RE: Kary L. Krismer @ 31 – How about requesting an AG opinion? That’s law until any court disagrees… .

Unless of course you’re a lame duck mayor. ;-)

“The WSBA does have the law practices board, but they render their decisions on the Supreme Court’s decisions. Based on that, they’ve held that an agent cannot even explain the terms of a contract without improperly practicing law.”

Another reason why I hire an attorney for important transactions. If there is a dispute as to the terms of a contract, then some attorney, which may be a judge, is going to sort out the terms.

But again, it’s not clear that a court would follow one of their decisions, so I’m not sure how useful it would be to obtain such an opinion.

As to that concern, don’t hold your breath for the law to be clarified. It’s not actually the bar association that determines such things, but instead the Washington Supreme Court. One of their most important decisions years ago allowed agents to fill out standard attorney drafted forms without being considered to practice law. But it’s not clear under that decision whether adding or deleting a single sentence would be practicing law. Arguably it would be, but what if the agent merely added the word “not” after the word “may” in a sentence. Would that be practicing law? Crossing out an entire paragraph? Anyway, the Supreme Court usually deals with specific situations, and thus a lot of questions remain after their decisions.

The WSBA does have the law practices board, but they render their decisions on the Supreme Court’s decisions. Based on that, they’ve held that an agent cannot even explain the terms of a contract without improperly practicing law. Whether a court would reach the same decision is questionable. The point is, don’t expect a lot of certainty any time soon, if ever.

Finally, as to requiring the seller to obtain counsel, great idea. There are some times when just advising people to obtain counsel is not enough, and while I won’t say short sales are one of those areas, if it’s not it’s very close. The worst thing from an agent’s point of view is a client that just wants to focus on selling, and doesn’t care about any of the consequences. When bad consequences do occur, that client is very unlikely to remember that they were warned and that they were advised to seek counsel. Requiring that they do obtain counsel prior to listing is good lawsuit prevention practice.

* It should be a requirement that all listing agents who take a short sale listing MUST have gone through a minimum required course of education on short sales.

(This brought the room to a full applause. Now of course this would be great for me and others that teach these classes, however I’m not so sure just taking one class would mean an agent is competent to take that listing….but it would be better than what’s going on now.)

*Any real estate agent who negotiates the reduction of the amount of money owed to a lender on behalf of a seller is practicing law.

(WHOA! Hold on! What came to mind immediately is that we have several thousand real estate agents who are currently doing this across WA State. Who gets to say what is the practice of law and what isn’t? I believe that would be the WA State Bar Assoc. I told my class today that at some point in the future, they should get ready for a big change in this area. It would be great for the Bar Assoc to come out on record as to what can and cannot be done in relation to a short sale and the practice of law.)

*A story was told in which a local real estate broker demands that before any of his agents can take a short sale listing, the file MUST include a receipt showing that the homeowner has paid for/retained his/her own legal counsel.

(I think this is a great idea; very prudent and has the potential to lead to good consequences for the homeowner.)

Ouch, that won’t help. When the safety net of potentially available credit disappears what happens to consumer spending? It shrinks even further, reinforcing an already downward spiral. The good news is BECU is watching out for their future.

I had 30% losses this year, but now am up 25% due to cost averaging myself into the same stocks. Now I am sold and have only cash, as this rally looks like the steam is gone. Thank god for SEP contributions up to $40k.

Actually, Buffett has done well in this environment. Buffett’s Goldman Sachs warrants(strike price $115) are worth 3 Billion as of Sept 29th. Plus,Buffett has a 10 percent dividend on the investment to GS….

http://www.cnbc.com/id/32982928/

Here is the recap of the email exchange I just had with a seller’s agent:

me: Is the listing a short sale, it doesn’t say anything in the ad where it says it is selling for 450k.
realtor: Yes, and we are working very close with the lender on this. I can show it to you.
me: What offers have been turned down so far?
realtor: None, but we think they will accept 450k on a 650k+ mortgage.
me: Are the sellers current on their mortgage?
realtor: No.

So, is the advice to potential buyers out there to just wait for short sales to turn into REOs?

Tim, is there anyway to pull together data on houses that were listed as short sales then went into foreclosure? It would be an interesting conversion rate.

“Colorado minimum wage to drop as living costs fall”

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091013/ap_on_bi_ge/us_minimum_wage_drop

Perhaps such would be a net loss if the planned building was never built.

I got a response to my own question from the listing agent. IMHO, not disclosing a short sale is disingenuous, and at best it just wastes time.

Since there is no site that I know of like Redfin or Findwell that covers this area, it is hard to find the info. The walled garden of the MLS isn’t so pretty from the outside……….

25402 NE 37TH AVE, Ridgefield, WA 98642

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2010051981_bighole13.html

I’m surprised they didn’t opt to simply build an underground parking complex that could later be built on top of.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/03/22/paul-krugman-song-lights_n_177746.html

Will the Dollar Keep De-valuing And Stocks Keep Going Up?

The dollar may keep de-valuing, but there is a breaking point on inflated commodity price impacts, where we simply stop buying it…..that’s when stocks collapse with the dollar too.

When will that occur? If I knew, I’d be richer than Buffet….LOL

http://www.nowpublic.com/world/even-buffet-loosing-money-stock-meltdown

Did he get it back lately? DOW was 14,000, now is about 9800 from a March low of 6000? Stay tuned.

Personally I lost about 43% in the stock market, but paid in about 10% to recoop and this year’s rally [suckers?] got all my money back to date by paying in the 10%. Its matching funds, so I’m not really gambling all my money.

I could lie and tell you I made 30% year to date, which is true…..but doesn’t account for last year’s losses.

A Bounce? Indeed. A Boom? Not Yet.
.
…….At the moment, it appears that the extreme ups and downs of the housing market have turned many Americans into housing speculators. Many people are still playing a leverage game, watching various economic indicators as well as the state of federal bailout programs — including the $8,000 first-time home-buyer tax credit that is currently scheduled to expire before Dec. 1 — in an effort to time their home-buying decisions. The sudden turn could signal a new housing boom, but is more likely just a sign of a period of higher short-run price volatility.

My comment this morning is an excerpt from an exchange Jonness was having with Kary on the 2007 Flash Back post.

With all the talk about returning to 2005 pricing it struck me that 2003 really was a golden year for the last fair pricing in Real Estate.

Flat to down for many years, may or may not have a sudden crash.

And he’s our voice of reason?

Now we are entering a new economy where investors say – look we know things can go astray so we will be more cool and at peace with what you do. Print cash like crazy – we will still borrow money.

If the US goes down – so will China, Europe, India and many more countries. So it will be a happy train. That’s why now investors need to shell out money to make things work.

http://articles.moneycentral.msn.com/Banking/YourCreditRating/the-rich-bail-faster-on-mortgages.aspx?ref=patrick.net

“In the last quarter, for example, government handouts and spending added about four points to GDP. That works out to about $130 billion dollars (the math is ~$13 trillion X 4% / 4 quarters = $130 billion). But to generate that $130 billion government took on $435 billion in new debt (Source: Treasury Direct “debt to the penny”), or roughly $3.35 for each dollar of GDP boost.

There is no durable recovery that can come so long as debt expands faster than GDP does. The math simply does not permit it.”

http://market-ticker.org/archives/1507-Is-The-Dollar-Doomed.html

Aside from that,we must consider how the Value is determined. So many people just place unrealistic Values on properties, and thus prices follow.

Let’s take a couple of vehicles as an example:

1. My new vehicle, purchased under the CFC program.
2. My clunker that I continue to drive.

Both get me from point a to point b, so should one have a higher value?

In 2003, credit was cheap and easy, house prices were much cheaper than now, jobs were plentiful compared to now, and inflation-adjusted incomes were roughly the same. Relatively speaking, buying a home right now gives you very little value. Obviously, exceptions to this rule exists, but this should not downplay the existence of the rule.