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Mortgage Fraud-Number One Investigation For Real Estate Commission's Marcia Waters, DORA which is the Department Of Regulatory Agency for Real Estate.

BrokerIPTV: Today we are talking with Marcia Waters, Investigations and Compliance director with the Division of Real Estate for Colorado, welcome to the show.

Marcia Waters: Thank you Dan.

BrokerIPTV: Glad you are here. Well, lets talk about what you do - complaints and investigations. First complaints, I guess about realtors.

Marcia Waters: Exactly.

BrokerIPTV: And they are? <read more>

Marcia Waters: The top one right now is mortgage fraud.

BrokerIPTV: Really?

Marcia Waters: Yes.

BrokerIPTV: That the realtor was involved?

Marcia Waters: Complicitive.

BrokerIPTV: And I was reading and tell me is it mostly about occupancy fraud?

Marcia Waters: No, its what's represented in the loan documents and also in the contract documents.

BrokerIPTV: Really, interesting so, what does a realtor do to stay out of trouble in this area?

Marcia Waters: Accurately disclose all the terms of the transaction in the contract, so that the mortgage lender is fully aware that money will be paid to the third party if there is going to be repairs done to the property or what ever the case may be.

BrokerIPTV: So, is it getting a little grey area with like escrow repairs after the fact or things of that nature?

Marcia Waters: Thats correct a lot of the time what we are seeing right now are fictitious third party companies, a lot of the times the brokers have ownership in them and then monies are going back to the buyer after closing, which most lenders do not want that to happen.

BrokerIPTV: Yeah, all right, how busy are you with complaints these days, people understand that this is a different market place then what we have ever seen, how busy are you?

Marcia Waters: We get 70 to 80 complaints a month that are assigned for investigation and its real estate brokers.

BrokerIPTV: And how much time do you have to invest in that?

Marcia Waters: Well we hope to have the average investigation completed with in 6 months and we have got 7 investigators on staff and so they are more than taxed.

BrokerIPTV: Can you step me through the remedy process of a particular investigation?

Marcia Waters: Well the commission does have the right to require that the respondent pay restitution but most of the time that we find that there is license on violation we discipline the license there may be civil remedies based on our findings but thats something that they pursue through civil court.

BrokerIPTV: I was talking to a friend in California who obviously over the last several years the amount of agents in that state went up dramatically and he said now with the current crisis most of those people are just in for quick buck are out and its been weeded out, is some of that going on in Colorado as well?

Marcia Waters: We have 50,000 licensed real estate brokers so and we hit the 50,000 mark last year and we have got 37,000 active ones. As soon as some people drop out of the industry a new wave comes in, so we maintain pretty stable as far as our number of licensees.

BrokerIPTV: So we havent had a spike or a drop like California as far as agents are concerned?

Marcia Waters: No.

BrokerIPTV: Got you and is 50,000 a lot for a particular state or do you know how that goes?

Marcia Waters: I dont know how other states compare 50,000 is a lot, when you consider that 5% do most of the business, there is 95% that are out there competing for whats left.

BrokerIPTV: Its true, Marcia thanks so much, great information, we appreciate it.

Marcia Waters: Thank you.

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