There has been a substantial amount of buzz in the real estate industry lately about MARS. No, not the red planet; although the market has been rather other worldly. MARS is the acronym for “Mortgage Assistance Relief Services”, a set of real estate-related services now defined and regulated by the Federal Trade Commission. The Final Rule, which became effective on December 29, 2010 was published in the Federal Register on December 1, 2010 at Vol. 75, No. 230, pages 75092 to 75144. It has REALTOR® associations scrambling to ensure that their members are compliant (see, e.g., the Florida Assn. of Realtors Legal Center Hot Topics page), lest they run afoul of the rule in their short sale negotiations and subject themselves to scrutiny and civil penalty.
All of this buzz convinced me to take a closer look at the rule as it relates to our title insurance-related short sale services. As far as I know, neither our national nor state (FL) title industry associations have issued any advisory opinions on the new rule regarding mortgage relief. This is understandable. The rule is pretty complicated; and either an over- or an under-reaction by the associations could cause issues for their members. But since Winged Foot Title provides short sale title solutions, I thought it worth our while to look at the rule more closely. So without going into too much annoyingly detailed analysis, I would like to explore the rule a bit and explain what Winged Foot Title is doing to prepare and to react.
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