A new scholarship program for aspiring teen real estate professionals, the CFPB’s digging for “junk fees” and interest rate cuts across the Atlantic. From the wild and wooly world of real estate, here are the Hits and Misses for the week of May 27-31.
Hit: Educating Tomorrow’s Leaders. The Tennessee Real Estate Commission deserves praise for its new scholarship program for graduating high school seniors to obtain real estate licenses. The program, created in partnership with Kaplan Real Estate Education, waives the fees attached to the base education required for the pre-licensing Tennessee exam. Considering that many people begin a career in real estate after working in another industry, having a program that will encourage young people to begin their professional experience in real estate is exciting.
Miss: Junk is in the Eye of the Beholder. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) has begun a public inquiry into mortgage closing costs, claiming that so-called “junk fees” are affecting housing affordability, access to homeownership and home equity. As part of its inquiry, the CFPB cited credit report costs and title insurance as “junk fees.” In reality, the obstacles to housing affordability are a lack of inventory exacerbated by onerous regulatory burdens on builders, coupled with elevated mortgage rates amid the miasma of our inflationary economy. The politicized CFPB seems to be taking a cue from President Biden, who outrageously claimed real estate broker commissions were responsible for record-high home prices. Hopefully, this alleged inquiry will go nowhere and be forgotten.
Miss: No Vacancy in the Big Apple. A New York Times report from this week found roughly 135 of New York City’s nearly 680 hotels are housing illegal immigrants, which has resulted in a loss of 16,532 hotel rooms. This represents approximately one out of five hotels. The current level of lodging availability is 2,812 fewer hotel rooms than existed in the pre-pandemic period. Not surprisingly, the loss of available hotel rooms resulted in a spike for lodging costs in the city. This story is so wrong at so many levels, and for New York City’s lodging sector (and wider economy) the situation is woefully unsustainable.
Miss: Someone Call HR! What the heck is going on at Florida’s Jacksonville Housing Authority? This week, Deputy Chief Financial Officer Greg Williams was fired for failing to show up at work – and this occurred roughly one month after he was promoted from comptroller. No one knows why Williams went AWOL from his duties, and this marked the second time since he joined the agency in 2022 that he failed to report for work. If that’s not bad enough, Chief Financial Officer Dennis Lohr resigned two weeks ago, and CEO Dwayne Johnson resigned in January, claiming that Mayor Donna Deegan’s office forced him out of office. The agency is currently the target of three Inspector General investigations and an audit by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, while Williams is also reportedly the subject of an ongoing internal financial investigation at the agency. Maybe it is time for Gov. Ron DeSantis to step in?
Hit: You Know What Grinds My Gears? The dysfunctional characters of TV’s “Family Guy” may not seem like the types who would sit together and play a good-natured board game, but they’ve been licensed to appear on a new edition of the most famous real estate-focused game of all time. The Op Games is now selling Monopoly: Family Guy Edition, with the original game’s Atlantic City-inspired settings changed to a Quahog location. Players can choose from six collectible tokens including Rupert and Evil Monkey while using Family Guy “Clams” Monopoly Money. And the old favorite Community Chest and Chance cards have been renamed “Holy Crap!” and “WHAAAAA?” All we can say is “Giggity! Giggity!”
Hit: Doing the Right Thing. Congratulations to the Utah-based Red Rock Real Estate and Eagle Gate Title for their very successful fundraising campaign on behalf of Make-A-Wish Utah. According to the St. George News, the companies teamed to raise $100,000 during April to coincide with Make-A-Wish Utah’s annual Drive for Wishes campaign. The endeavor brought in $111,000 in total, exceeding the initial fundraising goal. “We plan to do Real Estate for Wishes every year,” said Red Rock Companies Executive Assistant Katherine Chipman. “We’re excited by the response we got this year, and we look forward to being able to grant even more wishes in the future.” We’re looking forward to that, too!
Phil Hall is editor of Weekly Real Estate News. He can be reached at [email protected].
Photo courtesy of Fox
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