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That Troublesome Contract! ..... part two

That Troublesome Contract! ….part two

For part one of this “mini-series” please see: http://reopro.ning.com/profiles/blogs/that-troublesome-contract


As you see from Part One, this all started the week after Christmas, yes...Christmas of 2009. But let me get you up to speed with the latest.


Finally, after weeks of back and forth between the buyer's agent and the bank's asset manager, we come to an agreement on terms. Which were pretty good on paper, key phrase here is “on paper”. The deal was $4000 over list price (no competing offers) so the buyer could get more closing cost paid. The bank normally would not pay more the 3%, but the buyer needed up to 6% to make the deal work according to her lender. Red flag #4 or 5, not sure as I had stopped keeping track by now as we were in the second month of this transaction and still do not have a binding agreement. Almost all the delays were cause by the buyer's agent, having him re-write the offer 7, yes 7 times, before he got it right!


I get the A/M to finally understand what was going on and their net did not change, this only took 3 or 4 emails. The A/M send me the contract back to have the buyers initial off all the changes to the contract before he signs it. WTH? Why didn't he go ahead and sign it? But anyway, I roll with it and send it to the buyer's agent with instructions on what to do. This bank's division does not use addendums, they just mark out what they don't like on the original contract and initial all the changes. I've gotten use to it but some agents get very confused about this. I tell the agent the buyer must initial each and every change or it will be sent back to him. Well, it took 3 attempts to all the initials in the proper places, still not sure if it was the agents fault or the buyer's but I'll blame the agent anyway, he should have known better!


So after 2 more weeks I send the contract back to the A/M for his final signature. Shouldn't take more then a day, two if he's busy...right? Wrong again! Three WEEKS later I get the signed contract back and guess what, now we have got to re-negotiate the closing date as by now we only have 8 days to close a FHA loan. Finally, a closing date is set for April 20.....cool! Or so I thought.


Well, by now the buyer has swapped lenders, another red flag! I called the lender to confirm the approval letter like normal, “no problems” says the lender “we can close by the 20th”. COOL! Or so I thought again. This was early mid-March so I thought they had plenty of time to get this done. Wrong again!


Two weeks before any closing I usually start calling the buyer's lender to see how things were going and if there were any snafu's popping up. Well, when I call the lender his office phone number has been disconnected (red flag # 30 something by now?) but he answers his cell phone. Kids and a TV in the background, he quickly tells me he is swamped and would call me back in 10 minutes. Three days later I call him back, same story...will call you back in 10 minutes. I then call the agent, he says he will talk to the lender and call me back in 10 minutes. LOL, this is starting to become a funny game. Two days later he calls me back and says “no problems, we will close on the 20th”. It was around the 15th, (the closing was the 20th) so I say COOL! (I have got to stop saying this)


On the 20th the agent calls me early in the morning to say there is a problem. No kidding? There has been a problem since the very start! I told him he gets one shot at extending the closing date, talk to the lender and see exactly what the problem was and how long he needs to get this done and closed. That afternoon he calls me to say that the lender told him that the buyer's credit score was 613, that they were working on some credit repairs and would need an additional 21 days. WTH? This “lender” issued a letter of approval knowing that the buyer is not qualified? And I believe the agent knew this all along!


After I calm down and come off the ceiling, I tell this agent that this was unacceptable and that he needed to find a way to get this closed by the end of the week, 7 days max. To send me a closing extension request form before 4pm. Well I get it at 10pm that night.....requesting the 21 days I told him earlier he would not get. Needless to say that the bank rejected the request and I prepared the Termination of Contract and Release of Earnest Money form, sent it to the A/M on April 21 for him to sign, the day after the scheduled closing. COOL, I think to myself, I can get this back on the market in time for the last week or so of the tax rebates. Which did prompt a lot of activity locally.


Well, not so fast there big boy! Even so the A/M said that the bank wanted the earnest money ASAP because the buyer failed to close, and I sent the form to the A/M last month for him to sign and send back, I'm still waiting. The contract is still active and I cannot put it back on the market because in Georgia, contracts do not automaticly expire if not closed. It MUST be terminated in writing, no if's, and's or but's. This was explained to the A/M when I sent him the form.


I inquired again this past week with the A/M, as now I'm getting nasty letters from our business office wanting the paperwork or threatening to fine me. Again the A/M says that the contract has expired because it did not close, to send him the E/M ASAP. Now I can understand that keeping up with contract laws in multiple states can be overwhelming and hard to do, no problems. He tells me that other agents in my state do not require this form, why am I?


Because it's Georgia contract law and these other agents are wrong, not to mention breaking the law. I was only trying to protect them from any future legal liability. He did not believe me and requested documentation on this, so I found an article written by the very attorney who writes the contract forms for the Ga. Assoc. of Realtors (GAR) that states exactly what I have been telling him. Still not good enough and they call one of the partners in the mega law firm that handles all of their closing services.


That was Thursday, I'm still waiting for a one page form needing one signature and fax/emailed back to me and I'll take care of the rest.


I'm starting to think this house is jinxed! This is the third contract that has failed to close, I've had to fire a team member over it (that's for a whole other blog there), and now I expect to be fired by the bank because I refused to break contract law. Not to mention that I'm about to get a $50 fine for not turning in paperwork that the A/M has refused to sign.


I'm hoping that Part Three is a much shorter story to write!



Steve Adkins – REALTOR®

Better Homes and Gardens Real Estate Metro Brokers

404-843-2500

Hiram Office

www.The-Adkins-Group.com

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Alarming News for Short Sale Negotiations

By Ann Bone

http://blog.metrobrokers.com/2010/03/15/alarming-news-for-short-sale-negotiations/#more-1219

(This is posted with permission from my brokerage, un-edited)

I’ve been peppered with questions about a rather alarming article being circulated over the past couple of weeks, written by a well-respected real estate attorney in the Atlanta market area. The thesis of the article is that real estate agents may be committing a felony when assisting sellers seeking short sales by participating in any negotiations with the sellers’ lien holders. This is supposedly because the Georgia Residential Mortgage Act of 2007 requires any person who negotiates mortgage loans to have a mortgage license (which 99% of real estate licensees lack) and that working with the sellers’ lien holders is “negotiating a mortgage”.

Why raise this alarm now, in 2010? It’s being whispered that some (not all) mortgage brokers and lenders are angry at being required to become licensed in Georgia and are looking to make examples of real estate practitioners who they see as encroaching into lender territory.

March 31, 2010 marks the “drop dead” date by which mortgage brokers, mortgage lenders and the independent contractors working with them who solicit, process, place or negotiate mortgage loans for others or who work on renewing or refinancing mortgage loans for others must be licensed by the state or exit the mortgage business. The state and federal exams each applicant must pass are onerous, to say the least. I’m hearing that over 70% of the applicants are not passing either the state or federal exam and having to retest prior to March 31, 2010. It’s high stress time in the Georgia mortgage business, especially for the less reputable mortgage companies.

Why would real estate licensees be suddenly singled out for retribution? Well, could it be that REALTORS, those real estate licensees who join a Board or Association of REALTORS and pledge to adhere to a National Code of Ethics, were supportive of the efforts to force licensure upon the mortgage industry?

Real estate practitioners have been required to be licensed in Georgia since 1925. Anyone printing a business card or setting up a web site could call themselves a mortgage lender until the 2007 passage of the Act. And those active in the mortgage business prior to 2007 were “grandfathered” until the upcoming March 31 deadline.

Coincidental to the 2007 passage of the Act, the mortgage meltdown gained momentum in Georgia.

Reasonable people have discerned that unknowledgeable buyers and homeowners over-borrowed on over-valued properties. No one wants to allow that to ever happen again and the reins have been tightened by all parties involved in the real estate financing transaction – the real estate licensees, the appraisers, the lenders, the closing attorneys and the title companies. Please note that all the participants listed were licensed by the state in 2007 except the lenders.

Please don’t misunderstand me; this is not a blanket criticism of mortgage lenders. The reputable lenders will survive both the licensing process and the current economic downturn.

Today, though, real estate licensees are being threatened with prosecution for listing properties with outstanding mortgage obligations in excess of the current market value and assisting those owners in the process of proving to their lenders that an offer to partially pay off the total indebtedness may be better than forcing the lender to eventually foreclose on the property.

Since when is paying off a loan “negotiating”? And, since most mortgage loans have been packaged, sold and resold, perhaps multiple times, exactly which lender would negotiate with the final mortgage holder of a specific mortgage? The mortgage lender which originated the loan? And are they still in business?

Keith Hatcher, the Governmental Affairs Officer for the Georgia Association of REALTORS (GAR) has stated that it is his opinion and the opinion of key elected officials who serve on the Ways and Means and Banking and Finance committees that it would be a stretch to interpret the Act in this fashion and that this is not the intent of the Act. GAR is, in fact, working with the chairman of the Ways and Means committee to draft an amendment to the Act which would clarify that it is not a violation of the law for real estate licensees to assist in the negotiation of short sales.

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Granted, this story is about the State of Georgia, but because some of the licensing for lenders has federal connects, it may apply to other states. I did get word this afternoon (after this was written) that State Law Makers addressed this issue early today but an official statement should be released soon. More to come as I get it.

This should not be considered Legal Advice in any form, I only wanted to bring this to people attention as we all may be affected by this. Scary to say the least!

Steve Adkins - REALTOR

Better Homes and Gardens Real Estate Metro Brokers

404-843-2500

www.The-Adkins-Group.com

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That troublesome contract!

That troublesome contract!I want to spend a minutes to talk about that “troublesome contract” that you know is going to be problems from the very beginning. You just get that feeling from the very beginning. Everyone in this business gets one every so often, right? Or am I just lucky with more than my fair share?It all started the day before Christmas Eve. I get a call about 3 PM from an agent wanting to show the house to a potential buyer, he’s in the driveway. I tell him about the house and that he is welcome to show the house any time….so he asks me how does he get in? What? I tell him it’s on a Supra lock box, which he could use his Supra key to get in. Then he tells me he didn’t have his key with him. How can you show houses to a buyer without your Supra Key?This agent was expecting me to drop what I was doing and drive 15 miles to open the house because he was not prepared. More on this shortly. Mind you I was elbow deep in auto repairs with the dash of my truck disassembled as I replace the heater core. Needless to say it would take me 2 hours at best to get there. I told him I was leaving town for Christmas the next day and would be back late Sunday, he could call me Monday to set an appointment….which he did. Surprisingly!He calls me Monday morning and we set a time for the afternoon, 2 pm. Good, I rearrange my schedule for the day, no problems. I ask him if he was a real estate agent and if he had a Supra key, he said he was and that his key is broken. Yea OK and that bad feeling starts to grow. At 12:30 he calls me again to ask if he can more up the time, that he was already on the way with his buyer. No problems, it’s a light day and I stop what I was doing and leave the office to meet them.I start thinking this is going well when the buyer walks into the house and starts gasping for breath! She just keeps saying “I love it, I love it”. Good signs from the buyer! I start smiling as I know this trip worked out, the first one like this to ever go my way. The buyer loves the house and they both said that they were going back to his office to write the offer and send it to me that afternoon. As I’m driving back to the office I’m wondering if this was a dream? These “give-me’s” never happen to me! But I’ll take it if it really comes thru.Well, late afternoon the next day I hear from the agent again. He has a few questions so he can fill out the contracts, no problems as I have gotten use to that. Just before leaving the office around 4:30 pm I get the contract. Cool! Full price, no closing cost, 10-day closing….I’m thinking cash deal! Sweet! The asset manager is going to love this as it’s our last REO property in this subdivision. This is a new construction REO and we started with 11 houses in the late spring. This one had some minor issues and no Certificate of Occupancy issued, of course the bank was not going to finish that one small issue. So it has taken longer to sell then the others, and the bank understands why.Ok, back to the contract. I keep reading and there are some minor special stipulations that will need to be removed, no problems. Then there’s a check mark in the contract about an FHA Exhibit (but no exhibit) and then the last page is an un-dated letter of ptr-approval from a lender/broker I have never heard of. I start thinking that a 10 day closing and FHA do not play well together! Again, no problems, I’ll call the agent and get this straightened out before sending the package to the asset manager. I called to ask him is this a cash deal or FHA. If it’s FHA he needed a lot longer for a closing date. He says that 30 days will be fine and that it was FHA and that he left the closing cost blank because he wants the seller to pay ALL closing cost. Then he tells me that this is a Neighborhood Stabilization Program loan. Ok, the last one I did took almost 60 days to close, so I told him that the bank will only agree one closing extension. If he under estimates how long it will close because he has not talked to the lender, the bank can and will find the buyer in default and keep all earnest money. So we agree on a 45 day closing.An hour later he calls back to say that he wants to raise the offer price in hopes the bank will pay more closing cost. We go round and round about this for a few minutes and I tell him to call the loan officer and work out the details and send me a new (and complete) offer. He agrees and sends me a new offer the next day. It’s still not complete, but I can work with it. So I start trying to contact the loan officer to verify the pre-approval letter.After 3 days and 5 voice messages later of trying to reach the loan officer, the agent happens to call me. I tell him that everything is on hold until I talk to the loan officer. I finally reach her the next day (after 3 more attempts). She’s familiar with the buyer but says that the letter was issued more than 2 months ago and she would have to re-verify everything again with the buyer. She did call me back on New Year’s eve to say that she was waiting on the agent to bring her some documents, he was already a day late in doing so.I have not heard from the L/O or the agent yet this week, needless to say I have ZERO faith this deal will ever get to the closing table. I don’t want to say that the agent is unprofessional, but he is under trained and has no supervision.So what’s your “troublesome contract” story? I would like to know I’m not the only one who gets these!Steve Adkins - RealtorThe Adkins GroupBetter Homes and Gardens Real Estate Metro Brokerswww.The-Adkins-Group.com
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