Zillow

New fraud warning from Chicago Title

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It goes without saying that one of the most important partnerships for a real estate lawyer is a great title insurance company. I am biased, but in my opinion, there is no better title insurance company doing business in South Carolina than Chicago Title.

This week, a warning was issued from Chicago Title about a new and very specific fraud scheme that I want to share with all South Carolina practitioners.

Chicago Title received two reports last week of fraudsters apparently operating out of Houston. The fraudsters posed as owners of South Carolina properties and listed the properties for sale on Zillow. Mail away cash closings were scheduled with local real estate lawyers. In both cases, the fraudsters provided presumably fake identification and deeds to closing attorneys.

In the first case, the closing attorney very astutely foiled the scheme when he determined the signatures on the deed appeared suspicious. He contacted the New York notary who purportedly notarized the deed. She reported her seal had been stolen and used in at least one successful fraudulent scheme. The lawyer also learned from Federal Express that the deed had been sent from Houston rather than New York, where the seller was purportedly located. The transaction was stopped.

Unfortunately, the second transaction was not stopped.  This seller package also originated in Houston. The fraudster’s telephone number appears on Zillow listing for properties in multiple states. Houston law enforcement has been notified and is opening an investigation.

Any mail away closings should be particularly scrutinized. If you conduct a closing with an unfamiliar seller, you should be especially vigilant in confirming the identities of the parties. Use more than one set of eyes in your office! Anything that appears unusual should be examined carefully. Give your staff the flexibility to slow down and carefully examine each document. Tell them to bring any unusual document to you. Check behind your staff! A great real estate paralegal is invaluable, but we spent three years in law school learning to spot issues. Use those issue-spotting skills to foil these fraudsters!

Be careful and good luck out there!

Have you heard of Pacaso Second Homes?

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Dirt Lawyers: take a look at this company’s website: www.pacaso.com

(Photo by Robbi Pengelly/Index-Tribune)

I try to keep abreast of trends in the real estate market, but I missed this interesting story entirely. Luckily, my husband, Frank, a voracious purveyor of the news, pointed this article from NPR out to me. The story, dated August 24, is entitled “A Startup is Turning Houses into Corporations, And the Neighbors Are Fighting Back”. You can read the story in its entirety here.

It seems a “unicorn” (a startup corporation with a billion-dollar valuation) called Pacaso, is buying homes, slightly refurbishing them, furnishing them, and creating limited liability companies to own them. The ownership of each house is then divvied into eight fractional shares, and each share is marketed on the company’s website. Each share entitles an owner to 44 nights per year. Each visit is limited to no more than 14 days.

The corporation offers an app to handle booking, maintenance, and cleaning. The cost is 12% of the value of the property up front and monthly maintenance fees. After ownership for a year, each fractional owner is entitled to sell its interest at a gain or loss. Gifts of stays at the houses can also be made to friends or family members. The company advertises that it only buys luxury and super-luxury homes and that it is not competing with middle-class families for housing.

The news story and the company’s website indicate the corporation was founded in 2020 by two former Zillow executives. One of the founders who lives in Napa bought a second home in Lake Tahoe and immediately became inspired with making the dream of second home ownership available for more people.

This type of ownership is not new to real estate practitioners who practice on South Carolina’s coast. For sale signs for beachfront houses touting “Interval Ownership” are common. In fact, intervals in these homes seem to be perpetually for sale. 

My speculation about the frequency of these sales has always been that owning a home with multiple individuals and entities you don’t know can’t be much fun. It’s hard enough for two spouses to agree on when undertake major maintenance items. Imagine trying to decide when to spend the money on exterior painting with a large group.

 The crux of NPR’s article is the opposition being mounted by neighbors of some of the houses. It’s not surprising that owners in nice single-family neighborhoods would oppose the parade of vacationers interval ownership might create. One group of neighbors in Napa printed signs reading “No Pacaso” for homes and cars, wrote opinion pieces for local newspapers and were otherwise extremely vocal in their opposition.

Valid legal arguments might be made in these neighborhoods if restrictive covenants or zoning ordinances exclude timeshares or Airbnb-types of ownership, but Pacaso insists its model involves neither form. All real estate law is, of course, local, so various arguments will be mounted in different locations.

In response to the opposition in the Napa neighborhood, the company agreed to sell the home in question in the traditional manner. It also agreed to beef up noise provisions in its documents, to create a local liaison dedicated to assisting neighbors, to refrain from buying homes in the area valued less than $2 million and to donate funds to a local nonprofit dedicated to affordable housing.

I didn’t see any South Carolina homes in a quick review of the company’s website, but I did see homes located in Florida. I can only imagine that South Carolina’s beautiful coastline will be discovered soon. Real estate practitioners will likely be involved in both sides of this controversy.

iBuyers are jumping back into the water: does that mean the market is safe?

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In March, the disruptive iBuyers announced that they were no longer buying homes in the midst of the pandemic. They said they were unable to pinpoint house values to the extent to make them comfortable in proceeding with their market model. And they said they were unable to insure the health and safety of their employees, partners and customers.

Some economists projected these companies would completely go out of business after losing such substantial momentum in the midst of the various shelter-in-place orders.

But now, just weeks later, the iBuyers say they’re back!

Offerpad, Redfin, Zillow, Opendoor and others have announced plans to resume operations after verifying health safety procedures. More of the processes will be handled remotely, and, as we are all doing, there will be more sanitizing, mask and glove wearing, and hand washing. They will likely offer digital methods for appraisals and for home viewing by potential buyers. Some will offer self-service listings.

One of the companies has discussed a safe, on-demand, and fully digital experience to buy and sell homes. They believe the experience is needed now more than ever.

As this blog has discussed previously, although these market disrupters have made it to markets in Georgia and North Carolina, we have not seen them announce operations in The Palmetto State. But my colleague, Martha McConnell, said she saw a Redfin “for sale” sign in her neighborhood in southeast Columbia last week.

So the iBuyers may be closer to us than we think!

Disrupted Disrupters

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COVID-19 is causing the iBuyers’ business model to stall

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With COVID-19 spreading, the iBuying frenzy seems to be fading fast. Commerce is slowing and even closing in some locations, especially major cities, making it difficult for iBuyers to determine fair prices for homes. Zillow, Redfin, Opendoor and Offerpad have all withdrawn from the iBuying market for the time being.

The only company not putting on the brakes seems to be HomeVestors, the “We Buy Ugly Houses” company that was in the iBuying space before that term became cool. The companies recently occupying this space never made it to South Carolina, but we saw “We Buy Ugly Houses” signs on telephone poles throughout the state, even in the most rural areas.

Some economists are speculating that COVID-19 may put a nail in the coffin of the “institutional fix-and flip” business model of those companies recently entering the market. The model was considered risky in the best of times. In times of economic uncertainty, it becomes even riskier. Safely buying a home at 95% of the market value requires confidence that the market won’t drop substantially.

HomeVestors, on the other hand, is attempting to grow by selling franchises and advertising that it remains in the market that others are leaving.

Other economists and some of the companies themselves are arguing that iBuying is a viable alternative in a market where it’s difficult to show homes and hold open houses. At this point, the correct answer is anybody’s guess.

The retreat of Zillow, Redfin, Opendoor and Offerpad before they even reach South Carolina is good news to South Carolina closing attorneys and real estate agents who view the iBuying phenomenon as another disruption to our business model as well as another possible means of dilution of control over residential closings by attorneys.

It sounds as if, for now, truly ugly houses may be the only ones subject to iBuying in South Carolina. The disrupters have been disrupted by economic uncertainty.

What’s going on with iBuying during the COVID-19 chaos?

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This blog has discussed the spread of iBuyers, entities that make offers over the Internet to home sellers in certain residential markets. These sales take place with much less fuss and inconvenience than sales in the normal real estate market. What’s the catch? The sales price may be lower than the price that would have been obtained in the normal selling process. Sellers had to weigh convenience and price.

While we’ve seen the reach of the iBuyers (Opendoor, Offerpad, Zillow Offers and Redfin) spread to our neighboring states of Georgia and North Carolina, we have not yet seen the phenomenon reach into South Carolina.

I refer you to the April 3 article from Forbes that reports Opendoor, Offerpad, Zillow Offers and Redfin have all put their online buying on hold since the first COVID-19 shelter-in-place orders.

Interestingly, though, another company may be stepping up to fill this space. We’ve all seen the sign “We Buy Ugly Houses” posted on light poles, even in very small towns in South Carolina, for many years.

The Forbes article reports that the company behind those signs, HomeVestors, is transitioning to a virtual process and is continuing to buy houses across the nation. The article also reports that HomeVestors is opening new franchises to expand business further.

stay tuned - med WTS

This expansion may be good news to homeowners who are losing their jobs during this crisis and may need to sell their homes to remain financially solvent.

The article quotes the president of HomeVestors who said that nearly half of home sales traditionally occur between March and June, but the safety measures in place to prevent the spread of the virus may have significant impact on that market this year. HomeVestors is attempting to step into that market. The company hopes to provide some peace and continuity in this uncharted territory, according to the article.

iBuyers aren’t here yet, but they are close!

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iBuyers

I refer you to this article from The Title Report entitled “iBuyers gaining market share in some markets”.

While South Carolina has been safe from the iBuyer phenomenon so far, I wanted you to see this article because it shows us how close iBuyers actually are to us. The Raleigh, North Carolina, market led the nation in iBuyer market share for the third quarter, according to Redfin.

Nearly 8 percent of homes bought in Raleigh in that period were purchased by iBuyers.

This blog has discussed iBuyers previously. Opendoor, OfferPad, Redfin and Zillow continue to increase their footprints. They buy houses for prices determined by their respective algorithms in markets where they operate. The locations close to South Carolina, so far, are Atlanta, Charlotte, Raleigh-Durham, Jacksonville, Birmingham and Nashville. How far behind can we be?

Selling a home through an iBuyer can be much simpler than the market we currently occupy. The homeowner opens the iBuyer’s website, enters their address and some basic information about the house. Within a few days, the iBuyer will make an offer.

The seller doesn’t have to clean the house, stage the house, store excess furniture, board pets, leave home for open houses or any of the other indignities suffered under our current system. It’s a much easier process.

What’s the catch? The seller may be leaving money on the table. The offer will be less than the amount the homeowner could receive if all the gamers are property played on the open market.

If the offer is acceptable to the seller, he or she will schedule a time for a representative of the iBuyer to visit and assess the home. If maintenance issues are spotted, the seller may choose to complete the repairs or to allow the iBuyer to complete them at the seller’s expense. At that point, a final offer will be made.

The seller is allowed to select a closing date, typically within 60-90 days. The closing date is typically flexible and within the seller’s control. There is no worrying about the contingency of the buyer to sell a house or to obtain financing.

While real estate agents in normal closings might charge a total of 6 or 7 percent for commission, the iBuyer might charge a transaction fee of 7.5 percent. The iBuyer makes most of its money from these transaction fees, not from flipping prices. The homes are subsequently sold on the open market, so there will be a profit. But the iBuyer is not a normal home flipper. Substantial repairs are not made, and substantial profits are not made.

So the dichotomy for the seller seems to be convenience vs. price. If the amount the seller loses in price is worth it because of the convenience, then the seller is a prime candidate to do business with an iBuyer.

How are real estate agents adapting? They are assisting sellers by obtaining multiple iBuyer offers, analyzing and explaining the offers, discussing the options of accepting one of the offers or beginning to market the home in the traditional manner, and coordinating everything with the iBuyer or traditional buyer, including repairs.

We’ll pay attention as this phenomenon grows, and we’ll definitely report when it hits South Carolina.

“Curbed” article outlines the experience of iSellers

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iSeller may not be a “thing”, but iBuyer definitely is. I invite you to read the February 7 article by Jeff Andrews on curbed.com. This article outlines the experience of sellers who deal with Zillow, Opendoor and similar iBuyers. By extension, this article provides insight to real estate lawyers who want to remain in the real estate closing game after iBuyers make their way to South Carolina.

“iBuyer” is short for “instant buyer.” iBuyers buy houses for prices determined by their respective algorithms in the markets where they operate. The article contains a map showing those locations. South Carolina is not among those locations, but Atlanta, Charlotte, Raleigh-Durham, Jacksonville, Birmingham and Nashville are. How far behind can we be?

Selling a home through an iBuyer can be much simpler than the market we currently occupy. The homeowner opens the iBuyer’s website, enters their address and some basic information about the house. Within a few days, the iBuyer will make an offer.

The seller doesn’t have to clean the house, stage the house, store excess furniture, board pets, leave home for open houses, or any of the other indignities suffered under our current system. It’s a much easier process.

What’s the catch? The seller may be leaving money on the table. The offer will be less than the amount the homeowner could receive if all the games are properly played on the open market.

According to this article, if the offer is acceptable to the seller, he or she will schedule a time for a representative from the iBuyer to visit and asses the home. If maintenance issues are spotted, the seller may choose to complete the repairs or to allow the iBuyer to complete them at the seller’s expense.  At that point, a final offer will be made.

The seller is allowed to select a closing date, typically within 60-90 days. The closing date is typically flexible and within the seller’s control. There is no worrying about the contingency of the buyer to sell their house or obtain financing.

While the real estate agents in normal closings might charge a total of 6 or 7 percent for commission, the iBuyer might charge a transaction fee of 7.5 percent. According to this article, the iBuyer makes most of its money in these transaction fees. The houses are subsequently sold on the open market, so there will be a profit, but the iBuyer is not a home flipper. Substantial repairs are not made, and substantial profits are not made.

So the dichotomy for the seller seems to be convenience vs. price. If the amount the seller loses in price is worth it because of the convenience, then the seller is a prime candidate to do business with an iBuyer.

We’ll pay attention as this phenomenon grows, and we’ll definitely report when it hits South Carolina!

Motley Fool: “Zillow Plans to Do to Real Estate What Amazon Did to Retailing”

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Zillow Offers is not available in South Carolina yet, but it may be a matter of time

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This blog has promised to keep South Carolina dirt lawyers informed about the growing phenomenon of home “iBuying”. Please take a look at two recent articles from Motley Fool linked here.

One of the articles, entitled “Zillow Plans to Do to Real Estate What Amazon Did to Retailing”, indicates Zillow is aggressively taking on the neighborhood real estate broker. The other article, entitled “Why Zillow Wants to Pay More for Homes” indicates iBuying is a scale game, meaning the number of homeowners who accept Zillow’s offer increases dramatically with relatively small increases in price.

Zillow has been planning for this game for years. It already has a massive amount of traffic on its site and has accumulated an enormous amount of data. Go take a quick look at the data Zillow is showing about your own home!

To date, according to Motley Fool, Zillow faces intense competition from Opendoor, which leads the iBuying industry, already serving more than 40,000 customers. But Zillow is working hard to catch up. Opendoor operates in 21 markets. Zillow is in 17 of those markets, four additional markets, and plans to open in five more by the middle of 2020.

In early 2017, Zillow dipped its toe into the process of selling homes by launching a product it called “Instant Offers”. The product was initially tested in Las Vegas and Orlando and was described as a method for homeowners to sell their homes for a discounted price without the traditional complications of repairing, listing, staging and allowing for open houses.

The process started with a homeowner providing basic information via Internet about the home (square footage, number of bedrooms and bathrooms, and remodeling information) and uploading photos. The Zillow product then connected the homeowner with investors who buy homes in the area, and, typically, an all-cash offer was made by one or more of the investors. The homeowner paid no fee for the service and was not obligated to accept any offers. Zillow touted the product as a method to alleviate the seller’s stress and to allow the seller to close in a shorter time frame.

Other companies, Opendoor and Offerpad were already operating in this space at the time of the Zillow launch. The launch was called another example of technology disrupting the process of closing real estate transactions.

Real estate agents, of course, met the news with alarm. They said sellers would be suckered into making mistakes that might cost them the education of their kids, vacations or just the ability to sleep better at night because they have more money in their bank accounts. An online petition was initiated, asking the National Association of Realtors to threaten Zillow with being removed from access to listings. The NAR responded that it could not sponsor or encourage such a boycott.

Zillow has always stated publicly that it is not in the business of getting rid of real estate agents. Its executives called Zillow a media company, not a real estate company, and said it sold ads, not real estate. Even the Instant Offers program encouraged sellers to use a realtor even while avoiding the traditional listing and sales process. The question then became the amount of commission the real estate agent would earn for reduced services. When real estate agents initially complained about Instant Offers, Zillow responded that 70% of its revenue came from working with real estate agents.

In early 2018, however, Zillow announced that it would begin buying homes directly from sellers and then turning around and selling them. With this announcement, Zillow began selling ads and houses. Two test markets were announced, Las Vegas and Phoenix. Zillow said that when it buys homes, it will make the necessary repairs and updates and list the homes as quickly as possible. Zillow said local real estate agents would represent Zillow in the transactions. Zillow also announced in a press release that the vast majority of sellers who requested an Instant Offer ended up selling their homes with agents.

So far, nothing is in the works for South Carolina as far as we know, but since it is just next door in Atlanta and Charlotte, how long can it be?

Stay tuned for more news on this topic. Real estate lawyers will need to figure out how to remain in the game whether properties are sold through the Internet or not!

A sign of the times?

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Zillow begins to market title and escrow services

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A November 12 article in the “Title Report” states that Zillow has begun testing its own title and escrow services in a handful of markets.

After making significant strides in revenues in the third quarter, Zillow is testing the waters in our arena. But, thankfully, we aren’t yet seeing these activities in South Carolina. Zillow had previously used third party title and escrow agents for its transactions. It continues to use third parties in most markets.

A Zillow spokesman told the “Title Report”, “We are also building title and escrow services in-house as a part of our long-term goal of delivering a true, seamless, end-to-end transaction experience for consumers.”

Zillow told the Title Report that more than 80,000 homeowners requested offers in the third quarter. It purchased nearly 2,300 homes and sold more than 1,200 homes in the same time frame. The spokesman said the company believes these results demonstrate that the business model to mechanize real estate transactions is gaining traction as consumer demand reveals people want an easier way to buy, sell, rent and finance homes.

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This blog has previously suggested that the role of the local real estate agent may change to assisting sellers in analyzing the various offers they receive from iBuyers plus managing inspections and other steps in the real estate closing channel. As long as closings remain the practice of law in this state, our local dirt lawyers will remain involved in the closing process.

We promise to keep you informed of developments! Watch this space.

A glimpse into the future of residential real estate sales

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Here’s what may happen when iBuyer companies enter our market place

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I read an interesting article from Forbes recently by John Wake entitled “The Surprising Way Real Estate Agents are Adapting to ‘iBuyers’ Buying Houses Directly From Sellers.” I invite you to read the article in its entirety here.

The article focuses on residential real estate sales in the Phoenix market which the author calls “ground zero for the iBuyer explosion.” What does he mean by that? Apparently, the largest iBuyer companies, Opendoor, OfferPad and Zillow Offers, either started their operations in Phoenix or concentrate their efforts there. He estimated five to six percent of houses that change hands in that market are sold to iBuyers.

The article focuses, as its title suggests, on how real estate agents are adapting to this disruption in their market. But I find the article instructive to South Carolinians on the topic of how these internet sales are orchestrated and how they might affect sellers in our market when this disruption migrates east to us.

The author says that a homeowner who seeks to sell a house via an internet company must first complete an online form. An offer is typically made within two or three days. If the homeowner accepts the offer, inspectors will be sent to the house and will come back with a list of repairs and estimated costs for the repairs that the buyer requests before the closing.

As in our current process, the seller can agree to make the repairs, to reduce the price of the house to cover the cost of the repairs, or to terminate the contract.

The author suggests that real estate agents commonly complain that iBuyers tend to offer less and to ask for more repairs than traditional buyers. In other words, the seller makes more money in traditional sales involving local real estate agents.

The flip side of that coin is, of course, that closing with one of the iBuyer companies is more convenient than the process in our marketplace. A seller doesn’t have to get the house ready to sell, stage it, keep it clean for showings, or leave home for showings and open houses. The closing date may be more flexible, and there probably will not be contingencies for appraisals and financing.

How are real estate agents in Phoenix adapting? According to Mr. Wake’s article, real estate agents are assisting sellers by obtaining multiple iBuyer offers, analyzing and explaining the offers, discussing the options of accepting one of the iBuyer offers or beginning to market the home in the traditional manner, and coordinating everything with the iBuyer or traditional buyer, including repairs.

In short, real estate agents are attempting to become iBuyer experts in addition to traditional home sale experts.

Real estate lawyers, we need to be ready for this disruption when it hits us. We will want to be able to explain the changes in the market to our clients as well as to educate our real estate agents on how to stay in the game. Let’s keep our eyes and ears open! I’ll help!