in just fine.

As far as being a loan officer goes, the question is rarely "Can I get this loan through?" Much more often, it's "Should I? Am I really helping these people if I do this?" Not to mention whether or not I'm likely to end up buying the loan back from the lender. It doesn't benefit me to get a $1500 check if I were to end up paying out potentially $400,000 for a loan that went bad, any more than it benefits the client to be put into a loan where they can afford the payments now, but sure as gravity they won't be able to two or three years down the line.

You cannot provide service or expertise, and be compensated for it, without the associated liability. I'm not a lawyer, but that's my understanding of the law in a nutshell. You can try and duck out, sabotaging your business, your career, and your profession as a whole, or you can stand up and say in a loud clear voice that you are worthy of every penny of what you make, because you accept the challenge of that responsibility. Our profession is better off without the former sort, and they are unworthy of our protection. We should gladly cooperate in hounding those sorts out of the business. Not only is the profession better off without them, we'll be better off without them. On the other hand, there's room for as many of the latter sort as want to practice real estate.

Caveat Emptor

In many transactions these days, the buyer has absolutely no money, or an amount that is not sufficient to pay the costs that they would traditionally be expected to pay in order to close the transaction. Nonetheless, in today's buyer driven market, often the seller still wants to do business with them.



The usual way it's handled is in Seller Paid Closing Costs. The Seller gives the buyer an allowance to cover their share of the costs.



Lenders have been somewhat tolerant of the practice of late, at least so long as the appraisal comes in at or above the official sale price. However, more of them are once again starting to revert to the treatment this trick traditionally got, which is to say, if the sale price included a rebate to the buyer, then the sale price as far as the lender was concerned was the official price less the rebate. In other words, seller's net. Remember, lenders value real estate the same as accountants, on the LCM principal - Lesser of Cost (which is to say purchase price) or market (which is to say the appraised value). If the seller is giving the buyer money back, then the official price listed on the transaction isn't really the price, is it? Do advertisers tease you with the gross price of stereo or computer gear before the rebate, or the net price after the rebate? Same principle here. The lenders traditionally took this stance, although it has been more relaxed in the highly competitive lender's market of late. The lenders are (typically) not going to lend more money than the lesser of those the two variables, cost and market, and they will base the loan parameters on whichever is less. You can always buy a house for more money than the value, as long as you have the cash to make up the difference. But 100 percent financing seems almost de rigeur of late.



The Sellers get their house sold. That and the ego thing of the official sale price seem to be the benefits to them. I would certainly rather sell for the seller's net in the first place, if I'm a seller, without an allowance, because I have to pay commission on that higher amount. A $10,000 allowance (as has become common here) costs the seller $700 to $800 or so in increased costs - agents commissions, title insurance, escrow fees, transfer taxes - even if the sale price is $10,000 higher because of it. This is neglecting the potential effects of taxes due to exceeding the $250,000 (or $500,000) maximum gain exemption from the IRS code Section 121. I recommend against it for sellers unless there is a substantial deposit, as it is often indicative of a not very qualified buyer. Even then, it's a real good idea to talk to your tax person.



The Buyers get a deal, or so it appears at first blush. A piece of property without having to save for closing costs. In many cases, they don't have to put a penny down, either. Pretty cool, eh? Get a house and actually skip a month (due to the allowance covering prepaid interest), so effectively putting cash in your pocket. Keep in mind, however, that the average seller is going to inflate the sales price to match, where (if they were smart) they would rather have accepted the net sales price without rebate. Furthermore, at least here in California, property taxes are based upon official original sales price, so you'll be paying for it as long as you own the property. Finally, because your purchase price, and therefore your loan, is going to be higher, your payment is going to be higher, you'll pay higher loan costs every time you refinance, and your eventual net on the property will be lower. If it is the only way to get into the property, and the deal otherwise makes sense, that's fine - but don't kid yourself that you got free money. Chances are that you're going to pay far more than the amount of any allowance because you got it.





If it's bad for the seller, bad for the buyer, and risky for the lender, why does it keep happening so much?



Well, it's a sale for sellers. The property has now been disposed off. It's also an ego defense for sellers. Instead of $470,000, they can tell everyone they got $480,000. So long as they don't mention the allowance, it sounds like a far better price to their friends, family, and soon to be ex-neighbors. In short, bragging rights. Buyers, it gets them into the property, often without coming up with a penny and allowing them to save one month's rent or payment, effectively putting cash in their pocket.



Real Estate and Mortgage folks, get bigger commissions. $10,000 in sales price gets translated to $100 per 1 percent of commission. This is anywhere from an extra $100 to an extra $300 or $400 for each of the offices, buyer's, seller's, and loan. Furthermore, I know of loan agents who extract larger commissions because "it's such a hard loan." It does make the loan harder, but not by another point of origination's worth. Wouldn't you like to have extra money for essentially the same work? I assure you that your average real estate agent and loan officer are no different than most folks.



There is nothing wrong with this practice, so long as everybody knows what's going on. But it's certainly not something you want to do if you have a choice.



Caveat Emptor.

One of the things that has a lot of issues is any transaction between related people. Actually, this is not limited to purely family transactions, but applies also to transfers among partnerships and their partners, corporations and their officers



The market theory holding that the value of a property is what is agreed to between a willing buyer and a willing seller is subject to the proviso that neither buyer nor seller has a reason to inflate or deflate what the property is worth to them. If the parties are related, there is an obvious reason to think that this may not necessarily be the case. Parents do things for their children all the time, siblings for each other, and as you're probably aware if you work in corporate America, major stockholders, investors, and executives often manipulate corporate versus personal transactions for less than wholesome reasons. Partnerships do the darnedest things, as well.



The issue, as far as the lender goes, is that they are trying to safeguard their money. Lending is a risk based business, and the lender wants to know that they are not taking more of a risk than they intend to when they take on this loan.



Let's say Jane Jones is CEO of SuperColossal Corporation. She wants to manipulate her compensation, so she has SuperColossal sell her property for half it's real value.



Now this is actually okay by most lenders, if not securities regulators, IRS agents, et al. The loan is based upon the purchase price, the appraisal comes in double the purchase amount, and the lender assumes less risk than they price the loan for. Remember, the property is valued based upon LCM: Lower of Cost (purchase price) or Market value. When market value comes in high, the lender is covered. What isn't so cool is if Jane Jones sells SuperColossal the property back at twice its value. If the corporation gets a loan for 75 percent of value, that's at least a third of the lender's money they're not going to get back in case of default, which becomes likely when Jane is fired and the new CEO asks why they are paying the loan when they owe half again what the property is worth.



Needless to say, the lenders want to guard against that. Many lenders will not do related party transactions, period. For the ones that do, they will want to be very careful on the appraisal, which has now become their only guard against getting into an indefensible position. Many times, lenders may require related party transactions to go through certain appraisers, they may require in house appraisers, they may require multiple appraisals, and they may require that there be no contact between principals and appraisers. Whatever their required precautions, they need to be followed, as failing to do so will cause the loan to be rejected.



I'm going over this to make a point. Many lenders have other requirements as well. Some may require full documentation only, others require that the loans have full recourse (they can come after you legally if they lose money). Each and every lender creates their own policy, and if your transaction is between related parties, it is probably more important to inquire about related party transfer policy and requirements than it is to get a good rate at a competittive price. Not much use having a great quote if you can't meet the lender's requirements. Even worse if it causes you to waste time with a lender whose requirements you cannot meet, and now your deadline for the transaction is here and you don't have a loan, and so cannot complete the transaction.



Caveat Emptor.

Once upon a time, this was a good way to get more money for your listing. This led to a classic tragedy of the commons. Because it didn't take hardly any extra time, and there was no reason not to do so, listing agents will claim there are multiple offers with practically every property. It's not like they are expected to furnish any evidence.

Because of this, in the last few months, I've had listing agents try to tell me that there were suddenly multiple offers on property that has sat on the market for months. If I don't see any evidence that there's a reason for it to suddenly have multiple offers, such as a recent massive drop in the price, I find these claims dubious at best. It might be believable if the property has been on the market for three days, and has not recently been listed before that. If it's been on the market more than three weeks, such a claim is dubious at best. I recently talked a pair of clients into making an offer on a property that had expired twice and been re-listed for a third time. A week prior to that, a special incentive to buyer's agents had expired. In short, there was every reason to believe that that we had a clear field, with nobody else making offers. As I always do, I included information on comparable properties that had recently sold in the neighborhood, of which I had inspected two, and the issues that this property had. The listing agent claimed there were multiple offers and gave the kind of counter I hadn't seen since the height of the seller's market three years ago, demanding a "best and highest" counter. I and my clients jointly countered back that we'd agree to their conditions, if they'd agree to our price, and gave them 24 hours to take it or leave it.

Now before you pull something like this, you do need to have multiple counters in point of fact. Because the flinty-eyed buyer's specialists know better. Even if they do, in fact, believe that you've got multiple offers, we're going to tell our clients that it's best to counter back as if the seller is lying. Essentially, we call their bluff. If they do have multiple offers and someone is stupid enough to play ball with them, that's no skin off my client's nose. With over forty properties for sale for every buyer, if this seller doesn't want to be realistic, we can keep looking until we find a seller that will.

For an intelligent buyer in this market, even if there are multiple offers upon a property, it doesn't make us willing to offer more for the property. It means we want to expedite our deadlines for the sellers to respond, and it means we're likely to make subsequent counters with a multiple offer contingency (in other words, we're making offers on multiple properties now. If another offer gets accepted before you accept ours, we're going with that one). Mostly though, it means that this seller, and their listing agent, have their heads stuck in the land of wishful thinking, and it's time to consider another property. Nobody can make them sell against their will, but we can find another property where they seller isn't so far gone in denial, and where the agent has done a better job of explaining the realities of the current market. It's not like there's any shortage of choices.

Let's face it: Unless you fax over the offer, complete with all terms and the competing agent's name and their contact information so I can verify it, there is no reason for me to believe that you have a competing offer. If you do this, the offer is either better than my clients', or not as good. If it's not as good, the leverage is provides is minimal, in any market. If it's better than my clients' offer, it's either something my clients are willing to beat or it isn't. If it isn't, your leverage is still negligible. It's only if the other offer is better, but my clients are willing to beat it, that this trick offers you any leverage whatsoever. In this market, it's more likely to make us act like I discussed in the last paragraph - because in this market, no property is worth getting attached to before you own it. Let me baldly state that I also understand the potential benefits of collusion with your friend the agent from another office. She colludes with you on your client's property, and you collude with her on hers, each stating that they do, in fact, have clients making thus and such offers on that property. Since once again, it's trivial to convince yourself that it's in your client's best interest, even verified offers aren't going to mean a whole lot to a smart buyer's agent in this market. The buyer's market may not last much longer, but while it does, there are still no properties worth a buyer getting attached to them before closing. And for all the properties I've made offers on where the listing agent claimed there were multiple offers, I've never had one of them offer any real evidence.

People willing to price their properties to the market, and negotiate realistically, can sell properties very quickly due to the fact that comparatively few sellers are competing well for the buyers that are out there. In the last couple months, I've been involved in the sale of two beautiful properties - and two others that were plug-ugly, but sold quickly because the sellers and their agents had their heads in the right place. In one instance, I even had someone bidding against my clients, but we nonetheless consummated the sale quickly.

If you're trying to sell in this market, and you negotiate unrealistically, you are only hurting yourself. That buyer's agent can find them something better, cheaper, making the agent's client much happier. Even if you do have multiple offers, it might be a good idea not to particularly act like it. You can check the multiple offers box without being aggressive about it.

The property I mentioned earlier? Where the agent and seller acted like it was still a seller's market? It's still for sale, and my clients have moved into another property. The relocation company that owns it is out roughly $6000 per month. Had they priced it to market, and negotiated reasonably, they likely would have sold. If they simply negotiated reasonably, they would have sold it to my clients. My clients have their new home - they're happy. The sellers? Not so much. They're paying about $6000 per month for an empty property. It's been on the market for a year now, and it's not like they have any real alternative to selling. That's $70,000 they've flushed down the drain to no good purpose, and it's not like there's any chance of them getting more than the property is really worth.

For listing agents who refuse to act like their clients are competing for buyer business, and have to compete hard under current conditions, they are violating client interests no less than if they counseled the client to accept an offer from someone acting as a straw buyer for the agent, personally. In fact, I rather suspect this particular agent of being Sherrie Shark, but there's nothing I can do for the owners as a buyer's agent. It's not legal for me to so much as contact them without going through Sherrie. Nor would it benefit my clients in any demonstrable way. It just gets me and potentially my clients caught up in a legal morass to no beneficial purpose. So the owners are high and dry on their own. It's our profession's problem, but there's nothing I can do about it as an individual.

Caveat Emptor (and Vendor!)