Group Urges Government to Protect Middle Class Homeowners

Steve Brown, president of the National Association of Realtors, has called on the Federal government to protect the interest of middle class homeowners to enable more Americans to afford housing.

Speaking at the Bipartisan Policy Center’s 2014 Housing Summit, with the theme “Housing America’s Future: New Directions for National Policy,” Brown described the ongoing obstacles to mortgage credit facing creditworthy buyers.

“Homeownership is not a Republican or Democratic talking point, it’s an aspiration that all Americans share,” said Brown. “I’m pleased to be a part of the BPC’s summit, which is an opportunity for experts and policy makers from both sides of the aisle to come together and discuss housing policy in a bipartisan manner.”

Brown, co-owner of Irongate, Inc., Realtors in Dayton, Ohio, joined distinguished housing leaders and experts at the conference, including Julián Castro, secretary of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, Carole Galante, commissioner of the Federal Housing Administration, and current and former U.S. Sens. Kit Bond, R-Mo., Johnny Isakson, R-Ga., and Mel Martinez, R-Fla.

Brown discussed impacts of the new Ability-to-Repay rules on the current lending environment and emphasized how restrictive pricing policies at the FHA and the Federal Housing Finance Agency make homeownership prohibitively expensive for some first-time and traditionally underserved buyers relative to prime offer rates.

FHA’s high annual mortgage insurance premiums and insurance requirement for the life of the loan pose significant challenges to qualified buyers who are being priced out of FHA or the market altogether.

In a letter to FHFA last week, Brown raised concerns about the agency’s proposal to increase its guarantee fees and the upfront loan level price adjustments charged to borrowers. The increases would disparately impact individuals with shorter credit histories and lower down payments and as a result, shut middle class Americans out of the housing market.

The National Association of Realtors, “The Voice for Real Estate,” is America’s largest trade association, representing one million members involved in all aspects of the residential and commercial real estate industries.

According to Brown, policy makers and politicians must not follow party lines when drafting rules that would allow ordinary Americans buy their own homes.

Middle class Americans and real estate agents who are looking to buy or sell properties can take advantage of online technologies. One of these is  disruptive virtual tour technologies to market their listings. Realbiz Media Group, Inc. RBIZdevelops proprietary video marketing software that agents and their brokers can use to promote their virtual tour listings online. The company offers a Virtual Tour Program that allows real estate sellers to create virtual tours and presentationsthat are optimized for mobile viewing and could be syndicated through social media for only $29.95 a month. RealBiz Media’s Nestbuilder.com aims to grant agents control over how they want to run marketing campaigns for their listings. The portal came at a time when the norm among agents for capturing leads is to buy them from established multiple listing sites.

“Nestbuilder.com’s mission is to both empower the real estate agent and to connect the homeowner and homebuyer directly with the agent in a personalized and meaningful relationship without interference from large, impersonal, third party lead generation sites,” RealBiz Media President and chief revenue officer Steve Marques noted.

“Homebuyers are able to create personalized video collections of potential homes to be set-up for review and sharing. Agents can quickly bring their listings to life via RealBiz’s rich video conversion tools, and market their properties directly to homeowners and homebuyers in a personalized, customized, entertaining, and engaging format no matter where they are," he said.

The program is equipped with a video search engine optimization (VSEO) tool that automatically generate meta tags and descriptions for virtual tours and listings agents have uploaded to the platform so that they would be found easily by consumers online.

The program also has tools for creating QR codes, e-flyers, and seller reports as bonus features.

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