Mar/101
Scam trolls for checks on homes listed for sale
By ANDREW WOLFE
Staff Writer
http://www.nashuatelegraph.com/news/688694-196/scam-trolls-for-checks-on-homes-listed.html
NASHUA – Realtor Yve Hines knew something was amiss when she started getting calls and e-mails about a Craigslist ad offering her clients’ house for rent.
Hines has the house on Austin Circle listed for sale, and contrary to what the Craigslist scammers suggest, the house remains occupied by its rightful owners and is not available for rent.
While Craigslist has become one of the few remaining classified advertising mediums in most markets, the Web site has also been a boon to scammers who prey on buyers and sellers alike.
Now, a scam that festered for years in more competitive housing markets like New York City, for example, has branched out into southern New Hampshire, as Nigerian-based hucksters swipe legitimate real estate ads and repackage them, seeking to part people from their rent money.
A person would have to be fairly foolish to fall for it, but the ads can cause a great deal of aggravation and wasted time, for sellers and renters alike, Hines said.
“It’s been a very big annoyance to me,” Hines said. “It was a waste of my time, having to respond to all these calls and e-mails … My time is very valuable, and I don’t like it wasted in that way.”
The scam is simple enough. The scammer posts ads on Craigslist, offering properties for rent. When people respond, they get a rental application, and a song-and-dance about the owner being out of town. The scammer hopes to persuade renters to send the first month’s rent and a security deposit.
(A variation on the same scam targets landlords. A scammer posing as a prospective tenant contacts the landlord and sends a money order for the first month’s rent and security deposit. Soon afterward, however, the tenant claims some dramatic upheaval in his or her life and asks that the money be refunded. Typically, the landlord will have deposited the money order but not yet discovered that it was fake.)
The scammer who posted the Austin Circle house used descriptions and photos lifted from the real estate listing and looked up the owners’ names to impersonate them. The con claimed to have been transferred by his employer to Warsaw, Poland, but claimed to be “currently in Lagos, Nigeria, for an international Christian follower’s crusade.”
“I will like to let you know that i initially wanted to sell the house but my wife adviced i rent it out to responsible people,” the scammer wrote to one would-be renter.
Similar ads have been posted on Craiglist offering to rent out homes elsewhere in Nashua, Amherst and Wilton.
The same scam has been running for years in some cities, so it must work once in a while. It has become widespread enough that the FBI’s South Carolina office issued a warning about it last summer.
Nashua police have yet to receive reports of anyone being swindled, Detective Lt. George McCarthy said. The head of New Hampshire’s Consumer Protection Bureau, James Boffetti, said his office routinely gets calls about such scams.
In cases where the scammer is overseas, New Hampshire authorities can’t do anything about it, he says.
“Sometimes you can report it to the federal authorities,” he said.
The owners of the Austin Circle home had no idea that their property was being offered for rent, Hines said, but more than half a dozen prospective tenants were interested, enough to track down Hines and inquire about it.
“It didn’t cost me anything except time,” Hines said.
Andrew Wolfe can be reached at 594-6410 or awolfe@nashuatelegraph.com.
Mar/100
Tech Companies Reap Windfall from RESPA
Friday, March 19th, 2010, 5:01 pm
Recent changes to the Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act (RESPA) created a boost in sales from technology companies providing new software and integration offerings to settlement services companies.
During the housing boom, independent mortgage brokers were one of the biggest client bases for mortgage software firms. The independent originators relied on the third-party providers for any technology that could give them a competitive advantage. But that pool of brokers has since dried up in the origination space, and for those that remain, new technology isn’t a priority expense.
Tech companies found new clients in the surge of credit union and community banks that entered the mortgage space, but those clients are typically more conservative in implementing new technology, according to Bruce Backer, president of LoanSifter, which developed a pricing and eligibility software system.
But in a world where loan quality is the new mantra, Backer explained that technology is the best tool for transparent loan processing, and lenders normally skittish about spending money to upgrade technology are finding it more appealing.
“There’s a whole risk reduction benefit to the lender by going this route,” Backer said.
Driving this momentum shift is the new HUD-1 form, and it’s bringing more business to technology firms. Changes to the HUD-1 form shifted the intentions of the settlement document. The old HUD-1 was all about disclosure and reconciling the origination expenses for the lender and secondary market investor, but the new HUD-1 is all about the consumer. It ensures the estimates made at the front end of the origination process on the good faith estimate (GFE) form match with the final closing costs.
The result is that lenders are on the hook for so-called cure violations. It’s a shift in mindset that’s throwing title services firms for a loop said Barbara Miller, president and chief operating officer of Annapolis, Md.-based TSS Software Corp., a title and settlement software developer. Call volume at the TSS support center has gone up 40% since the beginning of the year, a combination of new clients integrating the software and old clients still trying to understand the changes.
“When they start to look at it, they realize the lenders have so much more liability now that the title company’s taken off the hook for a lot of things they used to be liable for,” Miller said. “Now when the borrower gets to the table, that HUD-1 better match the GFE and if it doesn’t, that’s not the title company’s problem, it’s the lender’s problem.”
In addition, outdated software systems aren’t getting the job done anymore. Companies that were on the fence about spending the resources to purchase, integrate and train employees on a new software system are finding that the new RESPA regulations are demanding it.
Miller said customers have come to the company looking to upgrade systems that were originally installed in the mid-1990s. One such client is Brenda Osiecki, president of title services firm Waushara Abstract in Wautoma, Wis. Her company was using the same settlement software it purchased in 1997 before recently upgrading its entire technology platform — computers, infrastructure and TSS’s settlement software offering.
Osiecki said she and her business partner looked at a number of options, including trying to add new functions to the old software. Implementing the new software was the best decision, she said, but it did come with some bumps along the road.
“We know we were going to upgrade, we had been planning on it for a couple years and when it came to the new HUD, we had to either upgrade the old software, which we didn’t want to do, or chose one of these other options,” Osiecki said.
The costs began to mount. The new computer she purchased for her office of three had the “home” version of Windows Vista, for example, not the necessary “pro” or “office” versions, so Osiecki said the company upgraded to Windows 7. In addition, TSS needed to train her staff on the new software and the office started to attend seminars on the new RESPA regulations.
The changes to RESPA at the beginning of the year required lenders to issue borrowers a new GFE. The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) started the year with some leniency toward lenders as they adjusted to the changes, but that hasn’t stopped a lot of the confusion. As a result, lending slowed down at the beginning of the year. Osiecki said she even brought a lender with her to a seminar on RESPA to help get the ball rolling again.
“At first, banks didn’t move on anything, and now, its finally starting to pick up,” she said. “The banks were scared and didn’t know what to do, so they didn’t do anything. We had some files here that were open for months.”
That lag did have one benefit, however. Osiecki said it allowed her firm the time to get used to the new software. Now, it comes second nature.
“We had a little bit of training the first week, but it didn’t go too far because when you first start using it, you don’t know what questions to ask,” she said. “TSS came back a week later and that was nice, so it’s gone pretty smooth.”
“When you do the HUD-1 [with the software], it looks just like the real form,” she added.
Write to Austin Kilgore.
Mar/100
Austin area home sales up 5 percent in January; Month marks one year of steady improvement in sales volume
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Austin Board of REALTORS® releases January 2010 real estate statistics “At this point, we can look back and see that January 2009 was the low point of this cycle. With steady improvement throughout 2009 that continued in January 2010, we can see that we’re one year into the recovery in Austin,” said John Horton, Chairman of the Austin Board of REALTORS®. “What’s most important about this is that it’s the kind of recovery we want: one that is steady, stable and consistent.” Throughout 2009, the volume of single-family home sales in Austin improved steadily. In the first half the year, the gap in year-over-year sales volume closed consistently, reaching levels similar to 2008 during the summer peak, with the exception of a dip in August. In the fall of 2009, sales volume began outperforming 2008 and surged in October and November, spurred by the original deadline for the first-time homebuyer tax credit. In December 2009, sales volume returned to a modest increase of five percent when compared to December 2008, a growth rate which was maintained in January 2010. Mr. Horton continued, “We’re already seeing positive signs in sales volume and price appreciation. Those factors, combined with the population growth and additional jobs economists expect for our area in 2010, bode well for the long-term value of Austin real estate.” January 2010 Statistics
The Austin Board of REALTORS® is a non-profit, voluntary organization representing more than 8,000 licensed REALTORS® in Central Texas. For more, please contact Angela Brutsché at 512-454-7636. |