Tips from DORE's Marcia Waters on how brokers can stay out of trouble

Broker IPTV: We are talking today with Marcia Waters Compliance and Investigations Director for the Division of Real Estate for Colorado. Welcome to the show. Thanks for being with us.

Marcia Waters: Thank you for having me.

Broker IPTV: We want to talk about brokers staying out of trouble, so this is just tips for us to keep our nose clean so to speak. I was wondering because this is discussed a lot in our firm; agency relationship disclosures, is this like one of the number one ways agents get in trouble?

Marcia Waters: It's not. We do see it occasionally, it will be something that we find during the course of investigation when a complaint has been filed against a broker for other behavior. It's more of an administrative error then.

Broker IPTV: Yeah, how about the top 3 places that agents were getting in trouble?

Marcia Waters: 1. There is mortgage fraud, 2. there are disclosure issues and 3. there is criminal convictions.

Broker IPTV: Oh, tackle the last part if you would, could you elaborate?

Marcia Waters: With the license law there are certain criminal convictions and that means if the broker has plead guilty, no contest or been found guilty to certain crimes that constitutes a license law violation in and of itself and for the past three years we have been requiring finger prints at the time of renewal, we have been finding out that brokers have been having run ins with the law and subsequently getting convicted of crimes that constitute license law violations, so that in and off itself is a license law violation and the failure to report it to us is a license law violation.

Broker IPTV: Okay had they reported to you what's the course of action?

Marcia Waters: Typically what happens depending on the nature of the crime most brokers get a diversion with a $250 administrative fee, it's not formal discipline, the ones that fail to report it are likely to get a public centre and a $500 fine.

Broker IPTV: But you are not out of the business, you can be?

Marcia Waters: As long as if it's not real estate transaction related or it's a public harm or crime like sexual assault, homicide that most likely the commission is going to vote to revoke your license.

Broker IPTV: Yeah, I imagine that what do it, I know for me we have had a tremendous amount of, more amount of paper work because of short sales and foreclosures and no one was talking about short sales and foreclosures. How much more paper work has that heaped in to your office?

Marcia Waters: Well with the new forms to cover the short sale issue, hopefully that will just fully educate the participants and those transactions prior to that we have a lot of people that were facing foreclosure went in to a short sale agreement with that broker, did not understand the transaction and everything just went all wrong, hopefully that will lighten our investigative loans as far as compliance are concerned.

Broker IPTV: This is just an opinion, do you like the change in law on the foreclosure with the different redemption periods and so forth?

Marcia Waters: You know I have enough to focus on the large statutes.

Broker IPTV: Yeah right, you don't need more. Thank you so much, I appreciate it.

Marcia Waters: Thank you.