Antonina Erbst

Late one afternoon, I get a phone call from my first-time buyer who closed in October of 2008. He says that he received a letter to pay $25 to have his property reassessed.Property purchase was 250,000 it was valued at 535,000. I asked him to read the letter which he did. Luckily, I had watch a news report on 60 minutes that talked about a person that was charged $125 in Los Angeles California. The letter looked like a government letter but the tell tell sign was the letters "Inc" or "Corp" and the return address was not to the assessor's office but to a P.O Box.

Sure enough my clients address match the criteria that it was a fake letter. I reminded him that we went online to apply for a reassement of his property soon after he purchased the property. I walked him online of off my Website.

30 minutes later another client that closed a little bit before him call regarding the same fake letter. I explained the same thing as I did to my first client. after my conversation with the second client I called everyone that I've worked with to purchase, refinance, and or did a loan modification. To Aler them of this new occurrence.

Please spread the word from Dick Larsen our Sanbernardino California Assesor in the news report , he says that reassesing property values is free do not pay anyone.

Why do you ask, should my client make sure that the property is reassesed, 1.25 % of $250,000 compare to $535,000 it is about a $300 dollar difference in monthly payment for taxes in your p i T i.(principal, interest, TAXES, insurance)

For the San Bernardino County go to my website http://www.ninaerbst.com/501.html, select seller/homeowner tab scroll down to icon (where comment says prop8 application to reassess your property.) Click icon where you can now have your client reassess their property online or by mail it's easy and free

or you can Google me @ www.ninaerbst.com and follow above instruction.

Things that use to make me mad.... cross-qualifying with Countrywide and Wells Fargo and different bank owned properties. It was really frustrating because by the time I would finaly get my cross- qualification letter the house, we were going to offer on went pending.Or the loan officer denied me because my client didn't want to talk to him, she supplied all of her information by fax but just didn't want to talk to any other loan officer. She was comfortable with her Loan officer, so her cross-qualification was denied. This was happening in the middle of 2008, I have since viewed a change from the Listing agent's point of view.

I'm still doing some research. I understand that this could be a RESPA violation but I'm not sure.

Now that I'm a recent REO agent, I can understand why the asset managers want to make sure that this transaction will not fall out of escrow and they have now wasted 30 days. I've been noticing a 25% fall out of escrow rate in the High Desert. Which is not good for the listing agent and the asset manager and ultimately the banks who owns these REOs.

Does anyone have any ideas to facilitate this process?