We received a cease-and-desist letter from the California Association of Realtors for having a blank copy of the purchase contract on the blog.
I speculated that they must have a lot of time on their hands, and asked if could they use some of it to pursue the rampant and unabated short-sale fraud by realtors.
Here is the response from a staff attorney:
Believe me, we have not enough time to be reviewing intellectual property violations, but your website came up at the top of a recent search that we did.
As to the latter point, short sale fraud and mortgage fraud have been a HUGE concern of C.A.R. over the last four to six years. The Legal Department has given a number of webinars, made in-person presentations, and created new Legal Q&As during the last several years addressing these issues, and also advises regarding the seriousness of these issues and the penalties associated with these types of fraud every day on the Legal Hotline. To illustrate, we have a link on our home page which takes users to the following portion of our website:
http://www.car.org/aboutus/
Unfortunately, C.A.R. is not an enforcement agency with the power to prosecute these matters, but we can refer any violations that you see to the FTC, the California DRE, and FBI who are taking these issues very seriously (even though they may be short on manpower). If you have any suggestions on what we can be doing further on this very important matter, please do not hesitate to let us know.
There you go! We have seen no efforts made by the local association of Realtors of the MLS system to curtail fraudulent activities by realtors, but the state association has a link!
I guess the realtors committing fraud didn’t get the memo about attending the webinar, or bothered to call the Hotline?
P.S. The last I heard, if you submit a complaint about a realtor to the California Department of Real Estate, they will get around to it in about 18 months.
It’s not just California. That seems to be the way the associations work everywhere.
This needs explanation. Are you telling us CAR demands you (and others) neither link nor provide copies of standard blank real estate purchase contracts?
If this is the case, what a sham operation. What s sham. The only — only — reason to send this demand is to make it more difficult for California consumers to use and obtain standard forms to buy/sell real estate. As if sending out these letters is going to force the do-it-yourselfers into the arms of the only constituency CAR cares about.
Also Jim, hope you leave the blank contract up.
It is pathetic they dont go after the real criminals out there. Seems to be business as usual in the real estate world. I never saw the purchase contract on the blog personally.
You are reading it correctly.
They will dance around the blatant fraudulent activity by realtors – the group they are charged with serving. I think they have a duty to the rest of the honest realtors to clean up the business!
And yes, unfortunately their rights to intellectual content are more valuable than transparency. They prevent the public from reading the contracts in advance, and want the realtor to be the one to distribute and explain – though the contracts say right on them that realtors are not lawyers and if you want legal advice go find an attorney but go ahead and sign here first before reading, let alone understanding.
Did you also note that they are too busy to pursue people, but they found time for me?
P.S. I did remove the contract. The blog post was from April when Kingside the attorney joined me on Blog Talk Radio and we were discussing the finer points of the contract to help educate people.
As of 7/1/13, the Department of Real Estate will technically cease to exist and operations will be transfered to the “Bureau of Real Estate” which will become a component of the Department of Consumer Affairs.
http://www.dre.ca.gov/files/pdf/DRE_BRE.pdf
Hard to imagine that the complaint backlog with the DRE will improve any time soon.
CAR doesn’t have to prosecute; they simply have to kick bad realtors out. Sheesh.