I couldn’t have said this better myself…. oh, wait, I probably have…

Reba Haas

I've been a real estate agent in the Puget Sound region since 2003 and came to the industry with a background in sales in the tech sector. I'd been interested in real estate for a long time and my mom was a 30 year veteran agent in Kansas. I didn't grow up around the industry but I have definitely taken the bull by the horns, so to speak, in my own area with some pretty positive results. I've got a great team of people working with me. There is tremendous power in a team and it helps to have different perspectives at times when it comes to running a business. All in all, we make a great team! We hope you'll get a chance some day to utilize our varied and excellent skill sets in a future real estate transaction. But, even if we never get to meet you, we hope you'll enjoy and appreciate the information we have to offer here because our first philosophy is to "give before you get!"

8 Responses

  1. Hi Reba,

    Regarding this: “We also advise them to ask about yield spread premiums (YSP) and if a mortgage broker will notify them of these fees up front or only with a notice of (POC) paid outside closing on the HUD Settlement Statement.”

    Mortgage Brokers and their LOs are required to disclose YSPs up front on the Good Faith Estimate and are not allowed to disclose their yield as a POC.

    It must show up on the GFE as a dollar amount. If a consumer is ONLY seeing a YSP on the HUD I at closing and that fee was not disclosed on the GFE, their mortgage broker is violating a state and federal law.

    Reba says: “I know several good mortgage folks who give discounts on their fee to clients if a YSP is paid on the back end. What the public doesn’t really understand is that agents are required to do this for their client – we offer it as a service but not everyone takes us up on it.”

    I am not aware of any state law that directs real estate agents to perform this service as a requirement. Can you provide a source to the state agency law on this?

    Thanks.

  2. Reba Haas says:

    Hi Jillayne, welcome to my own blog! Thanks for catching my typo on the 2nd comment you have here. I’ll edit my post, I did mean to say that as agents we are NOT required to review GFE’s for clients, but that we frequently will do it as a service for a client. We tell them we aren’t the definitive source but we can usually help identify items that they may want to go ask their lender about or at least get clarification on. We also can see whether or not what we may see as high fees are being charged (compared to the averages we see charged our other clients) and it helps the client to have a more elevated conversation with their lender about their loan options.

    As for your first comment, I hear you on the legal issue, but I can tell you that there have been a few times in the past 5 years I’ve seen a POC on a HUD that I’m reviewing at closing, I’ll ask the client, they don’t know about it (or may have missed understanding it in their GFE) and we’ll bring it up for review with the lender. It seems to me to be those times where docs are pushing the limit of the closing period where we’ve seen it happen most commonly, or we’ve seen it on the other side of the transaction.

  3. Hi Reba

    Thanks for the clarification. There’s two new senate bills coming before the WA state legislature. One would require brokers and hopefully their loan originators to act as fiduciaries for consumers.

    The other bill will require the broker/LO to refund the YSP to the borrwer at closing if it was not disclosed on the GFE.

    WAMB, the industry trade association, is opposed to both of these bills.

    Ethical Lending Foundation is in favor of both.

    Keep an eye out for these!

  4. Reba Haas says:

    very interesting, I can’t wait to see what happens with it.

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