Ethics | Real Estate Law Series ®

Risk Management – Be Careful What You Say

As real estate professionals, opinions coming out of our mouths may be heard as facts going into our customers’ ears. When people lose money or their expectations are not met, they may blame the people who “told” them they would succeed.

There is a great recent case that demonstrates this issue (okay, [...]

New(er) HUD-1

ATTENTION! ATTENTION!

There is a proposed New(er) HUD-1!

Actually, there are two proposed HUD-1s and YOU get to choose! Or at least you get to vote on which version you like and why. You may have heard that federal agencies were working to combine the Truth In Lending and Good Faith [...]

Update on Florida Bar Committee meetings

As a now past member of the Florida Bar’s Professional Ethics Committee and now current member of the Bar’s Unauthorized Practice of Law (UPL) Committee, I want to pass on some information from both committee meetings held on June 24th in Orlando.

You may have been waiting to hear what the [...]

The Unauthorized Practice of Law

I am going to report to you about the results of The Florida Bar’s Unlicensed Practice of Law Standing Committee’s recent meeting to allow public comments about short sales and claims by attorneys that nonattorneys are crossing the UPL line when working on short sales, I promise. But in the meantime, I find myself drifting to what [...]

Escrow and Trust Accounts

Recent high level thefts from title insurance escrow/trust accounts has triggered a lot of interest in these accounts by regulators and title insurers. What are the escrow and trust account rules? Who may audit your account and when?

Authority to hold money in escrow for Florida real estate brokers is found (primarily) in F.A.C. [...]

Solar Water Heaters

What is it about solar water heaters that screams scam? I just read an article that many folks are buying solar water heaters (and other solar energy saving devices) from companies who are, allegedly, indicating their government rebate checks would arrive before payment was due. Unfortunately, many of these people were also convinced [...]

Looking for Fraud

Everyone knows that the fraud industry never seems to crash, it just morphs into different appearances. The traditional mortgage fraud, with loan applications containing false employment, income, and other information, and the artificially inflated appraisals fraud, were going strong for several years. Now that lenders are more cautious, and many potential buyers have poor credit, the latest fraud is on the individual. Not only [...]

Privacy breach via your copier

You protect your clients’ and customers’ personal nonpublic information. You train your staff to keep all information confidential. You shred, delete, and use sophisticated computer systems to prevent identity theft. Yet you still may be letting information out of your office.

If you have not seen the CBS report about copy machines containing [...]

I’m Over “Underwater”

PLEASE stop! Stop talking about people being underwater, upside down, or whatever cute word is used when homes are worth less than their mortgage debts. So what?? Live in your home and pay your mortgage. Who cares how much your house is worth? In fact, I prefer my home to be worth zero dollars while I live here, [...]

Real Estate Law Series ®

Categories

Recent Comments

Prior Articles