Tag Archives: Brooklyn Law School

Beware of Contractor

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Realtor.com quoted me in Beware of These 8 Red Flags When Hiring a Contractor. It opens,

Finding the right contractor for a major renovation is like finding a spouse. You have to have chemistry, you have to be on the same page, you have to trust each other, you have to love pugs, and you must share a passion for Korean barbecue (oh, scratch the latter two—it’s not totally like finding a spouse). And while there might be more than one Mr. Right, there are plenty of Mr. Wrongs who can transform your beloved renovation project into a nightmare (and give new meaning to the term “punch list”).

In 2011, the average U.S. homeowner spent $2,889 on home improvements—it’s a pretty penny, but a fraction of the cost of a big project like a major kitchen overhaul ($60,000) or bathroom renovation ($18,000). So a lot of cash is at stake here, along with your mental health! Here are some matador-worthy red flags to look for when researching a contractor, and strategies for finding one you’ll love.

1. They have lousy reviews

We live in a world saturated with social media, where it’s harder for bad contractors to hide. When you see a Yelp review that slams a contractor, your antennae should go up. Not that any one review is gospel; review sites often are battlegrounds for competitors who unfairly slam one another.

“Anyone can have one or two bad reviews from cranks or revenge seekers, but a pattern of problems or red flags should make you think twice,” says Sandy Edry, a real estate agent with Keller Williams in New York City.

2. They’re not responsive

As in any long-term relationship, communication is key. If you have trouble getting a contractor on the phone before you give him your business, imagine how hard it will be for him to return calls after he already has your security deposit. Give a prospective contractor 24 hours to return your introductory call—48 hours, tops—before you move on.

3. They insist on unlimited time and materials

The best way to wreck a budget is to sign a time and materials contract that puts no fence around expenditures. Make sure a contractor offers you a flat fee for a project and specifies how much change orders will cost. If he won’t, walk. Or run.

4. They lack a sense of humor

When it comes to home renovations, Murphy’s Law (anything that can go wrong, will) might be a bit exaggerated (although we know quite a few homeowners who’d beg to differ). No matter what, you should be prepared for at least one unexpected problem to arise. Look for a contractor who can keep his footing when things get rocky, and has the expertise to remain calm—and to help calm you down—while sorting out a solution.

5. They overpromise

Before you sign a contract with anyone, do your homework to get a rough idea of how long a project should take and cost. Remodeling’s Cost vs. Value annual report provides national averages for popular projects and is a great resource. Beware of contractors who offer you a much lower price and faster delivery. If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.

6. They have outdated references

Good contractors have a constantly revolving list of new and satisfied customers. If they can’t provide a current reference, perhaps the quality of their work has dropped.

“You don’t want any old references,” says David Reiss, research director for the Center for Urban Business Entrepreneurship in Brooklyn, NY. “You want references for recent and current jobs, and for jobs that are similar to yours.”

The Trump Effect on Mortgage Rates

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The Christian Science Monitor quoted me in What Does President Trump Really Mean for Mortgage Rates? It opens,

In the week following the election, mortgage rates soared nearly half a percentage point. Average weekly 30-year fixed home loan rates are back above 4% for the first time since July 2015.

Here’s a three-minute read on the Trump Effect — past, present and future — on mortgage rates.

What happened to mortgage rates right after the election

Investors sold bonds on President-elect Donald Trump’s stated goals to lower taxes, boost deregulation and make massive infrastructure investments. A growing economy fueled by government spending could trigger higher inflation, which is a concern for the bond market.

As bond prices fell from the sell-off, yields rose. Higher bond yields equal higher mortgage rates. is happening with mortgage rates now

What is happening with mortgage rates now

Rates are already taking a breath. After a quick run-up following the election,  30-year mortgage rates are generally holding steady, near 4%.

What will happen to mortgage rates in 2017

The Federal Reserve this week reaffirmed its intention to begin raising short-term interest rates, most likely beginning in December. Following that hike, if it happens, the U.S. central bank’s policy-setting Federal Open Market Committee is looking to manage a slow climb in rates.

“The FOMC continues to expect that the evolution of the economy will warrant only gradual increases in the federal funds rate over time to achieve and maintain maximum employment and price stability,” Fed Chair Janet Yellen told Congress on Nov. 17. Those moves will influence longer-term rates such as on mortgages to rise as well.

And there’s another potential trigger for mortgage rates to move higher.

While Trump hasn’t taken a stance yet, Republican party leaders have been vocal about getting the government out of the mortgage business. That could mean redefining the role of the Federal Housing Administration and moving Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to the private sector.

David Reiss, a professor at Brooklyn Law School, concentrates on real estate finance and community development. He sees the Republican agenda to “reduce the government’s footprint in the mortgage market” as a possible catalyst to higher mortgage rates in the future.

“You put the government’s stamp of approval on companies like Fannie and Freddie, and it lowers interest rates because they can borrow at a lower rate — but then the taxpayers are on the hook if things go south, and that was the case in 2008,” Reiss tells NerdWallet. “If you reduce the federal government’s role in the housing markets, you’re going to reduce the likelihood of future bailouts by taxpayers. That’s the trade-off.”

Low Down Payment Mortgages, Going Forward

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TheStreet.com quoted me in Home Loan Down Payments Are in Decline: Will Uncle Sam Ride to the Rescue? It opens,

President-elect Donald Trump has enough problems on his hands as his administration takes shape, with the economy, health care, geopolitical strife and a divided country all on his plate.

 Chances are, dealing with a weakening real estate market, especially related to lower down payments, hasn’t entered his mind.
According to the November Down Payment Report, from Down Payment Resource, median down payments from first-time home buyers fell to just 4% of the home’s value, down from 6% in 2015. At the same time, home down payments for FHA-backed loans are also at 4%, signaling that homebuyers aren’t saving enough for home down payments, and thus face higher monthly mortgage payments.
There’s one school of thought that says homebuyers aren’t putting serious money down on a purchase, because they don’t have to.

“U.S. homebuyers are putting less down to purchase homes due to the wide availability of low- and no-down payment loans such as FHA loans, Fannie Mae’s HomeReady program, a resurgence of ‘piggy-back mortgages’ and other programs,” says Erin Sheckler, president of NexTitle, a full-service title and escrow company located in Belleview, Wash. “Meanwhile, USDA and VA loans also do not require any down payment whatsoever.”

Sheckler also notes that lending requirements have begun to ease nationwide, thus giving homebuyers more wiggle room with home down payments. “According to Ellie Mae’s Origination Insight Report, in August, home buyer down payments varied by loan program but, in nearly all cases, down-payments were near minimums,” says Sheckler.

Sheckler also doesn’t expect the low down payment trend to end anytime soon.

“How much money a person decides to put down on the purchase of a new home is a combination of risk and personal tolerance as well as the loan programs available to them,” she says. “As long as mortgage guidelines remain relaxed and with first-time homebuyers being an increasing segment of the market, we will likely see down-payments hover around the minimums into the near-term future.”

The risk with lower home down payments is real, however. “No one wants to find themselves house-poor,” Sheckler adds. “Being house-poor means that the majority of your wealth and monthly income is tied up in your residence. This can be a catastrophic situation if you find yourself suddenly faced with a loss of income or unexpected expenses.”

Homebuyers looking for more help from Uncle Sam, though, may come away disappointed in the next four years. “While Trump has been pretty silent on the housing market, (vice president-elect Mike) Pence and the Republican party platform have made it clear that they want to reduce the federal government’s footprint in the housing market,” says David Reiss, professor of law at Brooklyn Law School. “This is likely to mean fewer low down payment loan options being offered by Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and the FHA.”

Honesty Is Best

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Grant Wood; "Parson Weems' Fable"; 1939; oil on canvas; Amon Carter Museum, Fort Worth, Texas; 1970.43

Grant Wood; “Parson Weems’ Fable”; 1939; oil on canvas; Amon Carter Museum

Trulia quoted me in 6 Things Home Sellers Are Legally Required To Disclose. It opens,

When it comes to selling your home, heed your mother’s advice: Honesty is always the best policy.

Denise Supplee and her husband, Jerry, had been in their new home in Horsham, PA, for just three months when they started to notice something strange in their bathroom. “You could see mold starting to seep through the paint,” says Denise, a co-founder and director of operations of SparkRental.com. “We had a contractor come in and he told us we were lucky,” she says. “It seemed to be an issue kept to the bathroom and occurred most likely because there was no exhaust fan.” The problem: The seller had blatantly painted over existing mold without ever disclosing it to the Supplees. Although the seller made good and paid for the mold removal — a $1,500 cost — the Supplees could have taken them to court for not disclosing the problem before the sale.

It’s a question that plagues many residential sales: As a seller, what do you — and don’t you — need to tell the buyer about your home? “My rule of thumb is this: If you’re not sure if you should disclose something, you probably should,” says Sam Pawlitzki, a real estate agent with Beach Cities Real Estate in Los Angeles, CA. “Think of seller disclosures like a Carfax report.” Plus, the harm in not disclosing something can result in some serious legal and financial woes. Here’s a list of what you legally need to include in your sellers’ disclosure to keep yourself out of hot water.

1. Lead paint

One item is a must when it comes to being upfront with potential buyers: the use of lead-based paint in your home. “If the home was built before 1978, each party in a transaction needs to sign a lead paint disclosure,” says Pawlitzki. “This is a federal law and applies to every state. No matter if you think the lead paint has been removed or not, it still needs to be disclosed.” However, David Reiss, a professor at Brooklyn Law School in Brooklyn, NY, explains, “If you are not aware of a lead-based paint issue in the house, you are not required by the act to investigate whether there is any.”

Firing Your Real Estate Agent

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USA Today quoted me in How (And When) To Fire Your Real Estate Agent. It opens,

Breaking up is hard to do. Add a house and tens of thousands of dollars into the mix, and it can get downright ugly.

Unlike romantic entanglements, though, breaking up with your real estate agent as a seller if you’re not getting the service or the results promised doesn’t have to be dramatic. Here’s what you can do early on to minimize the damage — and how to handle the situation if, alas, you do come to irreconcilable differences.

When you first enlist an agent

Review your contract closely. Many real estate agents require their clients to sign an exclusive representation agreement, which is essentially an employment contract, says Brian Pendergraft, a real estate attorney in Greenbelt, Md. These contracts spell out how the client and real estate agent will each uphold their end of the deal, and they tend to be worded to protect the agent’s interests, says David Reiss, a law professor at Brooklyn Law School in Brooklyn, New York.

As a seller, you’ll want to ensure the contract covers your rights, too. This includes outlining exactly how your agent will market your home, and a plan to generate enough showings within a set timeframe so that you’ll have a legal leg to stand on for early termination, Reiss says.

Understand your options for termination from the get-go. There are a few ways to call it quits with your agent, but the win-win situation is a no-penalty termination in which neither party is penalized if the relationship ends prematurely, says Bruce Ailion, a Realtor and attorney in Atlanta. Include this detail in your contract.

If things go sour

Consider what constitutes a fireable offense. If you’re upset with your agent about sales strategy, lack of communication or poor service, those are issues that are unlikely to be resolved easily, Ailion says. Or perhaps you’re worried that your agent is in murky legal waters, such as refusing to show your home to people from certain protected groups or failing to share a property disclosure with buyers. Report these issues immediately to the agent’s broker of record, who is responsible for the real estate agents in a brokerage, Ailion says.

Put it in writing. If your agreement is in writing, you have to get out of it in writing even if there’s no specific expiration date, Pendergraft says. Write a letter or email to your agent requesting to part ways. If you get no response, hire an attorney to write a demand letter for you, Pendergraft says. This shows you mean business — at a fraction of the cost to take the issue to court.

Signs You Are In A Bubble

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Trulia.com quoted me in Signs Your Local Real Estate Market Is A Bubble. It reads, in part,

If you were burned in 2008, the last time the housing bubble burst, you’re probably (and understandably!) gun-shy about jumping into the housing market again — especially if you think your local area could be experiencing another bubble. If you buy during a bubble, overpaying for your home, you might be forced to sell for less than the property is worth — either that or stay put longer than you’d like until you build up enough equity to sell. So if you’re thinking of buying, it’s important to have a sense of the signs that point to a real estate bubble. Here are five of them.

1. Shaky loans are common

As we learned from the 2008 recession, subprime lending (lending to anyone with a pulse) is not sound practice. And we have made changes. “Credit remains relatively tight,” says Jonathan Miller, CRE, CRP, and president of Miller Samuel Inc., a New York, NY, real estate appraisal company.

Yet the U.S. government still backs loans that some might consider risky, particularly ones that require only a 3.5% down payment, which the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) offers. Before you get too alarmed, keep in mind that the FHA has been helping people become homeowners since 1934. The underwriting standards are higher with FHA loans than with some of the subprime low-down-payment products offered in the early 2000s, explains David Reiss, professor of law at Brooklyn Law School in Brooklyn, NY.

2. There’s lots of leverage

When you take out a mortgage, you’re leveraging your money — the smaller the down payment you make, the more you have leveraged the deal by using the lender’s money to make the purchase. “A bubble means lots of leverage,” says Miller. “And this [current] cycle has been remarkably devoid of leverage.” Miller cites New York City as an example. “About 45% of the transactions are cash. And for the price points below half a million dollars, the average person puts about 35% down.”

3. Home prices are rising faster than salaries

When housing prices are rising and your salary isn’t, you’re left with two options: continue to rent, or buy a house you can barely afford. If you think your market is in a bubble, you might want to wait to buy, especially if you’re really stretching to make ends meet.

“I would review the mean income levels and employment levels compared to real estate prices for signs of discord,” says Michael Kelczewski, a Pennsylvania and Delaware real estate agent. “Indicators of a local real estate bubble are asset values exceeding the local market’s capacity to absorb prices.” Reiss says that when home prices rise faster than salaries, “It could be the sign of froth in the market.”

Miller agrees that a “rapid run-up in prices that don’t match wage growth leads to discussions about bubbles.” But he says that as long as credit conditions from bank lenders are tight, you won’t have runaway price inflation. In New York, prices aren’t rising like they were, but they aren’t falling either. Miller says they’ve leveled off and are “stuck on a high plateau.”

So what do you do when affordability isn’t improving in pricey markets like New York, NY, San Francisco, CA, Los Angeles, CA, or any other high-cost urban market? Buy in the burbs. Miller notes that for New York, the market is booming in the outlying suburbs.

 *     *     *

When there are no signs

Of course, you might think your market is (or isn’t) in a bubble, but you could be wrong. “The problem with bubbles is that we don’t know them when we see them,” says Reiss. He explains that San Francisco, CA, for example, a hugely unaffordable city for most people, isn’t in a bubble just because prices are high. “Bubbles do not refer to rapid price appreciation. They refer to unsustainable rapid price appreciation. [The market] is unsustainable because fundamentals do not support the appreciation.”

The bottom line is, it’s difficult to know whether it’s really a bubble. “If homeowners buy a house that works for their family and that they can afford over the long haul, they will have made a decision that benefits them every day, even if real estate prices drop significantly,” says Reiss. But heed his warning: “If homeowners instead buy a house that is a financial stretch in the belief that it will appreciate down the road and fund their retirement, there is a good chance that they have set down a road to ruin.”

The Housing Market Under Trump

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TheStreet.com quoted me in Interest Rates Likely to Rise Under Trump, Could Affect Confidence of Homebuyers. It opens,

Interest rates should increase gradually during the next four years under a Donald Trump administration, which could dampen growth in the housing industry, economists and housing experts predict.

The 10-year Treasury rose over the 2% threshold on Wednesday for the first time in several months, driving mortgage rates higher with the 30-year conventional rate rising to 3.73% according to Bankrate.com. Mortgage pricing is tied to the 10-year Treasury.

Housing demand will remain flat with a rise in interest rates as many first-time homebuyers will be saddled with more debt, said Peter Nigro, a finance professor at Bryant University in Smithfield, R.I.

“With first-time homebuyers more in debt due to student loans, I don’t expect much growth in home purchasing,” he said.

Interest rates will also be affected by the size of the fiscal stimulus since additional infrastructure spending and associated debt “could push interest rates up through the issuance of more government debt,” Nigro said.

Even if interest rates spike in the next year, banks will not benefit, because there is a lack of demand, said Peter Borish, chief strategist with Quad Group, a New York-based financial firm. The economy is slowing down, and consumers have already borrowed money at very “cheap” interest rates, he said.

The policies set forth by a Trump administration will lead to contractionary results and will not spur additional growth in the housing market.

“I prefer to listen to the markets,” Borish said. “This will put downward pressure on the prices in the market. Everyone complained about Dodd-Frank, but why is JPMorgan Chase’s stock at all time highs?”

An interest rate increase could still occur in December, said Jonathan Smoke, chief economist for Realtor.com, a Santa Clara, Calif.-based real estate company. With nearly five weeks before the December Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) meeting, the market can contemplate the potential outcomes.

“While the market is now indicating a reduced probability of a short-term rate hike at that meeting, the Fed has repeatedly indicated that they would be data-driven in their decision,” he said in a written statement. “If the markets calm down and November employment data look solid on December 2, a rate hike could still happen. The market moves yesterday are already indicating that financial markets are pondering that the Trump effect could be positive for the economy.

“The Fed is likely to start increasing the federal funds rate at a “much faster pace starting next year,” said K.C. Sanjay, chief economist for Axiometrics, a Dallas-based apartment market and student housing research firm. “This will cause single-family mortgage rates to increase slightly, however they will remain well below the long-term average.”

Since Trump has remained mum on many topics, including housing, predicting a short-term outlook is challenging. One key factor is the future of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, who are the main players in the mortgage market, because they own or guarantee over $4 trillion in mortgages, remain in conservatorship and “play a critical role in keeping mortgage rates down through the now explicit subsidy or government backing which allows them to raise funds more cheaply,” Nigro said.

It is unlikely any changes will occur with them, because “Trump has not articulated a plan to deal with them and coming up with a plan to deal with these giants is unlikely,” he said.

Trump could attempt to take on government sponsored enterprises such as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, said Ralph McLaughlin, chief economist for Trulia, a San Francisco-based real estate website.

“If he does, it’s going to be a hairy endeavor for him, because he’ll need bipartisan support to do so,” he said.

Since he has alluded to ending government conservatorship and allowing government sponsored enterprises to “recapitalize by allowing retention of their own profits instead of passing them on to the Treasury,” the result is that banks could have their liquidity and lending activity increase, which could help boost demand for homes, McLaughlin said.

“We caution President-elect Trump that he would also need to simultaneously help address housing supply, which has been at a low point over the past few years,” he said. “The difficulty for him is that most of the impediments to new housing supply rest and the state and local levels, not the federal.”

Even on Trump’s campaign website, there is “next to nothing” about his ideas on housing, said David Reiss, a law professor at the Brooklyn Law School in New York. The platform of the Republican Party and Vice President-elect Mike Pence could mean that the federal government will have a smaller footprint in the mortgage market.

“There will be a reduction in the federal government’s guaranty of mortgages, and this will likely increase the interest rates charged on mortgages, but will reduce the likelihood of taxpayer bailouts,” he said. “Fannie and Freddie will likely have fewer ties to the federal government and the FHA is likely to be limited to the lower end of the mortgage market.”