• Check your Air Conditioner: Having a professional inspect your unit once a year is an easy way to stay ahead of any problems that may turn into costly repairs.
• Clean Fans: By dusting and turning fans off when you aren’t using them you can save energy and maximize efficiency.
• Finish your Basement: Use the summer to complete your basement. It’s a great time to get a lot done and home improvement stores have regular project classes to help you along the way.
• Use Different Appliances: By using the grill instead of the oven you can make it easier on your AC by cutting down on the heat produced. Also, running the dishwasher and laundry machines at night will save energy and money.
• Shade and Shutters: Put up heavier curtains to shade your home in areas that get the most sun.
• Renovate your Powder Room: A seemingly daunting task is cheap and easy. Update a few small pieces for a simple makeover in no time.
• Set the Thermostat: Adjust your thermostat to cool when you are home, don’t waste energy by cooling an empty house or running your AC all night.

These are all simple tasks when looking into home improvement in Northern VA, especially when getting ready for summer. Take on a different small project every weekend and your home will be in top shape soon!

Insulation - Insulating your basement walls will help to keep your new living space more comfortable and energy efficient. But you might also want to insulate the basement ceiling to reduce sound transmission upstairs. The best type of insulation to use in the basement is rigid foam. Unlike fiberglass batt insulation, rigid foam won’t absorb moisture, settle, attract mold or lose its insulating value. Foam’s ability to stop air leaks is also an asset.
Install a larger window.

Bedroom or Not? Is there any chance that your basement might need to serve as a bedroom? If the answer is yes, then it’s wise to have a small basement window enlarged so that an “egress-compliant” window and exterior window well can be installed…Installing a larger basement window not only fulfills code requirements for a basement bedroom; it also brings much more natural light into the space.

Easy to Care For - Choose durable, easy-care finish materials.

Don’t Let Mold Grow – It’s important to use inorganic materials that won’t support mold. But you also want floor and wall surfaces to be as indestructible and easy-cleaning as possible. Low-profile, high-strength plastic floor tiles have gained a great following among savvy basement dwellers. Though they look surprisingly like ceramic tile, oak parquet or solid wood flooring, these tiles won’t ever warp, cup, or crack. They never require refinishing, and they clean up quickly whether you’re mopping or vacuuming. Wall panels covered with textured vinyl rather than paper offer similar advantages. Both of these products are carried by Total Basement Finishing dealers.

When it comes to refacing kitchen cabinets, it is usually cheaper and quicker than buying new. However, this may only be a good option when the current cabinets are of higher quality. If they are of solid frames, doors and drawers are fully self-contained with closed backs and reinforced corners. Painting the current cupboards is also an option if they are of high quality wood. Refacing usually takes one or two days.

The key here is quality.  The ONLY time you should consider refacing cabinets is if the originals are very high quality.  This means that they were originally fully custom (not always).  Solid wood means there are no veneers.  If the originals are not super high quality, ditch them for new or risk causing yourself the exact same issues within a short year or two.

If interested in completely replacing kitchen cabinets, stock cabinets are a good choice because they are the least expensive but still have a wide variety of shapes, sizes, colors and materials.  Solid hardwood cupboards made of cherry, maple, oak and birch are usually more expensive than laminate or veneer finished options. Custom cabinets can also be bought but at a much higher price point.

Homeowners should always check to make certain the cabinets have high-end hinges and mechanical hardware. Cheap ones may not function properly or could break and need to be replaced.

Before finalizing a purchase, costs should be compared with a variety of vendors before making a sale final.
If interested in refacing over replacing, hardware can be tricky. If painting the surface and replacing just hardware, ensure the new hardware has the same drill centers as the previous ones. Otherwise, old drill holes will need to be patched before painting.

Knobs are easier to install over handles because only one screw is needed and the spacing therefore does not need to be exact. These door handles or knobs should match the finish of the appliances and other kitchen features. When buying hardware, homeowners should pick up a couple additional pieces in case any need to be replaced in the future.

In our experience, you can often get a complete pull and replace job done with better results and much less hassle than with refacing or painting your cabinets. Give us a call to go over this – we’ll get you the help you need!

These points were originally posted over at the moneypit.com and we thought they made a lot of sense. Here they are:

Seal Leaks. Doors, windows and electrical outlets are common culprits. With energy prices continuing to climb, energy and money saving measures can be a big help. Air leakage accounts for between 25 and 40 percent of the energy used for heating and cooling a typical home. Before the weather gets too cold, check around doors, windows and joints in building materials for air leakage.

Clean Air. In cooler weather we all spend more time indoors – where the air quality is often 25 times more polluted than the air outdoors. The solution is a whole house air cleaner. Unlike the seen-on-TV room air cleaners, a whole house air cleaner is built-in to your home’s heating and cooling system. As a result, it can clean the entire home. High efficiency units not only remove dust, but also removes bacteria that causes colds and flu. Professionally installed whole house air cleaners can also help extend the life of your heating and cooling equipment, and is a good fall home improvement project.

Add Programmable Thermostat. Did you know that programmable thermostats could help you save money and energy all year long? They allow you to control your home’s climate around the clock, winter and summer – without any additional effort. In fact, setting the thermostat to control the operation of your central air conditioner can also manage excess humidity in the home and reduce your overall cooling bills.

Prep for Storms. Be it sleet, snow or something in between, winter storms can wreak havoc just about anywhere. In fact, each year 75% of all Americans experience a power outage. A backup generator is a great idea, especially if your household has young children, elderly residents or anyone with special needs. A great type of backup power to consider is a generator that will automatically take over the running of your home’s electrical appliances if power is suddenly cut off. Running on your home’s natural gas or propane, there’s no messy gasoline to handle or extension cords to connect. Providing worry-free safety and security in sizes ranging from 7,000 to 150,000 watts.

It is also noteworthy that HDElements just launched an off-shoot company – Storm Restoration Services. SRS provides complete storm restorations. So, if you need storm repairs in northern Virginia, call SRS and we can help!

Tweaks and Squeaks. Before winter’s corrosive weather sets in, homeowners are wise to give their homes the once over with a can of WD-40. With windows and doors to lubricate, squeaky hinges to silence and much more, no home should be without WD-40.

Follow these tips and tricks for a more secure and more energy efficient home.

Happy Fall!

This robot isn’t planned for making little gingerbread houses, but home builders probably should not fear them as Terminators – just yet.

A California scientist’s experiments have led to developing a robot that can read an architect’s computer aided design (CAD) drawings and whip up a full-sized house using 3D printing technology.

Behrokh Khoshnevis, a University of Southern California professor of industrial and systems engineering, says the robot can build a complete house in a single-day – with little assistance from human builders.

Khoshnevis is focusing on residential applications, but also has the attention of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), for his out-of-this-world home building research. NASA is looking into systems than can be used for extraterrestrial habitats, perhaps a lunar base.

Khoshnevis also sees early adoption for his “Contour Crafting (CC)” robots in building fast, post-disaster housing, military housing, low-cost inner city and developing nations’ infill housing, rather than traditional mass-produced homes.

“Robots of this kind could potentially dramatically reduce the time and money needed to build quality homes, including plumbing, electrical and HVAC conduits,” said Robert Federowicz, CEO of Quantum International Corp. a publicly traded robotics innovation company.

“These machines can theoretically work around the clock, needing only a constant supply of power and semi-liquid concrete. It’s exactly the kind of robotics innovation that we’re interested in helping to commercialize on a global scale,” Federowicz.

The CC robot, a computer-controlled crane or gantry, which looks like scaffolding with nozzles, loads up on semi-liquid concrete and extrudes it in layers as surfaces, wall structures and domed roofs, building the home from the ground up.

In addition to the potential for architecural departure from the standard cookie-cutter, rectilinear design of new homes, the 20 to 25 percent savings on financing, 25 to 30 percent savings in materials and 45 to 55 percent savings in labor make CC attractive, Khoshnevis reports in “Houses Of The Future – Construction By Contour Crafting Building Houses For Everyone”

Building speed reduces financing costs, the process reportedly leaves zero waste and it will replace muscle power with brain power – women and older workers can find job opportunities in CC construction, Khoshnevis reports.

“This revolutionary technology uses modern robotics in combination with a construction tool used since ancient times – the trowel – to build a custom-designed house in a few hours. A full implementation of the technology will have the potential to significantly improve the urban housing infrastructure in Southern California, the entire nation, and the world, by providing much higher quality construction at much lower cost,” he added.

The availability of information online in the 21st century has radically changed many industries, including real estate. Travel agents and car dealers have found their businesses impacted dramatically as consumers tap into online information that gives them power and choices and makes proprietary information a thing of the past. In the real estate industry, the “one size fits all” model is quickly become antiquated. Consumers want choice. They want more control. They are more educated and feel more empowered and many do not fully understand the value of the real estate agent in their transaction.

The good news is that our business is more complicated than buying a trip or a car. You and I both know much of the information available online is not accurate or useful, the volume of information is staggering and valuations shift quickly based on market demand. So, our ability as professionals to interpret the information and bring value and sense to it all is vitally necessary to help a consumer make good decisions.

How have you changed your business model? During the ’80s and ’90s, most agents and companies offered a single way of doing business, usually with a fixed percentage of the sales price as compensation. As flat fee, limited service brokerages, offering menus of service, became more common, consumers have begun to question which model suits their needs best. Traditionally, the seller’s objective has been to sell their home for the most amount of money in the least amount of time. This is still usually the goal. Consumers often find hiring a full-time, full-service professional is the best and easiest choice to achieve that result. An expert knows how to put more money in their pockets. However, others are questioning that premise and are trying to understand the value of using a full service broker.

With greater access to more information and exposure to different models, today’s consumers now have lots of choices. Smart agents, who previously offered just one model, are adapting and expanding their thinking and strategizing for how best to serve and bring value to today’s consumer. Offering different levels of service with different costs is one variation that is becoming more popular. As the Gen Yers, 78 million strong, become a more significant segment of our markets as first time homebuyers, their love of self-sufficiency and autonomy will continue to mold expectations and drive the desire for multiple models and choices.

How Will You Stay on the Short List of Most Wanted?

If you are seeing the need to do some re-invention, here are four questions to give you a framework for your brainstorming and re-strategizing. Set aside a couple of hours to work on this. If you are part of a team, the synergy of masterminding with others is more powerful than solitary work. If you have a coach, their outside perspectives can help expand the thinking you have. Or invite a few friends to do the work with you.

The National Association of REALTORS® as part of its Right Tools Right Now program, has made The Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers available to members for free. This profile offers a wealth of information to help understand the wants, needs and buying habits of today’s consumers. It is available at

Ask yourself:

1. Who are your clients? Know your target client/market in terms of their age (generation) and preferences. Define your present clientele and project what this will look like in one year and in five years. The easiest way to do this is to define your business by percentage of type (i.e. 35% Internet, 20% 1st Time Buyers, 20% Referral, 25% Sphere of Influence).

2. What do they want or expect? For each category, list their preferred style, buying habits and needs. Think about where they do their research. What social media do they use? What ways of communicating do they prefer?

3. Where are you right now? (Or look at last year.) Review your present business to determine:

• What segments or niches generated business?
• Where did you generate leads that didn’t turn into business?
• What percentage of your business comes from buyers? Sellers?
• What choices are you giving consumers in regards to services? Commissions?

4. Where can you learn to increase your business?

• What objections are you hearing on listing appointments? Are you losing listings because of these objections? What scripts or objection-handling tools should you be using?
• What new services can you offer and what would you charge? Look at each of your business segments (Internet, SOI, first-timers) and identify the services that are most wanted or important.
• What seminars, courses, certifications or designations could give you new ideas and tools? Consider for technology & Social Media training, The designation or the (ACRE®).

Most agents who have expanded their offerings for consumers have found something interesting: While the clients call or are attracted to the agent because of the choice they are offered in how to work with them, over 80% will still choose full service in the traditional way. So while choice is important to attract the interest in the first place, an agent who can demonstrate the value of all of their different marketing tools and strategies provides the consumer with a compelling reason to choose them.

It should also be noted that about 15% of consumers make their choice on price and price alone. These clients are often higher maintenance and less respectful of what you do. These are the ones that will take an inordinate amount of time and energy. So we should be cheering for the fact they have models that fit their wants. And…if their homes don’t sell with a limited service model, because you have stood your ground with how you do business and the choices that involves, they may come back and give you the respect you deserve. “You want to be the first love, second wife and third REALTOR®!”

These are demanding times, and this is the new NORMAL. So even if your skills were honed and served you well in the past years, to be successful in the coming years, you must make some adjustments and connect with the needs of today’s (and tomorrow’s) sellers!

If you don’t want to lag behind and are ready to be among the elite selling agents, set aside time today to hone your skills for today’s markets!

The article make some interesting points:

There are three basic elements to ROI measurement that I have found to be successful in my agent career:

Brand identity.
Lead generation.
Sphere of influence.

Brand identity is vital in this overly saturated digital world we live in. You need to stand out. And your brand must be clear, concise and have continuity. I always consult agents to begin with WHY they want to utilize social media and WHO they are as a real estate agent. If these questions are not answered, you already are “behind the social media eight ball.” It’s like the foundation of a house: It’s what everything is built upon.

Next: lead generation. And before I begin, I want to note that I believe all leads generated through social media are “warm leads.” As agents, we all want to:

Increase our revenue.
Drive more traffic to our listings and agent pages/blogs/social media.
Produce passive income.
Bring in more relocation referrals.
Pull in more customers.
Establish a legacy.

Here is one way to begin. I advise other agents to create a spreadsheet on Google Drive or whatever cloud service you use.

The main columns are the specific lead source (FB, Twitter, Pinterest); customer name/info; active/inactive; search criteria; and conversion status. You have to track the complete cycle from generation to conversion. Don’t just keep it in your head. Without facts and analysis, we, as agents, get irrational — and irrational is not good for making sound business decisions. Using myself as an example, I was able to bring in $200,000 of commissions in 2009 generated from social media alone, not taking into account my other sources.

Lastly, increase your sphere of influence (industry and non-industry). I believe whole-heartedly that the power of social media is in the second-degree connections. And from my tracking, the facts stand by this. Furthermore, this has been one of the biggest surprises for me. My SOI has grown exponentially every year since 2007. I have become colleagues with high-profile industry experts by meeting them on Twitter. I have also met potential warm leads participating in an interest group on Facebook. I have even found (through Facebook) a wonderful business networking group for real estate professionals and social media.

You can see the full text at:  http://next.inman.com/2012/09/can-an-agent-truly-prove-the-roi-of-social-media/

If you are a home seller, the good news is that there is one sure-fire, simple, inexpensive way to supercharge your home staging efforts – organize!

However, organizing and decluttering aimlessly isn’t enough. It’s essential to organize with one goal in mind, and that is to create a sanctuary where potential home buyers can easily imagine themselves living, working, and playing for years to come.

Here are the top five residential “trouble spots” for clutter, and what you can do to organize them.

1. The home office

The problem: Big libraries with books, magazines, and files as well as big electronics like computers, printers, and shredders mean little extra, useable space.

The solution: Toss magazines and newspapers first, as they are normally the easiest to part with and will give you a motivating “win” to start. Give away unwanted books to charity. Switch out a desktop computer for a laptop, opening up more room. Dust, label, and arrange the computer cables in an attractive manner.

2. The bedroom closet

The problem: Closets always look too small, especially to the ladies.

The solution: Remove out-of-season clothing and accessories, and place them (neatly!) elsewhere in the home or a storage unit. Relocate or purge any items that don’t belong in a clothes closet, like sports equipment, papers, and junk. Then situate the remaining in-season items as if on display in your favorite store or magazine.

3. The kitchen

The problem: As the heart of the home, the kitchen sees high-traffic volumes – and it normally looks worse for wear.

The solution: Make your kitchen into an orderly command center. Remember: you want to make sure that your kitchen has everything you need to survive a crisis, not that your kitchen has just survived a crisis. Remove any small appliances you don’t use on a daily basis. Chuck the junk mail, and use a tidy basket to hold bills and other essential paperwork. Clear the table and counters of anything “cluttery.”

4. The garage

The problem: The garage is a catch-all for… well, everything.

The solution: Pull everything out of the garage, purge the clutter, and then separate the remaining items into categories like auto accessories, camping equipment, yard tools, recycling containers, etc. Find a home for and use tasteful storage to display each category. The key to organizing a garage is to make use of the elevated space, like the walls for storage racks and ceiling for a false attic.

5. The yard

The problem: It’s easy to ignore the dead patch of grass in the backyard because you have more pressing matters, but the outside of a home is reflective of the inside of a home.

The solution: Have a “discovery session,” where you walk around your house making a list of necessary outdoor improvements. Then schedule a daily to-do on your calendar, or outsource the tasks, until all items are crossed off.

Bonus: The details

The problem: If the would-be home buyer discovers you’ve skimped on the details, it takes the trust out of the buyer-seller relationship.

The solution: Create a “house handbook” that includes information about the features of the home, like a list of paint colors by room, vendors for housecleaning and lawn care, maintenance records, and manuals for the appliances included with the property. Taking care of the details demonstrates to the home buyer that you have responsibly taken care of the home while it was in your possession.

Prospective home buyers will be quick to judge your house, both inside and out, for any flaws. Following the above organizing tips could reduce your listing time on the market and help your house fetch more than one not properly staged.

Champion Rule: Creating leads is easy! It’s managing and converting them that pose a challenge.

The real barrier in the equation isn’t lead creation, as everyone believes. It’s in the management, conversion, and commitment of the leads. Now, if you are an Agent reading this and don’t have enough leads right now, you might think I am wrong. Bear with me as I present the evidence and truth.

There are literally thousands of ways for Agents to generate leads. The list is really endless with new avenues being created all the time. We have farming, cold calling, direct mail, expireds, direct response advertising, FSBOs, pay-per-click, calling our sphere, our website, calling past clients, REALTOR.com, calling current clients, relocation referrals, strategic alliances, open houses, IVR systems… you get the idea. The list is really endless with unlimited sources from which to create leads. Each with its own ratio of success attached to it.

I know Agents who generate all (or the bulk) of their business from only one of these sources, not a combination. I had a friend in Portland sell as many houses as I did while I was selling real estate . . . over 150 a year. He could connect over 80% of his sales to open houses. He did them every Saturday and Sunday. He was a master at meeting the people, connecting with them, and converting them to clients. The truth is I would rather have my skin eaten off by ants than do open houses, but it worked for him. The problem is not lead creation.

I get the same magic lead generation schemes daily via e-mail as you do. I received one the other day from one of those “magic guys” who is an Agent and Speaker in Canada. He was touting his latest protégé who did sixty transactions a year and generated over 1,200 leads a month. This all happened his third year in the business. By my third year in the business, I was doing over 100 transactions, so I wasn’t that impressed. I realize, however, that the average Agent would be frothing at the mouth for 1,200 leads a month. The whole focus was to promote this Speaker’s direct response advertising system that would create 1,200 leads a month for you if you followed his system.

I did what any good Coach would do and grabbed my calculator as I read the glowing copy of his marketing piece. This “new superstar” Agent generates over 14,400 leads a year! That means he has to invest his time and resources to manage, track, call, mail, e-mail, and try to convert over 14,400 leads annually. If their claims of that lead volume are true, that’s a lot of leads to properly process. The key word being, properly process. The net result, in his case, of 14,400 leads is a mere sixty transactions. That represents a conversion rate of .004167. That is less than 1/2 of 1%! In other words, he has to talk with, mail to, e-mail to, send information to, track, and manage 240 people to get one person to buy from this magical, easy, instant lead generation system.

An intelligent person comes to one of two conclusions (or a combination of both). The first is that the quality of leads is poor (keep in mind that conversion rate is a function of the quality of the leads). The cost of conversion runs so high that, by the time the advertising and marketing expenses are paid to generate the lead and run all 240 through a lead follow-up process to get one transaction, there is little (if any) net profit left. The other conclusion is that the leads are better than his 1/2 of 1% personal conversion rate, and this Agent, like most, doesn’t know how to control, convert, and commit the leads.

It is also quite likely a combination of the two. In any instance, the net result is vast logs of leads and few transactions. I have a client in Toronto, Canada who is one of the best Agents in North America. He has built a wonderful business with a large volume of production and a solid team. He has eleven Buyer’s Agents who work for him. Soon after we began working together, we were evaluating the numbers and ratios of his Buyer’s Agents from the previous year. In that year, the team generated 5,537 leads that indicated some level of interest to buy. They closed 276 transactions on the Buyer side from those leads. Again, I instantly reached for my calculator and found that their conversion ratio was less than 5%.

During our discussion, I asked my client what he needed to do to increase his sales by the 100 units he wanted in the next year. I had not yet shared with him the conversion number I had just calculated. He said, “I will need to increase my leads by roughly 30%.” That would be the natural response from most Agents, even great ones. Why process, manage, pay to create, mail, e-mail, and invest staff time to deal with 30% more leads when there is a better way? When I asked him if there was another way, he was stumped. I said to him, “That’s why you pay me the big bucks!” I shared with him that if we raised the conversion ratio a little less than 2%, he could add 100 units to his sales volume without the additional cost to generate another 1,661 leads.

This Agent’s situation was certainly much better than the “magic guy’s” example, but it isn’t where we should be as salespeople. To have that many leads with that low of a conversion rate is really unacceptable; my client agreed, as well. The truth is most Agents don’t know the number of leads they generate, much less the conversion percentage of those leads. They have no idea what is really working in their business because they don’t source or track their leads well.

Champion Rule: Each lead costs money to create.

Don’t think for a moment that there is not a cost attached to each and every lead generated. There are costs to acquire that lead in advertising, marketing, your time, etc. No matter what source you acquire the lead from there is a cost. You can determine your hard costs to generate a lead by tracking the dollars invested to create leads and divide that by the number of leads you create annually. That’s just the per-lead cost to create it. Now, you have to manage it, track it, call it, and send stuff to it to convert that lead.

Just think of the investment we have in each lead…and my client thought he needed 1,611 more of them! Actually, all we had to do was increase his conversion rate by 2% to reach his goal. It was a measly 2%! We could and did do that – and more.

I had him give me one more number that clenched it. I asked him for the conversion rate of their Buyer Interviews versus their closed Buyer transactions. In other words, how many interviews did they conduct and how many sales did they make? The worst Buyer’s Agent had a 46% close rate; the best Buyer’s Agent had a 68% close rate. All the others were somewhere in between. So, the team had a less than 5% conversion rate for leads, yet an above 50% close rate on average, once they got them face-to-face. The barrier for most Agents isn’t lead generation; it’s lead conversion from the initial contact to the face-to-face meeting.

I would venture to say that wherever you are in your career today, whether you are a new Agent, struggling, or trying to break through to the Champion level, you can easily achieve a 50% conversion rate once you get face-to-face with a Buyer or Seller. Leads are the lifeblood of your business; but managing, controlling, and converting them to face-to-face meetings is the heart muscle of your business. Do you have a healthy heart?

I have been preaching and teaching this message for the last seven years. The real estate community is finally starting to get it. Your lead follow-up is like the hub of the wheel in your business. All avenues of lead creation lead to the hub of lead follow-up.

The ability to define, categorize, systematize, follow-up, control, manage, process, convert, and commit the lead is far more valuable and far more challenging than creating it in the first place.

The question at issue has been, “Is providing a home warranty a settlement service?” If it is, then home warranty companies, as settlement service providers, would be subject to RESPA’s Section 8 (12 U.S.C. 2607) prohibition against paying referral fees for business. The NAR discussion put it as follows:

“Real estate professionals and home warranty companies routinely partner to provide home warranties to consumers. For nearly two decades, the industry was led to believe there were no problems with this under RESPA. In 2008, HUD issued an informal letter that called into question the practice and led to several class action lawsuits. HUD compounded the problem by issuing an interpretive rule in 2010 that made the situation worse.”

In a background paper supporting H.R. 2446, NAR provided a legal analysis on the issue of whether or not providing a home warranty should be considered a settlement service. The paper notes that HUD’s only authority for this position is a RESPA regulation (24 C.F.R. § 3500.2), whereas the enabling legislation (12 U.S.C. § 2602) does not mention home warranties. The latter point, in itself, is hardly persuasive. The legislation provides one of those lists that is “including, but not limited to…”; so the fact that home warranties are not mentioned hardly implies that they don’t belong there.

The NAR analysis also points out that various court decisions have treated settlement services as services necessary for a closing. It is then argued that, inasmuch as home warranties are not necessary for a closing – though they may often be included – they should not be treated as settlement services. This, too, would be a position one wouldn’t want to lay a lot of money on. After all, even title policies and loan originations are not necessary for a closing — cash transactions come to mind – but, rather, they are only necessary depending on the kind of transaction the principals agree to.

Be all that as it may, it all comes down to the point that whether or not something is a settlement service in the context of RESPA depends on what Congress says. In this case, Congress (at least, so far, the House) has said, “Nothing in this section, section 2, or section 3 [of RESPA] shall be deemed to include, or be deemed to have included, homeowner warranties or similar residential service contracts…” So, there.

The legislation also includes two disclosure provisions: (1) If the Home Warranty company does pay anyone not employed by them (in particular, a real estate agent/broker) for selling, advertising, marketing, or otherwise assisting in the placement of a home warranty contract, then they must make a disclosure of that fact in boldface type of 10 points or more. (2) If an agent or broker receives payment for such services, they must make a similar disclosure in a similar manner.

H.R. 2446 was opposed by Americans for Financial Reform. That organization argued that “exempting payments related to these products from the ban on kickbacks and referral fees would be harmful to consumers.” They believed it would result in consumers paying higher fees, and sometimes receiving inferior services. Their letter of opposition was co-signed by the Center for Responsible Lending, Consumer Watchdog, and the National Consumer Law Center (On behalf of its low income clients) (sic). H.R. 2446 has been received in the Senate and referred on to the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs.