Web sta­tis­tics include the terms peo­ple use to search on my web­sites. Through the first 36 hours of Decem­ber 2009, the search terms which brought peo­ple to GNAde.com were:

1. wash­ing­ton state rodent dis­clo­sure buy home
2. stairs near the liv­ing room
3. home sell­ers dis­clo­sure form wash­ing­ton state
4. first time home buyer tax credit seattle
5. din­ing room with sky­light light­ing room design
6. mount­lake terrace
7. real estate attor­ney north­gate washington
8. cus­tomer tes­ti­mo­ni­als exam­ples real estate
9. form 17.doc washington
10. real estate laws for wash­ing­ton state
11. under­stand form 17 seller disclosure
12. bed mas­ter room door out
13. fail­ure to pro­vide resale cer­tifi­cate wa
14. exam­ple of home buy­ers form 17
15. the liv­ing end 1998
16. brick tudor homes
17. first time home buyer seattle
18. form 17 wash­ing­ton state law
19. dec­la­ra­tion state­ment real estate washington
20. wash­ing­ton state form 17
21. real estate seat­tle area
22. prop­erty dealer — tes­ti­mo­nial by clients
23. 8000 tax credit flyer

Six of the 23 terms deal with seller dis­clo­sure or men­tion directly Form 17, the Wash­ing­ton Seller Dis­clo­sure State­ment which I have called “form fatale.” Two are look­ing for infor­ma­tion about the which has not only been extended for tax credit for first-time buy­ers but also expanded to include tax cred­its for cur­rent home buy­ers.

Five search terms deal with spe­cific loca­tions (Mount­lake Ter­race and North­gate ) and home style or fea­tures (brick tudor, stair loca­tion, sky­lights). The lat­ter where likely image searches.

The one seach term on the list that has me baf­fled is “the liv­ing end 1998.”

The March 25, 2009 edi­tion of The Wall Street Jour­nal (WSJ) car­ried one of the most lucid and log­i­cal expla­na­tions of the cause of our cur­rent finan­cial cri­sis. The arti­cle — Toxic Assets Were Hid­den Assets — was penned by none other than Her­nando De Soto whose book,  The Mys­tery of Cap­i­tal caught my atten­tion some two years ago.

I posted a blog about this book on SERENE™ back in Jan­u­ary 2007 which is worth repeat­ing in part:

Her­nando De Soto, makes a very good case for pri­vate own­er­ship of prop­erty as the engine of any econ­omy. With­out hav­ing doc­u­mented proof of prop­erty own­er­ship entre­pre­neur­ship would be impos­si­ble. Over 80 per­cent of all busi­nesses in this coun­try are started because the home served as col­lat­eral.  He says:

This wasn’t always pos­si­ble. After the Cal­i­for­nia gold rush there were about 800 sep­a­rate prop­erty juris­dic­tions, each with its own laws. Out­side each juris­dic­tion a prop­erty did not “exist”. It was with­out value. The ear­lier squat­ters who occu­pied land did so out­side the for­mal legal sys­tem. It took sev­eral decades to cre­ate the nation-wide for­mal legal own­er­ship of prop­erty that can be doc­u­mented through title.

I’ve bolded in the above the word “doc­u­mented” to empha­size the miss­ing char­ac­ter­is­tic of the newly-minted finan­cial instru­ments known as deriv­a­tives — mortgage-backed secu­ri­ties, col­lat­er­al­ized debt oblig­a­tions, and credit default swaps.

Not sur­pris­ingly, De Soto’s com­men­tary in the WSJ picks up where his book leaves off:

These deriv­a­tives are the root of the credit crunch. Why? Unlike all other prop­erty paper, deriv­a­tives are not required by law to be recorded, con­tin­u­ally tracked and tied to the assets they rep­re­sent. Nobody knows pre­cisely how many there are, where they are, and who is finally account­able for them. Thus, there is wide­spread fear that poten­tial bor­row­ers and recip­i­ents of cap­i­tal with too many non­per­form­ing deriv­a­tives will be unable to repay their loans. As trust in prop­erty paper breaks down it sets off a chain reac­tion, par­a­lyz­ing credit and invest­ment, which shrinks trans­ac­tions and leads to a cat­a­strophic drop in employ­ment and in the value of everyone’titles property.

In other words, what has taken us cen­turies to develop, which is the doc­u­men­ta­tion and cat­e­goris­ing and reg­is­ter­ing of own­er­ship of real prop­erty (title) has been will­fully ignored by the peo­ple who’ve invented these derivatives.

In De Soto’s own words, his WSJ arti­cle says:

Ever since humans started trad­ing, lend­ing and invest­ing beyond the con­fines of the fam­ily and the tribe, we have depended on legally authen­ti­cated writ­ten state­ments to get the facts about things of value. Over the past 200 years, that legal author­ity has matured into a global con­sen­sus on the pro­ce­dures, stan­dards and prin­ci­ples required to doc­u­ment facts in a way that every­one can eas­ily under­stand and trust.

The result is a for­mi­da­ble prop­erty sys­tem with rules and record­ing mech­a­nisms that fix on paper the facts that allow us to hold, trans­fer, trans­form and use every­thing we own, from stocks to screen­plays. The only paper rep­re­sent­ing an asset that is not cen­trally recorded, stan­dard­ized and eas­ily tracked are derivatives.

(Empha­sis mine).

De Soto does not believe the solu­tion to the cur­rent cri­sis lies in “cling­ing to the hope that the exist­ing mar­ket will even­tu­ally sort things out.” What is the mar­ket to sort out if the mar­ket does not know who owns it, much less what “it” is worth?

“Mod­ern mar­kets only work if the paper is reli­able,” De Soto concludes.

As a Real­tor® I know this only too well. Doc­u­men­ta­tion of own­er­ship and value are crit­i­cal to every real estate trans­ac­tion. Cloud on title is a bad thing.

The cloud that dark­ens most of these deriv­a­tives needs to be lifted before we can see our way out ot this mess.

Because much of my busi­ness revolves around relo­ca­tion I help many peo­ple rent before they buy.  (Some never buy and that’s fine with me, too.)  Tomor­row, a young fam­ily who trans­ferred from Europe to Seat­tle with Amazon.com will move into an east­side rental home.  The loca­tion is per­fect: walk­ing dis­tance to a Park & Ride for an easy com­mute via I-90 across Lake Wash­ing­ton. The neigh­bor­hood, close to Lake Wash­ing­ton,  is quiet with plenty of parks and play­grounds  — just what a mother of a three-year old would want.

When we started our col­lab­o­ra­tive search via the Web, the young fam­ily had their eyes set on Seat­tle neigh­bor­hoods,  specif­i­cally the Queen Ann and Green Lake areas.  As it turned out the two most attrac­tive homes we saw after their arrival were one in the Walling­ford neigh­bor­hood and one in Queen Anne — the lat­ter chiefly because of a won­der­ful view of the city.  But there were draw­backs with all these homes:  too far to walk to every­day con­ve­niences, restric­tive park­ing and heavy local traffic.

What these new­com­ers to Seat­tle liked were trees, parks, and open spaces. That’s what they liked about the east­side neigh­bor­hoods. Not hav­ing a car ini­tially and intend­ing to buy just one car, the prox­im­ity to pub­lic trans­port was crit­i­cal. Sur­pris­ingly, some best east­side neigh­bor­hoods offered greater con­ve­nience than some of the Seat­tle loca­tions. Finally, the qual­ity of  pre-school facil­i­ties made the South Belle­vue home nearly ideal.

Because exe­cut­ing a lease can be done fairly quickly I edu­cate my clients about land­lord and ten­ant law at the out­set.  I will give them a stan­dard lease to review before the time comes to fill it out, date and sign.

Find­ing the right rental home is a good thing.  Rent­ing that home the right way will make the stay enjoyable.

P.S.

To the unini­ti­ated, the process of rent­ing  a home would appear to be sim­ple. After all, there is no financ­ing, no title issues, no escrow.  In fact, an inex­pe­ri­enced single-family home land­lord and a less than qual­i­fied renter can get into plenty of trou­ble.  That’s why many home rentals are han­dled by real estate agents or, even bet­ter, by prop­erty man­age­ment com­pa­nies. They know how to qual­ify a renter with credit and back­ground checks, they use rental con­tracts designed to elim­i­nate mis­un­der­stand­ings and are in com­pli­ance with the law. Their ser­vice includes a walk-through with a detailed check list that cap­tures defects before move-in. They know to give the renter required infor­ma­tion on the dan­gers of lead paint and mold. They will de-commision that hot tub to avoid an acci­dent and elim­i­nate unnec­es­sary liabilty.

You’ve heard all you can stand about that Mad­off guy.  You’ve read about yet another Ponzi scheme, another fore­clo­sure fraud artist, another dis­hon­est bro­ker, agent, etc. You’re dis­gusted about cheats and liars large and small. So am I.

Black sheep are found in every pro­fes­sion. They seem to mul­ti­ply when oppor­tu­nites to cheat are on the rise. How­ever, oppor­tu­nity tempts not only pro­fes­sion­als but ama­teurs. And there are more ama­teurs than professionals.

When Seat­tle real estate was hot in 2005 and 2006 (it started to sim­mer down in August 2007) I missed out on a lot of busi­ness. Who needs an agent to sell a home when an ad on craigslist will bring crowds to the seller’s door? How many For-Sale-By-Owner deals went down with no real estate agent rep­re­sen­ta­tion for the buyer? How many buy­ers went straight to the list­ing agent in the hope of sav­ing some money?

How many more buy­ers used a rel­a­tive or friend with a real estate license just a few weeks old? How many peo­ple got a real estate license just to buy for them­selves and go into the flip­ping homes business?

How many of these do-it-yourself artists are now fac­ing fore­clo­sure?

Too bad there are no sta­tis­tics on this.

The prospect of a new job in another coun­try or city can be excit­ing. The first move is to look for infor­ma­tion about the new city on the web. Often, that first move is made by the spouse or “sig­nif­i­cant other” who is not start­ing a new job but a whole new life in a new place. Nat­u­rally, ques­tions about hous­ing, neigh­bor­hoods, and home prices top the list. When there are chil­dren, edu­ca­tion is another pri­or­ity concern.

A Sense of Antic­i­pa­tion: We are mov­ing to Seattle!

The move may be months away but pic­tures of dis­tant homes for sale are being for­warded to rel­a­tives and friends. “Look where we could be liv­ing in Seat­tle!” Sev­eral real estate agents receive emails from what looks to them like a promis­ing prospect. “We are relo­cat­ing to Seat­tle; can you send us some more infor­ma­tion on this home?”

The Real­ity: the Transferee’s Relo­ca­tion is Being Outsourced.

Else­where, in the other world — the real world of cor­po­rate relo­ca­tion — com­pany poli­cies and pro­ce­dures on relo­ca­tion deter­mine what hap­pens next. The relo­ca­tion of an employee is an out­sourced activ­ity del­e­gated to a relo­ca­tion man­age­ment com­pany which han­dles every aspect of the relo­ca­tion and, most impor­tantly, the cost of the relocation.

The Real­ity: Relo­ca­tion is Expen­sive and Costs Need to be Managed.

Accord­ing to World­wide ERC (for­merly Employee Relo­ca­tion Coun­cil), the cur­rent, aver­age cost of a domes­tic relo­ca­tion was for:

• Cur­rent Employee Home­owner $62,185
• New Hire Home Owner $55,165
• Cur­rent Employee Renter $18,365
• New Hire Renter $16,177

Accord­ing to ERC, of the nearly 400,000 trans­fers gen­er­ated by ERC mem­ber com­pa­nies, 1/3 are new hires and 2/3 are cur­rent employ­ees and 54% are home own­ers while 46% are renters. (ERC pro­vides no data for inter­na­tional relo­ca­tions but we can safely assume that the costs are higher.)

Man­ag­ing the Cost Means Man­ag­ing the Transferee

It’s under­stand­able that relo­ca­tion man­age­ment com­pa­nies are charged by their cor­po­rate clients to man­age these costs. The sooner the trans­feree can become a pro­duc­tive employee the bet­ter. The less the trans­feree has to worry about logis­tics and life out­side work the more likely the trans­feree will be productive.

Thus, many relo­ca­tion man­age­ment com­pa­nies like Car­tus (for­merly known as Cen­dant) hire des­ti­na­tion con­sul­tant com­pa­nies like Full Cir­cle that ensure the smoothest pos­si­ble “set­tling in” of the trans­feree. When deal­ing with inter­na­tional relo­ca­tions the des­ti­na­tion con­sul­tants are deal­ing with visa issues, open­ing bank accounts and obtain­ing social secu­rity cards — activ­i­ties that require con­sid­er­able knowl­edge and exper­tise. In the end, this exper­tise ben­e­fits the trans­feree and saves the employer money.

Reduc­ing the Cost of Relo­ca­tion by Turn­ing an Expense into Income

If the relo­ca­tion involves real estate — sell­ing and/or buy­ing — relo­ca­tion costs are “shifted” from Car­tus and the cor­po­rate client, such as Microsoft, to com­pa­nies and indi­vid­u­als involved in the real estate transaction.

Here’s how it works. The relo­ca­tion man­age­ment com­pany works with select real estate bro­kers who assign agents to work with the trans­feree. For that priv­i­lege, the agent pays a refer­ral fee — up to 40% of the real estate com­mis­sion — to the relo­ca­tion man­age­ment com­pany. If the trans­feree sells and buys, this hap­pens twice.

Con­trol­ling the Process

In the case of Car­tus, the pre­ferred bro­kers are the ones that are owned by Real­ogy, the par­ent com­pany of Car­tus. The Real­ogy Fran­chise Group con­sists of well-known real estate com­pa­nies, includ­ing CENTURY 21® and Cold­well Banker®.

A link on the Realogy’s web­site leads to the Title Resource Group (TRG) which “…is a full-service title and set­tle­ment ser­vices com­pany” that …“serves real estate com­pa­nies, cor­po­ra­tions and finan­cial insti­tu­tions in sup­port of res­i­den­tial and com­mer­cial real estate transactions”…“TRG is a nation­ally man­aged fam­ily of com­pa­nies oper­at­ing under well-known, local brands.” On the fact sheet it says that “TRG is as an inte­gral part of the Car­tus Asset Recov­ery Pro­gram.” Expense recov­ery may be more accurate.

The Inter­net Inter­feres with the Process

Back to the begin­ning: the trans­feree and any “sig­nif­i­cant other” are intel­li­gent, internet-savvy indi­vid­u­als. They would like to have a say in the selec­tion of the real estate agent. To them the choice of neigh­bor­hood and schools should not be left to some­one cho­sen by cor­po­rate rela­tion­ships. The trans­feree may have found an agent who speaks her lan­guage and knows the dif­fer­ence between liv­ing in Munich and Seat­tle because the agent has lived there him­self. The trans­feree may also want to be the one to choose the mort­gage lender since this is a major finan­cial deci­sion which requires a great degree of trust which can only be found in a per­sonal rela­tion­ship. Nei­ther the pur­chase of a home nor the financ­ing should be treated as a commodity.

The Trans­feree Has a Choice

Many trans­fer­ees don’t know that they have a choice because the relo­ca­tion process is not as trans­par­ent as it should be. In most cases, all a trans­feree has to do is to make her/his desires known to the employer and/or the relo­ca­tion man­age­ment com­pany who then will have the transferee’s choice of broker/agent sign a refer­ral agree­ment. This agree­ment allows for part of the com­mis­sion to be paid back as a refer­ral fee at the clos­ing of the real estate transaction.

Pos­si­ble Conflicts

What if the broker/agent refuses to sign the agree­ment and the trans­feree insists on choos­ing the agent? What if the agent is a long-time friend of a trans­feree who is mov­ing to another city? Can the relo­ca­tion man­age­ment com­pany insist on the refer­ral fee “after the fact?”

Tor­tu­ous Inter­fer­ence and RESPA Issues

After-the-fact-referral-fees are not a recent issue. An arti­cle in Realty Times, pub­lished first in 2000, stated: “Tor­tu­ous inter­fer­ence is the inter­fer­ing by one real estate licensee [broker/agent] with a con­trac­tual rela­tion­ship between another real estate licensee [broker/agent] and their client. This is a vio­la­tion of license law in every state. This law is bro­ken every time a relo­ca­tion com­pany speaks with a trans­feree or the transferee’s agent about a refer­ral fee after a con­trac­tual rela­tion­ship has begun.”

The same arti­cle also raises con­cerns with RESPA — the Real Estate Set­tle­ment Pro­ce­dures Act: “…unjust enrich­ment is a RESPA law vio­la­tion and is reportable to the Depart­ment of HUD [Hous­ing and Urban Devel­op­ment). RESPA reg­u­la­tions are such that no fee can be charged, received or paid in a real estate trans­ac­tion with­out due cause. In other words, any fee charged must be earned and deserv­ing in order to be paid or received.”

Cen­tral­ized Man­age­ment vs Trans­feree Choice

The best relo­ca­tion prac­tice takes advan­tage of the valu­able ser­vices of relo­ca­tion com­pa­nies and experts while respect­ing the transferee’s right and desire for per­sonal ser­vice. If YOU have been trans­ferred, what has been YOUR experience?

Share it with oth­ers on SERENE where you will be heard and seen.

On June 12, the Wash­ing­ton State “Dis­tressed Prop­er­ties Law” took effect. That’s House Bill — HB 2791 If you have the time to plow through the bill, here’s the whole offi­cial mess as a PDF file. If you have a shorter atten­tion span, read the June 6 Press Release from the Wash­ing­ton Attor­ney Gen­eral.

So, what’s the big deal, you ask.

Big deal because you, too, are a “Poten­tial Dis­tressed Home Owner” if you

1. Are at risk of loss for non-payment of prop­erty taxes,
2. in default under a mortgage,
3. 30 days behind on mort­gage — OR
4. believe that you could default on your mort­gage within 4 months and tell your lawyer, real estate agent, lender, mort­gage or credit coun­selor, etc.

The bill has many flaws,

such as point 4 in the list above, vague word­ing, and sweep­ing def­i­n­i­tions, but there are two major flaws worth not­ing. To be a Poten­tial Dis­tressed Home­owner you must be

1. occu­py­ing the property,
2. the prop­erty must be your pri­mary res­i­dence, and
3. this prop­erty has from 1 to 4 res­i­den­tial units

Any­thing miss­ing here?

Yep, the Dis­tressed Prop­erty Law does not cover any build­ing with more than 4 units, which excludes almost every con­do­minium com­plex.

What makes this an impor­tant flaw, you ask? Well, the pur­pose of HB 2791 is to pro­tect res­i­den­tial prop­erty own­ers in Wash­ing­ton from those shady char­ac­ters who are prey­ing on the dis­tressed home owner. It is to pro­tect them from con artist who “skim equity” and “steal homes”.

Since a good num­ber of first-time-buyers buy con­dos and since some of them financed their dream with ques­tion­able mort­gages this leaves a whole lot of tar­gets for the scam artists to pur­sue.

The other major flaw

of the bill is that it does not exempt real estate agents. (In other states that passed sim­i­lar leg­is­la­tion, real estate agents are exempt,) It is not that real estate agents are nec­es­sar­ily bet­ter than the aver­age per­son, but they are already cov­ered under other leg­is­la­tion, namely RCW 18.86 which gov­erns real estate prac­tice.

The bill cre­ates a whole new pro­fes­sion: the “Dis­tressed Home Con­sul­tant.” That new label was meant to apply to legit­i­mate fore­clo­sure spe­cial­ists and scam artists. It now also applies to real estate agents. The bill does exempt oth­ers equally likely involved in real estate trans­ac­tions: lenders, mort­gage bro­kers and lawyers.

These two flaws may be major but this one beats both.

Each bill that becomes leg­is­la­tion includes a “Fis­cal Note” which states the esti­mated Fis­cal Impact of the bill — that’s the impact on the bud­get, I sup­pose. And since that bud­get is paid for by our taxes that means the fis­cal impact on you and me. Accord­ing to the math wiz­ards in Olympia, the Dis­tressed Prop­erty is esti­mated to have “No Fis­cal Impact.”

No Fis­cal Impact? Let me count the ways.

The bill has resulted in numer­ous rewrit­ten and newly printed real estate trans­ac­tion forms. It has already cre­ated and will cre­ate more con­fu­sion and waste of time for any­one involved in buy­ing and sell­ing a home. That includes all the afore­men­tioned poten­tial dis­tressed home own­ers. The worst and most costly impact of this bill will be this: Every sane real estate agent will stay miles away from any­body sus­pected of har­bor­ing thoughts of being a poten­tially dis­tressed home owner. The poten­tial lia­bil­ity to be sued is sim­ply too great. Ulti­mately, this bill may achieve the oppo­site results of what was intended: more fore­clo­sures and more bank­rupt­cies. The shady char­ac­ters meant to be deterred by this bill will find other ways to ply their trade. Most condo own­ers remain unpro­tected and should watch out.

Much has and will be writ­ten about this law.

Here’s how a real estate fore­clo­sure spe­cial­ist (now becom­ing my Dis­tressed Home Con­sul­tant col­league) views this bill. Your com­ments are welcome.

Almost as inevitable as death and taxes, the Wash­ing­ton Seller Dis­clo­sure State­ment is a sure thing when it comes to sell­ing res­i­den­tial prop­erty in Wash­ing­ton State. Form 17, as it is also called, looms large and larger.

Get­ting more com­plex over time.

The state leg­is­la­ture keeps adding and chang­ing Form 17. The last major change was in 2003. Sub­se­quent effec­tive dates and changes/additions per­tained to:

• Jan­u­ary, 2005: sex offender in area
• June, 2005: prox­im­ity to farms
• June, 2006: farm prox­im­ity lan­guage changed
• June, 2007: envi­ron­men­tal sec­tion added plus other major changes

Major changes include:

• Def­i­n­i­tion and des­tinc­tion between improved and unim­proved res­i­den­tial property
• Amends the exist­ing Form 17 used for “improved” property
• New Seller Dis­clo­sure State­ment to be pro­vided to buyer of “unim­proved” prop­erty zoned for res­i­den­tial use
• Lim­its a Buyer’s abil­ity to waive receipt of either form

Changes to sec­tions of the form include:

• Sec­tion 6 – title of sec­tion changed from “Com­mon Inter­ests” to “Home­own­ers’ Association/Common Interests”.
• Sec­tion 7 – title of sec­tion changed from “Gen­eral” to “Envi­ron­men­tal”. This sec­tion must be pro­vided to the Buyer, and receipt of this sec­tion can­not be waived by the Buyer, if the answer to any ques­tion in the sec­tion is “yes”.
• Sec­tion 7(D) – replaces old ques­tions related to flood­ing with new ques­tion ask­ing about exis­tence of shore­lines, wet­lands, flood­plains, and crit­i­cal areas on the property.

Who must pro­vide Form 17?

The require­ment is get­ting tougher. Not hav­ing occu­pied the premises is likely no longer a valid excuse. One excep­tion remains: when the owner has passed away.

What if the Seller does not pro­vide Form 17?

The buyer can walk away from the pur­chase just before clos­ing and get the earnest money back.

What’s the role of the real estate agent?

The agent can not assist the seller in fill­ing out the form. The buyer acknowl­edges this by sign­ing below a state­ment that reads: “…the dis­clo­sures made herein are those of the seller only, and not of any real estate licensee or other third party.”

Must agents dis­close what they learn from Form 17?

Once the Form 17 has been pro­vided to the buyer the answers become known to the real estate licensees rep­re­sent­ing the seller and the buyer. Hav­ing learned of mate­r­ial facts through Form 17, the real estate licensees must dis­close them.

I am not using an agent to sell my home. Do I need to pro­vide Form 17?

Absolutely.

If you are inter­ested in the details of the new con­tent and ratio­nale behind the changes to the Wash­ing­ton State Seller Dis­clo­sure State­ment, visit the Wash­ing­ton State leg­is­la­ture web­site (pdf file).

Now we are both licensed. My wife, the “loan orig­i­na­tor” and I, the “real estate sales­per­son.” You can check for your­self at the Wash­ing­ton Depart­ment of Licens­ing Query Sys­tem. You can search for all kinds of licensed pro­fes­sion­als, from archi­tects to cos­me­tol­o­gists, and apprais­ers to embalmers and apprais­ers to real estate bro­kers and sales­per­sons (agents).

If you are look­ing for my wife you need to head over to the Wash­ing­ton State Depart­ment of Finan­cial Insti­tu­tions (DFI) and check the Licensee Data­base. Among the kind of sub­jects you can search are Invest­ment Com­pa­nies, Escrow Offi­cers, Mort­gage Bro­kers, and now also Loan Originators.

The photo mon­tage above shows the online search results for her and me (exclud­ing the pho­tos). She now works for Choice Lend­ing  in Bellevue.

It’s hard to believe but until Jan­u­ary 1, 2007 loan orig­i­na­tors did not have to be licensed in the State of Wash­ing­ton. Given the tremen­dous respon­si­bil­ity that comes with advis­ing some­one on financ­ing res­i­den­tial prop­erty, I think this change is for the bet­ter. Some cyn­ics may dis­agree. “The state’s just see­ing this as a way to col­lect more fees,” or “a licensed crook is still a crook” are some of the arguments.

I was told at a recent real estate work­shop that some loan orig­i­na­tors did not line up to be fin­ger­printed for the license because they would not pass the crim­i­nal back­ground check. Let’s hope the change to a licensed sta­tus keeps the worst out of the busi­ness. Let’s hope that mort­gage fraud will decrease proportionately.

Obvi­ously, hav­ing shared a cer­tain kind of license for 30 years, I could have told you that Frances Ann is hon­est, com­pe­tent, patient, superb at explain­ing things, detail-oriented, always cour­te­ous and charm­ing, but you may have pointed out that I was biased. Yes, I am. But I am also right. Just ask her. I am always right.

This blog has been updated Feb­ru­ary 7, 2008.