Tag Archives: Mt Kisco Real Estate for Sale

New Mortgage Rule Only a Start in Jump-starting Lending | Mt Kisco Realtor

Leave a reply

If the years leading up to the U.S. housing bust were rife with lax underwriting, the opposite problem has occurred in its aftermath: Excessively tight credit is making it impossible for many borrowers to obtain mortgages.

Enter the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which this week unveiled a much-awaited rule intended to strengthen mortgage standards and provide more legal protection to lenders. In requiring that lenders verify the ability of borrowers to repay their loans, the CFPB aims to safeguard consumers against deceptive practices and provide legal protection to banks, which have been wary of lending, fearful that borrowers would eventually default and sue.

The CFPB’s qualified-mortgage rule, which goes into effect next year and was required under the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act, gets many things right: It requires lenders to consider specific factors in determining whether a borrower can repay a loan, including income, overall debt, employment status and credit history. Borrowers’ total debt payments — including car loans, school loans and mortgages — can’t exceed 43 percent of their pretax income.

The rule prohibits many of the exotic loan features, such as interest-only payments, that fed the housing bubble. It also smartly avoids being overly prescriptive. It doesn’t, for example, require a certain level of down payment, which could wind up denying credit to otherwise-qualified borrowers.

Missing Pieces

Yet the CFPB’s rule alone won’t open the lending spigot. Other pieces must fall into place, including finalizing — and harmonizing — a rule detailing which types of mortgages will be exempt from a requirement that lenders retain a 5 percent financial stake in loans that are packaged into securities and sold.

Capital levels for banks must also be firmed up so companies can determine how much they can safely lend. Most important, the U.S. must outline its plans for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which own or guarantee about 84 percent of mortgages, including whether the U.S. will continue to offer a mortgage guarantee at all.

The latter question is crucial given the CFPB’s new rule, which will probably lead to fewer types of loans and a heavier reliance on the 30-year fixed-rate mortgage. That product, largely unique to the U.S., has traditionally come with a government guarantee.

The CFPB’s rule, intended to set the industry standard for mortgages, gives huge deference to Fannie Mae (FNMA) and Freddie Mac. For example, it grants legal protection to loans that don’t meet the 43 percent debt-to-income test if they satisfy the underwriting standards of Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac (FMCC) and the Federal Housing Administration. The CFPB said this bypass, which could last as long as seven years, was necessary given the “fragile state of the mortgage market.”

As we’ve said, the time has come for a serious overhaul of housing finance, including limiting the government guarantee and adequately pricing it to reflect risk. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are profitable again and have stopped drawing on the Treasury. Housing prices are rising and foreclosures are beginning to stabilize.

If the roles of Fannie and Freddie aren’t soon clarified, the companies could become permanent wards of the state. Even Fannie Mae’s chief executive officer, Timothy Mayopoulos, said at a Bloomberg Government breakfast that the company’s mortgage dominance has reached an unhealthy and unsustainable level.

To bring back private capital, lenders need to know what constitutes a qualified residential mortgage and is thus free from risk-retention requirements, also known as the “skin in the game” rule. The rule, which six federal agencies are writing, is supposed to largely mirror the CFPB’s, yet a proposal last year differed in many ways, including imposing a 20 percent down- payment requirement.

The Federal Reserve and other agencies have rightly waited to finalize their rule until the CFPB completed its work, and they should now move quickly to synchronize.

Consumers deserve access to quality mortgages they can afford. The U.S. economy still suffers from the consequences of lax underwriting standards, yet the pendulum has swung too far the other way.

The CFPB’s rules strike the right balance between responsible lending and mortgage availability. Yet truly strengthening the housing market will require more effort by regulators and lawmakers.

To contact the Bloomberg View editorial board: view@bloomberg.net.

via bloomberg.com

Outrage after NY paper publishes names of gun permit holders | Mt Kisco Homes

Leave a reply

NEW YORK A newspaper’s publication of the names and addresses of handgun permit holders in two New York counties has sparked online discussions — and a healthy dose of outrage.

The Journal News, a Gannett Co. newspaper covering three counties in the Hudson Valley north of New York City and operating the website lohud.com, posted a story Sunday detailing a public-records request it filed to obtain the information.

The 1,800-word story headlined, “The gun owner next door: What you don’t know about the weapons in your neighborhood,” said the information was sought after the Dec. 14 school shooting in Newtown, Conn., about 50 miles northeast of the paper’s headquarters in White Plains. A gunman killed his mother, drove to an elementary school and massacred 20 first-graders and six adults, then shot himself. All the weapons used were legally owned by his mother.

The Journal News story includes comments from both sides of the gun-rights debate and presents the data as answering concerns of those who would like to know whether there are guns in their neighborhood. It reports that about 44,000 people in Westchester, Putnam and Rockland counties are licensed to own a handgun, and that rifles and shotguns can be purchased without a permit.

It was accompanied online by maps of the results for Westchester and Rockland counties; similar details had not yet been provided by Putnam County. A reader clicking on the maps can see the name and address of each pistol or revolver permit holder. Accompanying text states that inclusion does not necessarily mean that an individual owns a weapon, just who obtained a license.

By Wednesday afternoon, the maps had shared about 30,000 times on Facebook and other social media.

Most online comments have criticized the publication of the data, and many suggest it puts the permit holders in danger because criminals have a guide to places they can steal guns. Others maintain it tells criminals who does not have a gun and may be easier to victimize, or where to find law enforcement figures against whom they might hold a grudge.

Some responded by publicizing the home addresses and phone numbers of the reporter who wrote the piece, along with other journalists at the paper and even senior executives of Gannett. Many echoed the idea that publicizing gun permit holders’ names is tantamount to accusing them of doing something wrong, comparing the move to publishing lists of registered sex offenders.

The Journal News is standing behind the project. It said in the story that it published a similar list in 2006.

“Frequently, the work of journalists is not popular. One of our roles is to report publicly available information on timely issues, even when unpopular,” Janet Hasson, president and publisher of The Journal News Media Group, said in an emailed statement. “We knew publication of the database (as well as the accompanying article providing context) would be controversial, but we felt sharing information about gun permits in our area was important in the aftermath of the Newtown shootings.”

Roy Clark, a senior scholar at the Poynter Institute, a Florida-based journalism think tank, said publishing the data was “too indiscriminate.”

He, too, compared the maps to similar efforts involving sex-offender registries or lists of those arrested for driving under the influence, noting that such a move is usually done to indicate a serious problem that requires a neighbor or parent to maintain vigilance.

“You get the connotation that somehow there’s something essentially wrong with this behavior,” he said of the gun permit database.

“My predisposition is to support the journalism,” Clark said. “I want to be persuaded that this story or this practice has some higher social purpose, but I can’t find it.”

Also common among the comments on the lohud.com were suggestions about suing the paper for violating permit-holders’ privacy rights. Such a move would likely be unsuccessful.

“The media has no liability for publishing public information,” said Edward Rudofsky, a First Amendment attorney at Zane and Rudofsky in New York. The issue does present a clash between First and Second amendment rights, he said, but in general, the law protects publishing public information unless the intent was to harm someone.

via cbsnews.com

7 steps to protect condo funds from embezzlement | Mount Kisco Real Estate

Leave a reply

DEAR BENNY: I have just been elected president of my 200-unit condominium association and have heard that some property managers throughout the country have embezzled association funds. How can we protect ourselves and our money? –Fred

DEAR FRED: First, most property managers are honest and hard-working. Unfortunately, as in every walk of life, there are bad apples, and one such apple casts a negative spell against all such managers.

I would immediately talk with your association attorney, your property manager and your insurance agent. Each will be able to provide you with information that will assist your association in securing its funds.

Here are some suggestions I have developed over the years, especially since I have represented two associations whose property managers stole their money.

  • Check out the property manager carefully. Perhaps you should even obtain credit reports on the firm (and the property manager who will be servicing your project); this will, of course, require the permission of the manager, but they should not object if they want your business.
  • Keep control of your funds. Generally speaking, there are two pools of moneys in community associations: operating accounts and reserve accounts.

Regarding the operating account, set a dollar figure above which the property manager will need the co-signature of at least one board member on all checks going out of that account. This will, of course, create a burden on both the property manager and the board member who has to sign checks. But, in my opinion, if you want to serve on the board, you should be willing to assume those responsibilities, which will protect the funds belonging to you as well as the unit owners who elected you.

Clearly, there are routine checks that have to be paid on a monthly basis — such as water bills, insurance, and trash collection. If you set a dollar limit based on your monthly needs, the property manager can write checks up to that amount without a second signature. But any checks over that limit must be co-signed by at least one board member. Your bank will give you signature cards and these signature requirements should be spelled out in those documents. Then, the bank will have to honor your request.

Regarding the reserve accounts, they should be in the name of the association only, and only board members should be authorized to sign checks (or transfer funds) from those accounts. If you visit website you will understand how the community associations do not transfer moneys often from reserve accounts; it should not be a hardship on anyone to require that only board members be authorized to have access to those funds.

  • Make sure the property management company has adequate insurance covering your association in the event of embezzlement, fraud or other activities that may cause your association a loss. The insurance industry will write “third-party-coverage” bond insurance, which will give you protection in the event of a loss. The amount of the policy will, of course, depend on the amount of the reserves you anticipate you will carry. Some associations have hundreds of thousands of dollars in reserve; clearly, third-party coverage in the amount of $50,000, for example, is woefully inadequate for those associations.
  • Ask if the management company has a fidelity bond in place to cover any loss created by its employees. If they do, your association must be named as an additional insured.
  • Make sure that you (and not the property manager) hire an accounting firm to give you a full audit or review each and every year. Your association should give a letter of engagement to the accountant, and the accountant should report back to you — and not the manager.
  • Make sure that your funds (operating and reserves) are in separate bank accounts in the name of the association. It is absolutely wrong for a property manager to co-mingle funds with other associations, or even with their own bank accounts.
  • Perhaps most importantly, insist that the property manager give you and your board members a monthly financial status report, which will include copies of the actual bank statements received by the management company. But, your president or treasurer should also receive a copy of the monthly (or quarterly) bank statement directly from the bank. In the past, those property managers who embezzled money were creating false bank statements on their computer. In one case, although the manager left the association with only $2,000, every month he created a bank statement showing more than $80,000.

I do not believe that property managers will object to the various suggestions I have made, and indeed may have more recommendations of their own.

Community association board members have the power to control as best they can the financial security of association funds, and steps should be implemented immediately while it is not too late.

DEAR BENNY: My husband and I were in Las Vegas and made a horrible mistake in sitting through a time-share presentation so that we could obtain half-price tickets to a show. The presentation was at an office on the Strip.

Unfortunately, I did not research the company before the presentation. The salesman gave only his first name and had no business card; that should have been a clue about the company.

Anyways, he started talking about the time shares at a Vegas hotel, which was running about $52,000 for a two-bedroom. Since we were not interested, the sales manager came out and said there was an issue with our tickets.

While waiting for the tickets, the sales manager starting talking to us about a resale/foreclosure unit at another Vegas hotel.

The cost for a two-bedroom was significantly less, even though it was considered biannual usage. The rest is history as to what happened that afternoon. Later that evening, we found the same two-bedroom unit for $7,000 cheaper and another on eBay for $1.

In addition, we researched the company and found hundreds of unhappy time-share owners. We also read that a class-action lawsuit was filed against the company in November 2011. We immediately sent a rescind letter, while we were still on vacation. We even called the salesman the next day and he told us that “they never cancel.” At that point, we knew we were scammed.

We just received a letter from the company in which they repeated that we are “not the owner/seller of the time-share interest but rather we are an authorized agent acting on behalf of the owner/seller with respect to the resale of the timeshare interest.” Therefore, we are unable to cancel the purchase agreement since the statutory right of rescission applies only to developer sales. Since the purchase is a resale by a nondeveloper owner, the buyer has no contractual or statutory means to cancel the agreement.

Our question to you is whether the company as an authorized agent on behalf of the owner/seller is obligated to tell the buyer that the sale is final and that you are unable to cancel the purchase agreement. While we were finalizing the paperwork, they made sure we initialed the floor plan for the unit. Never did they have us initial any document that we could not cancel the contract nor did they volunteer this information.

The majority of people who attend the time-share presentations are not familiar with real estate law and haven’t even purchased a resale/foreclosure. Does the buyer have any rights to cancel a contract? Is there even a cooling period? Are we stuck with the time share? Shouldn’t we receive some document that we are unable to cancel the purchase agreement? –Thomas

DEAR THOMAS: I have deleted the name of the time-share company that you dealt with, so as to avoid any back-and-forth responses with that company. But if you go to the Web and type in “time share scams” you will find a large number of websites.

I can’t provide legal advice, but suspect that the company carefully complied with existing laws. It has lawyers on retainer who will do their best to keep the company from doing something illegal. Some states provide rights of rescission; others do not. The sale may fall under the federal Interstate Land Sales Full Disclosure Act, which does give you the right to cancel after you sign a contract; but again, your attorney will have to provide you the specific answers to your specific transaction.

However, you got caught because you wanted something free — those Vegas tickets. Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi has posted a number of ways to protect oneself from time-share fraud, and a couple are as follows: (1) be wary of the hard sales pitch; and (2) be wary of too-good-to-be-true claims when it comes to resales.

My suggestion: Don’t make any payments. If you made the mistake of authorizing direct deductions from your banking account, stop that immediately. If you used a credit card to make a deposit, demand that your credit card company cancel the transaction. They will investigate and may be able to help you.

But the bottom line is: Please do not fall for those fast-talking salespersons who promise you the moon. I can assure you that you won’t even get a single star.

via inman.com