kickbacks<\/a>. RESPA also prohibits fee splitting and receiving compensation for services that were not provided. This is done because kick backs typically increase fees charged to the home buyer, sometimes excessively, so as to \u201ctake care\u201d of the referring party.<\/p>\nThird, RESPA prohibits a home seller from requiring a home buyer to use a specific title company or lender.<\/p>\n
Penalties for violating RESPA are stiff. Violations of RESPA include civil and criminal penalties. The penalties vary depending on the infraction. For example, if someone is found guilty in criminal court of giving or receiving a kickback, they may be subject to a $10,000 fine and a year in jail. The civil penalty for kickbacks is the repayment of three times the fee in question.<\/p>\n
Although kickbacks are not as common today as they were in years past, they still exist. In response, the U. S. Department of Housing and Development (HUD) has taken a firm stance on kickbacks in the last several years. There have been many out of court settlements in the last few years, and there may be some serious criminal charges pending as investigations continue.<\/p>\n
It is not uncommon for home buyers, especially first time home buyers, to ask their Realtor for lender and title company recommendations. After all, most people do not buy homes very often. As a practice, many Realtors provide a list of several names of lenders or title companies for the home buyer to interview. The list is usually comprised of professionals with whom the Realtor has worked with in the past and (hopefully) had a good experience. As a home buyer, you can always start with whomever you bank with. It makes sense that since you have already developed a banking relationship with your bank, why not start there?<\/p>\n
If you find yourself in the situation where you are \u201cforced\u201d to use a specific lender or title company, or you think this may have occurred in the past, you can contact HUD (HUD.gov) or contact the state attorney general\u2019s office of consumer protection for additional information.<\/p>\n
By Dan Krell
\nCopyright \u00a9 2006<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
When you bought your home recently did your Realtor or lender tell you that you had to use a specific lender or title company? Did the seller require you to use the mortgage and title companies of their choosing? If so, you may have been denied your right to choose the lender and title company … <\/p>\n
Continue reading “HUD is Kicking Back”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[270,405,16,45,23,141,44,43],"tags":[490,800,803,786,450],"class_list":["post-21","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-home-buyer","category-homebuyer","category-hud","category-kickbacks","category-realtor","category-realtor-ethics","category-referral-fees","category-respa","tag-home-buyer-2","tag-hud","tag-realtor","tag-realtor-ethics","tag-respa-2"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1VZLf-l","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dankrell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dankrell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dankrell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dankrell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dankrell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/dankrell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4399,"href":"https:\/\/dankrell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21\/revisions\/4399"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dankrell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dankrell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dankrell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}