FRONT LINES: Washington Report

Congress OKs bill allowing faxes

Real estate professionals may continue to send fax advertisements to contacts with whom they have an established business relationship without having to obtain their prior written permission. Congress passed the legislation at the end of June with NAR’s support. President George W. Bush was expected to sign the bill in early July.

The Junk Fax Prevention Act maintains the longstanding business-relationship exemption in Federal Communication Commission rules on fax communications. In addition, the law supersedes, among other things, an FCC rule to take effect in 2006 that would end the business exemption rule.

At the same time, the law permits recipients, even if they have a relationship with the sender, to opt out of receiving faxes.

A chief NAR concern over the FCC requirement, had it been allowed to apply, is the administrative burden of collecting and managing written permissions for consumers requesting listing information.

“Without passage of the Act, practitioners wouldn’t have been able to fax listings to consumers who call and request such information without first getting written permission,” says NAR President Al Mansell.

NAR worked with more than 600 other groups to get Congress to keep the exception in the FCC rules.

Focus on employer-assisted housing

Employers and homebuyers would receive tax help on employer-assisted housing programs in an NAR-backed bill introduced in the U.S. Senate this summer by Sens. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., Mel Martinez, R-Fla., and Gordon Smith, R-Ore.

The bill, Housing America’s Workforce Act, allows homebuyers to exclude their employer’s housing assistance from income on their federal tax return.

The bill also provides a tax credit to employers who provide housing assistance to their employees, and makes funds available to nonprofits and public agencies to cover some employer-assisted housing program costs.

No date has been set for consideration, and no comparable bill had been introduced in the House by early July.

HUD again eyes RESPA reform

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development this summer launched a series of meetings with industry and consumer groups to exchange ideas on potential reforms of the federal Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act.

HUD’s last effort at RESPA reform, in a proposed rule published in 2002, met with stiff resistance from Congress, NAR, and other industry groups concerned that the rule’s approach for allowing settlement service providers to offer single guaranteed packages of services gave an advantage to large financial institutions.

In that rule, which HUD withdrew in 2004, only providers able to provide a guaranteed interest rate could offer a service package with mortgage financing as a component, considered a key piece to any comprehensive package. Other typical packaged services include title and homeowners insurance.

Critics also said HUD provided industry groups insufficient opportunity to make their concerns known during the rule-writing process. The HUD meetings this summer are aimed in part at addressing those concerns. “I promise before we put pen to paper, we’ll carefully consider input from consumers and industry alike,” Alphonso Jackson, HUD secretary, has said.

But HUD could still act on reform even if industry groups can’t resolve differences in how to structure that reform. “The purpose of these summer sessions is to stimulate a meaningful exchange of ideas among participants over the substance of new RESPA reform proposals, not to reach consensus through negotiation,” a HUD statement says.

NAR will be represented at all Washington, D.C., sessions, and practitioners are participating in three additional meetings around the country that HUD is holding jointly with the U.S. Small Business Administration, NAR analysts say.

In the sessions, NAR is stressing the need to revise the existing HUD good-faith estimate form, with full transparency on all finance costs, and to allow all providers to offer mortgage financing as part of packaged settlement services.

HUD has given no timetable for publishing a new proposed rule. “I’m more concerned with doing this right than doing it fast,” Jackson has said.

MORE ONLINE
NAR info on do-not-fax law

HUD RESPA announcement

RESPA issues update

RESPA compliance resources