Hawaii Realtors Now Exempted From Distressed Property Law

Great news for Hawaii REALTORS that handle distressed properties and for homeowners in the unfortunate situation of being behind in their payments and facing the risk of foreclosure! As of Wednesday May 20, Realtors are exempted from many of the provisions of the Mortgage Rescue Fraud Prevention Act of 2008. This is an enormous benefit to distressed homeowners who can now rely on the help of their real estate agent working with their lender to help them sell their home prior to foreclosure.

The Mortgage Rescue Fraud Prevention Act is a law enacted to help protect homeowners that are behind on their mortgage payments from unscrupulous people that attempt to take advantage of the homeowner’s predicament by purchasing the home for less than it is worth or otherwise stealing the equity in the home.

The law defines a Distressed Property as one in which the homeowner is at least 60 days deliquent on his/her payments, or at least 90 days delinquent in the payment of taxes, association fees or other encumbrances, or meeting other similar criteria. It provides that a person doing certain tasks for the homeowner must enter into a Distressed Property Agreement with the homeowner and that that person would be considered a Distressed Property Consultant. The tasks covered include things such as helping to postpone foreclosure, negotiating with the homeowner’s lender or other creditors, helping protect the homeowner’s credit, and other tasks that help the homeowner and which, sometimes, may be handled by a realtor knowledgable in these areas.

The original Hawaii law was modeled after several other similar state laws. However, one of the main differences was that realtors were exempted from the law in other states. So, since Governor Lingle has now signed Act 66 of 2009 into law, Hawaii has now realized that including realtors within the definition of Distressed Property Consultants was not helping homeowners, but rather, hurting them, and has corrected these problems. While realtors still may not purchase a Distressed Property that they represented, during or within 365 days after their listing agreement has expired/is terminated, they may still do what it takes to really help the homeowner try to avoid foreclosure via negotiations with creditors and/or selling the property.

If you are behind or may become behind on your payments and are looking at selling, even if you owe more on your home than it is currently worth (a short sale), please do not hestiate to contact me. I will do what I can to help.

Aloha~ Yvonne 808-721-8088