Buying in the murky foreclosure waters is not quite as dangerous as swimming with the sharks thanks to Foreclosure Title Insurance, says Florida foreclosure defense attorney Roy Oppenheim.

More than 500,000 foreclosure filings entered Florida’s books in 2009, and those properties now saturate the South Florida real estate market. While these economic times are challenging for most, they can be the best time for some South Floridians to capitalize on an unprecedented opportunity who want to purchase foreclosures.

Foreclosure buyers can now add a perk to their deals with Foreclosure Title Insurance. Check out how South Florida real estate investors can protect themselves with Florida Foreclosure Title Insurance.

There are two caveats to this waiver that you must be aware of.  The first caveat is that the waiver is limited to forward mortgages, so it does not apply to Home Equity Conversion Mortgages.  The second caveat is when the sales price of the property is 20% or more over and above the seller’s acquisition costs, the waiver will only apply if the new buyer’s lender:

(1)     Justifies the increase in value by retaining in the loan file supporting documents and/or a second appraisal verifying that the seller has completed sufficient legitimate renovations, repair and rehabilitation work on the subject property to substantiate the increase, or the appraiser provides appropriate explanation of the increase in property value since the prior transfer of title; AND

(2)     Orders a property inspection and provides the inspection report to the purchaser before closing.

A.     The lender may charge the borrowers for this inspectio

B.     The inspector:

• Does not have to be an FHA-approved or a 203(k) consultant
• Must have no interest in the property or relationship with the seller
• Must not receive compensation from any other party other than the lender
• May not compensate anyone for the referral of the inspection
• May not receive any compensation for referring or recommending contractors to perform any repairs recommended by the inspection.

C.     At a minimum the inspection must include:

• The property structure, including the foundation, floor, ceiling, walls and roof;
• The exterior, including siding, doors, windows , appurtenant structures such as decks and balconies, walkways and driveways;
• The roofing, plumbing, electrical, heating and air conditioning systems;
• All interior; and
• All insulation and ventilation systems

So to all of you real estate investors… go ahead and buy these lemons and make a profit by selling lemonade.

At my most recent seminar last week I discussed the possibility of a Black Swan event occurring that would literally change the complexion of the South Florida real estate market. A Black Swan event is something that just can’t be anticipated. At that moment I gave as an example the possibility of tens of thousands of folks from Venezuela fleeing to South Florida from Chavez’s new economic restrictions.

Now it is already anticipated that Haitian refugees will likely be arriving in South Florida over the next several months and likely years. They will need to be housed and be fully integrated into the community.

Further I had discussed that as a nation and as a community, we are blessed with a housing stock or what I call our “Ark”. That Ark of excess vacant housing can now be deployed with the assistance of FEMA and HUD and other governmental programs to help our struggling island neighbors.

Thus, once again not even the best economists could have anticipated the economic impact both good and bad that such an unthinkable crisis can have to a community. I do hope that with so many vacant homes and condos now in South Florida, and many still owned by the Banks, that we will be able to utilize this housing reserve.

Unlike the flippers of the past, these folks are true professionals as this IS their business. They are not cops, firemen or teachers by day and flippers by night.

In fact, OppenheimLaw and Weston Title represent a number of these types of professional groups. They are all well funded and clearly taking advantage of the fact that the Banks are drowning in too much stuff and thus many times are clueless to the true value of an asset.

Further, as we have explained before, the Banks would rather get back cold cash now than continue trying to make old loans work through loan modifications, when they know the likelihood of re-default remains high.  That is why we at OppenheimLaw and our sister title company, Weston Title, are calling 2010 the “Year of the Short Sale.”  Banks actually still do about 20% better according to a recent Federal Reserve study when they allow a short sale to proceed as opposed to the Bank proceeding all the way through the foreclosure process. Of course with millions of homes that have already been foreclosed upon by the Banks, the Banks have to somehow get rid of their unwanted inventory.

One word of caution: if you are thinking of becoming a “professional flipper” do your homework; and do not think for a moment that there is a title company out there that will allow you to use the funds from the final buyer as your source of funds to purchase the property at the courthouse’s steps or in a short sale. That practice is now dead.

Thus, if you are in a position to look at flipping as your way to help bail yourself out from being underwater to treading water with your head up high… call me!

Roy Oppenheim

From the Trenches

Wall Street, One Year Later

The Times’s Andrew Ross Sorkin, Gretchen Morgenson and Joe Nocera recount the events of the weekend that Lehman Brothers failed and discuss the lessons learned from the financial crisis…

My PR agency, The Buyer Group, told me I needed to be in this story! I’m proud to be the trail blazer when it comes time to reinventing your business and how you think. In today’s economy, what worked yesterday might never work again, so we try new things.

Here’s the story, let me know what you think.

Hybrid campaigns blend online, traditional marketing methods

When Roy Oppenheim appears as an expert guest on a local television news broadcast, that’s the start of a hybrid marketing campaign.

His media relations firm pitches him to the media as an expert in foreclosure and real estate law. When Oppenheim appears on television, he takes that recording and posts it to YouTube – and then embeds it in his Web site and blog site. He then blogs – in one of the more than two dozen blogs he’ll post each month – about the appearance, his monthly seminars and other content.

Oppenheim once believed in the power of traditional marketing. Today, his campaigns are a blend of some traditional and heavy online and social media.

“We’re not using social media just to solicit clients, but as a means to deliver services and information,” said Oppenheim, senior partner with the newly branded practice, Oppenheim Law. “We’re redefining ourselves as almost a Web-based firm. You have to be on the path and embrace this medium to make it successful.”

As new media and online social marketing take hold, some companies are embracing a hybrid approach to their marketing. Not keen to cut off their remaining traditional marketing – including print, radio, Yellow Pages or television ads, and public relations – they’re lowering those budgets, but using what’s left to drive awareness about their online presence.

For Oppenheim, each news release that’s distributed is optimized for keywords critical to the firm. His Twitter feeds, a Facebook fan page, his LinkedIn account and other sites are driving brand awareness of Oppenheim Law and Weston Title, his title insurance company.

No one application has proven to be the “silver bullet” that individually drives the bulk of Oppenheim’s online awareness, said Lisa Buyer, principal with the Deerfield Beach-based Buyer Group, his marketing firm. But, the combined results have been a 98 percent increase in Web site visitation, from about 900 unique visitors a month late last year to 1,800 in August, she said.

“They all feed off one another,” said Buyer, who started handling Oppenheim’s PR, search optimization and social media in December. “We use social media to promote some of the traditional marketing events such as seminars, where it takes traditional networking to really close a deal.”

Oppenheim’s blended approach has reduced or eliminated much of his traditional advertising, halving his Yellow Pages ads last year and pulling them completely this year. His mainstay today is media relations and public appearances as a way to drive traffic to his Web site, blog and social media sites.

Read on for the full story from the South Florida Business Journal.

Donald Trump’s famous words: ‘Your Hired!’

Finding a job in a recession takes more than just a resume, Attorney and Law Blogger Roy Oppenheim tells viewers tonight on CBS 4 Neighbors to Neighbors. what it takes to get hired in South Florida.

Pouring through hundreds of qualified resumes, emails and messages, Oppenheim tells how to get noticed when the economic odds are against you. Connections, relationships, networks, training, books and internships are all part of reinventing yourself when at the mercy of the economy.

Oppenheim is not only a partner in Oppenheim Law but is a principal of Weston Title & Escrow, Inc. and sees it all when it comes to employment do’s and don’ts.

Maybe its is just me, but what I am seeing over and over again during these turbulent economic times is a general sense of a lack of personal responsibility. It is truly becoming a sign of the times and until we figure out how to properly correct it, our very foundation will be continuously questioned if not threatened.

The examples are now running amuck.

AIDS at the VA

First we hear this past week about the VA literally spreading AIDS in a VA hospital in Miami and elsewhere by not properly cleaning certain “sensitive” equipment used in colonoscopies. Hello!! Are they STUPID? Would we ever hear of such an idiotic situation at a private facility where the Dr. and his partners would lose their license and be sued to the moon if this happened? No! Of course not, but at the VA no one will ever be held personally accountable.

In fact if the person who received AIDS is still on active duty he may not even be allowed to sue the VA. But even if the innocent victims do sue, who will actually be paying the damages: you and me the taxpayer. Not the manager of the facility, or the person responsible for cleaning the tubes. Certainly the President won’t ask the Secretary of the VA to step down because it wasn’t “his fault.” Well whose fault was it is the real question and how do we create a system that prevents these kinds of unbelievable mistakes? I am not sure but the list continues.

JPMorgan and Madoff

The NYT on Saturday reported that a Florida latecomer to Madoff’s investment scheme sued JPMorgan Chase in NY because as the bank that handled Madoff’s checking account they knew or should have known that something was wrong in late October 2008 when billions of dollars kept rapidly flowing in out of certain Madoff accounts. In Fact, the bank now acknowledges that it indeed removed $250 million from a Madoff feeder fund around the same time. So in other words while JPMorgan Chase continued to enjoy the revenue it earned from helping Madoff facilitate his operation, they themselves took $250 million off the table.

Thus, maybe just maybe with this new lawsuit we are starting to see a glimmer of the application of the doctrine of enterprise liability. It is a legal construct that lets courts look at an entire enterprise regardless of various subsidiaries and divisions and say “as an enterprise you committed, fraud, a tort or negligence by hurting someone else and thus must be held accountable.” A well-known example of its application is in the 80’s against Union Carbide. The parent company was held responsible for a terrible accident that killed scores of people at a facility in Bhopal, India that one of its subsidiaries ran or managed even though the parent company had no day-today responsibility concerning the plant’s operation.

Naturally, JPMorgan denies it is not responsible for the loss of the investor’s money with Madoff. Would we expect otherwise? But then why did JPMorgan Chase decide to move $250 million out of its own investments with Madoff? Should they not be held accountable for sleeping at the switch yet benefiting from their own knowledge? We will see… won’t we?

Foreclosure Crisis

So, how does enterprise liability relate to mortgage foreclosures?? The answer is simple. Can the same banking enterprises that know it is accepting liar loans, no income verification loans, offering mortgage brokers incentives to ensure that borrowers would be enticed to initially take a loan with certain terms even though it was obvious that soon the borrower would be unable to make the payments, and then reselling such loans as graded securities to unsuspecting investors around the world, yet buying insurance products should the loans fail, be held accountable for creating a house of cards that would take down the entire economy and require each family in the US to spend about $350,0000 to bail out the system? Some folks are saying it is impossible to hold any organization to that standard.

I say if we permit these trillion dollar organizations to dominate our lives without the notion of personal responsibility and accountability we are all doomed. These large trans-national organizations and their employees are permitted to take risks that no one individual would ever do if they knew they would lose their house or personal net worth. Yet these “too big to fail” enterprises” knew if they took the risk and failed they would have our government and economy by the short hairs and could demand a bail-out for if they didn’t get it, they would take us all down with them. That is not what I call personal responsibility. I call that extortion or blackmail- plain and simple.

And let’s not forget what happens to these poor folks who made these bad decisions. They still got to keep all their bonuses. Maybe a few lost their jobs, but they assume no responsibility. They maybe have to get a new job or career, but they are not being sued, not being chased by debt collectors, not having their credit scores destroyed like the folks who were mislead by over zealous mortgage brokers. Nothing, nada. In fact, some will end of working for the government either for the Department of Treasury or the FDIC under the premise that they understand the system. Boy do they!

In fact, the Wall Street Journal reported that 18 percent of all U.S. households will refinance in 2009. That is a whopping 72 percent increase from last year or almost $2 trillion! Interest on these loans will average about 4.7 percent – rates I have not seen in my entire career nor has anyone since the 1950s!

So let our homeowner self-bailout begin! I always said it would be South Florida’s new home buyers and the folks who had maintained good credit that would lead us back to normalcy. But, don’t kid yourself… without the stimulus package the lenders would still be on life support. Now at least we are all seeing and feeling less of a chill as the spring thaw begins. So start shopping around for what will likely be the best mortgage deal you will likely see in your lifetime!

Interested in buying or selling a home in South Florida? Take advantage of these low South Florida morgage rates and contact us at Weston Title for more information.