Multiple Listings Manipulation Tricks
The MLS or Multiple Listing Services includes every item of property except those up for sale by the owner. It is often an indicator of market rate patterns. But real estate agents most raise the price of a house. This method comes in handy when there is a mortgage fraud. A mortgage fraud is when the broker pays the seller the original listed price but takes back the extra amount from behind the agent’s back at the close of the deal.
It has a snowballing effect. Other sellers overprice their units and then are unable to dispose of them while some hasty buyers pay more than the current rate. However, the story does not end there. In an atmosphere of fraud, the ordinary man pays more taxes calculated on a false basis.
Problems due to mortgage fruads are usually subtle or hard to miss. Fraud task forces have been formed that offer seminars that acquaint people with the nature of mortgage frauds. One Miami realtor, Brian Carter, recalls that, after verbally agreeing to a price, he was later asked to raise it by the MLS, which allows a buyer to get back his money. He immediately backed out of the deal. But the offers have keep popping up again and again.
Another broker, Coldwell Banker of Coral Gables, says that half of the realtors present at a meeting admitted that a chunk of the money goes back to the buyer after the so-called sale duping of a seller.
In another case, Diz, a real estate agent, increased the price of a Coral Gables property but later backed out of the deal. He never got a commission. The property had been bought a year ago for $850,000 and was sold for $1.2 million! Diz retreated after smelling a rat and went by his instincts.
The MLS is a private database and used by about 48,000 people in southeast Florida. It is difficult to bring it under regulations. But some realtors in South Florida have been instructing their representatives sternly to refrain from getting involved in these types of frauds.
Eight months ago, Coldwell Banker restrained its agents from raising listing prices without the sanction of the manager. In another establishment, Douglas Elimann, there is a rule that only one person, who is an administrator, has the right to handle listings. If any changes are made to the listings, then a written notice is required from all the parties involved. Even then these are carefully scrutinized.
Judith Corocos, a sales manager, is of the same opinion that usually honest buyers would not require credits at closing.
