Dec
24
Happy Holidays
Filed Under General Thoughts and Comments | Leave a Comment
Happy Holidays to all who enter this site. I sincerely wish all of you a meaningful Holy Day filled with joy and good tidings. I also look forward to a prosperous new year and wish the same for you.
Dec
13
This is my first blog and I thought I’d tell whomever is reading this why I did it. I have been in the mortgage/real estate business for over 13 years now and I have seen a lot of changes happen recently that merit further comment. Comment that I will continue in later blogs. This blog is to introduce myself and tell you all why I did it.After having been in the industry for over 13 years I have discovered that this is a very incestuous business. By that I mean that there are three distinct methods of legally performing a real estate escrow in California and two of them seem to go against the very core of what escrow is. Escrow is supposed to be a neutral third party to a real estate transaction. It is not an agent for the buyer or seller or a protector of profits for the broker, lender, or title company. Escrow is neutral. In California, however, escrow services can be performed by a real estate broker if the escrow is for a transaction that the broker is acting as a broker in. Escrow can also be performed by the title insurance company that is providing insurance for a transaction. To me, that doesn’t seem very neutral when distinct parties to the transaction can act as escrow to the transaction.To make a long story short, I firmly believe that all parties to a transaction are best served when escrow is independent of all the other parties. That just makes sense to me and I think that, in time, it will make more sense to our legislators.(but that is another blog too).
