221–230 of 244 posts
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You said clearly that predatory businesses are alright as long as the advertisement is not deceptive. No bad faith on my part.
How are they defrauding and scamming if they're honest? You made your counter-argument about something else so you don't have to address my argument. Bad faith.
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They can provide access to listings that you might not have accesss otherwise. They also get stuff done fast: ours had a hole in our basement fixed (weep hole; Michigan basement) that would have prevented closing. We were first time buyers and it really made things sane.
They facilitate the market transaction and act as your fiduciary. To some people that is useful. To others, it's not.
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Listing Realtors (TM) rely on people's misunderstandings to get them to sign those lopsided agency agreements in the first place (3% of a capital asset for setting up a key box, taking mediocre pictures, and writing a description of the property!), so those less critical misunderstandings are just part and parcel of their market. You should never skimp hiring a real estate attorney, as they will actually go to bat fo…
I'm sorry you've had such bad experience with realtors... just some thoughts: -- My experience with real estate attorneys has been as mixed as your experiences with realtors. Some know what they are doing, many do not. Many care about billable hours just as much as the outcome. YMMV. -- Some realtors care about volume, and some care about their fiduciary responsibilities to your business. If they are actually a Realt…
And then the second time around, trying to negotiate those terms with several different realtors was like talking to a brick wall. None of them wanted to understand that as two parties sitting down to sign a legal document, you can agree to cross bits out. Full on steering wheel tossed out the window for the game of chicken.
I'm sure there are many realtors who do a decent job - the problem is the incentives are just set up all wrong. I wouldn't actually mind if they got a 20% or 25% commission on every dollar over the market appraisal of the property. It's just ridiculous that they're taking 6% from the first dollar when the property would sell itself for a low amount.
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What legislation could you make that wouldn't be a case of the side effects being worse than the disease (bearing in mind how often we dont realize there are side effects or their severity)?
Require that cash sales be registered through a state agency that monitors sellers for patterns of fraud. Add a “cooling off period” of 7-30 days where the seller can cancel the transaction without going to court. Streamline the process by which family members can raise claims of mental incompetence. Upon a sale being registered, provide the seller with a computer-generated piece of paper containing an estimate based…
a) a person needs money asap, can't wait for a cooling off period. b) a person has greedy children who expect the house as inheritance, and don't like that mom/dad has decided to sell the house and spend the money cruising around the world so they decide to declare mom/dad mentally incompetent.
None of these are new issues. We've arrived where we are (and that place is different in different jurisdictions) as we lurch back and forth between the least bad solutions.
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There’s a general problem with low friction transactions being used to exploit people with diminished capacity, particularly when intermediaries are involved (another common one in UK is signing them up for multiple phone contracts) and there may be some regulatory innovation possible in this area. Punishment after the fact is not sufficient if it doesn’t adequately prevent this population being exploited.
I think the important part is that both parties go into the transaction with full information and a genuine meeting of the minds, which is obviously not the case in this market. I use eBay's "Buy It Now" functionality all the time, in preference to the "Wait 7 days and deal with snipers" auctions. I fully know that I'm trading low-price for low-friction.
I see no reason to excuse fraud and deception, those are not convenient low friction services.
I see no reason to ignore how there is supposed to be a take-backs provision which they are merely getting around, producing exactly the outcome those provisions were created to prevent.
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I think this misses the forest for the trees; the handful of cases where they broke the law are nowhere near as deleterious as the rest where they didn't. I can't think of a better time for new regulation than a hedge fund extracting home equity from desperate people.
What legislation could you make that wouldn't be a case of the side effects being worse than the disease (bearing in mind how often we dont realize there are side effects or their severity)?
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Required to sale or show? I should clarify that I’ve usually signed and amended it during pend stage so agent gets commission and has documentation that I’ve agreed to all the terms within. I also limit it to just the property in question so if things fall apart it does too. Requiring it to show, seems like a mess that will slow things down or people will just ignore it/backdate it like they do so much already to bea…
We're kinda waiting to see what form it will take, but there seems to be a belief we are headed toward a required to show type scenario. I think it was one of your earlier comments that said something I completely agree with - clients should always have the ability to walk away from an agent they no longer want to work with, and should not feel pressured into signing an agreement that might create a binding relations…
I have to get creative to get the commission into my pocket when I don't use agents. First, the other side usually does have an agent and explaining to them that I want the commission and it's already a sunk cost is usually a nightmare. I do it at the end, because otherwise it impacts negotiations "but your keeping the commissions already". (No I'm talking to you, doing the work of an agent, so I should get paid just like you are; it doesn't cost your seller anything more than the transaction costs they were already planning - in reality, I know it's because the sell side hears no agent and thinks "I get to keep it all").
In my state, it says only licensed RE brokers and attorneys can collect commissions. I'm neither. But we also have a clause in the law that allows commission rebates. So, I typically just pay an attorney a small flat fee to collect the commission and rebate it back to me. It can be a pain but then I realized I don't have to tell the sell side anything, I now have a standing agreement with my attorney who will collect the buy side commission and subtract out the flat fee part and rebate the rest to me. I just put his info on the offer as my agent and give him a heads up a few days before close. It works pretty well.
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How are they defrauding and scamming if they're honest? You made your counter-argument about something else so you don't have to address my argument. Bad faith.
Nobody thinks of the poor predatory businesses?
In France you cannot buy a house without a notary, and the whole thing is completely standardized. No surprise contract, or small print. The notary has a monopoly and charges for it a lot (the amount is regulated as well) but at least you have no legal worries.