The Real Estate Bloggers

Real Estate Agents Caught Up In Russian Spy Case
Who Is Responsible For Losing My Home Buyer Tax Credit?
180,000 Homes Might Lose $8,000 Tax Credit

Real Estate Agents Caught Up In Russian Spy Case

Posted: 29 Jun 2010 08:16 AM PDT

A Redfin agent, Tracey Foley, was arrested yesterday in a Russian spying case that included 10 others. Here is the report from Redfin’s corporate site.

A Boston-area Redfin field agent was arrested today by the FBI on charges of being a Russian spy. In her job application, she identified herself as Tracey Foley, but called herself Ann.

Before we hired Ms. Foley in February of this year, at least two Redfin employees interviewed her, using a template that focuses on character, specifically situations where the candidate has put customers’ interests ahead of her own, and where the candidate has worked on a team. She interviewed well.

According to her application, she had worked since 2007 for the real estate brokerages Weichert and Channing Real Estate. As with every agent we hire, Redfin validated her social security number, her deal history and that her real estate license was in good standing; as with every agent we hire, we ran a criminal background check, which came up clean.

Once hired, Ms. Foley was responsible for showing homes, not representing clients. In our customer-service model, experienced lead agents represent clients. Field agents work for the lead agents, handling property showings when the lead agent is unavailable. Lead agents are all full-time employees. Field agents are largely contractors, mostly part-time.

Another Russian spy, Anna Chapman, also had an online real estate business according to the New York Post. I will try to find out what the online real estate business she ran.

A ring of 11 Russian moles right out of a Cold War spy novel was smashed yesterday — and among those busted was a flame-haired, 007-worthy beauty who flitted from high-profile parties to top-secret meetings around Manhattan.
Russian national Anna Chapman — a 28-year-old divorcee with a masters in economics, an online real-estate business, a fancy Financial District apartment and a Victoria’s Secret body — had been passing information to a Russian government official every Wednesday since January, authorities charged.
In one particularly slick spy exchange on St. Patrick’s Day, Chapman pulled a laptop out of a tote bag in a bookstore at Warren and Greenwich streets in the West Village while her handler lurked outside, receiving her message on his own computer, the feds said. A similar exchange occurred at a Midtown coffee shop at 47th Street and 8th Ave.

It does make sense though. Real estate is one industry where you are already on the move constantly meeting with new people. It would be very hard to try to track a real estate agents moves and find illegal activity.

More on Tracey Foley from the Washington Post here.

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Real Estate Agents Caught Up In Russian Spy Case

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Who Is Responsible For Losing My Home Buyer Tax Credit?

Posted: 29 Jun 2010 05:09 AM PDT

Money-house-lady The question I expect to see starting on June 1^st from home buyers is “Who Is Responsible For Losing My Home Buyer Tax Credit?”

This is not a trivial amount of money and if a home buyer has lost the money because of incompetence odds are they will be coming after the people who promised them it would be no problem getting the home closed in time.

Agents, brokers, and mortgage brokers, have you inadvertently made yourself liable when trying to convince a client to take action? Did you put in the proper disclaimers in all your correspondence to protect yourself?

And conversely, are there attorneys out there that will start trolling for business?

I can easily see class action lawsuits arising from this home buyers tax credit.

The opportunity for small claims lawsuits filed locally against agents and mortgage brokers for the lost tax credit due to overstated expectations is also an option for an angry buyer who could not close in time.

From a homebuyers perspective, $8,000 is a great deal of money. If they can show that one person in the chain created the situation where they lost the tax credit because of incompetence while promising they would make the tax credit goal, we could see frustrated homeowners seeking compensation and taking this to court.

This could get very ugly folks.

Thanks for reading this post. If you would like to see more articles like this, please come visit The Real Estate Bloggers. where it was originally published.

Who Is Responsible For Losing My Home Buyer Tax Credit?

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180,000 Homes Might Lose $8,000 Tax Credit

Posted: 29 Jun 2010 04:58 AM PDT

Money-house The home buyer tax credit that moved up so many closings in the real estate world has 2 days left. If you do not close by Wednesday at midnight, the home you went to contract on just got between $6,500 and $8,000 more expense.

Ouch!

So the 180,000 families that the National Association of Realtors expect not to be able to close in time are going to save the government between $1,170,000,000 and $1,440,000,000 in tax credits.

But the reality is even worse. How many of these homes had people qualifying for the loans needing the $8,000 tax credit to qualify? Or how many will walk away from the contracts now that the tax credit is taken away?

The tax credit spurred people into action, that is for sure. However now the market is dead in the summer selling season and there are going to some very unhappy people out there.

Congress last fall extended a tax credit, worth as much as $8,000, to buyers that signed contracts by April 30 and closed on transactions by June 30. The real-estate industry stepped up calls for an extension of the closing deadline in recent weeks amid concerns that some buyers might miss the deadline after a last-minute home-buying rush led to bottlenecks at banks, appraisal firms and title insurers.

But a Senate bill that included the extension failed to secure enough votes last week and has been shelved.

The National Association of Realtors said that as many as 180,000 contracts that were signed by April 30 might miss the June 30 closing deadline. But it is unclear how many of those sales won’t happen as a result of missing the tax credit.

Thanks for reading this post. If you would like to see more articles like this, please come visit The Real Estate Bloggers. where it was originally published.

180,000 Homes Might Lose $8,000 Tax Credit