Question 1:

What types of fees and conditions are prohibited under RESPA?

Student 1:

Fees –  RESPA prohibits any person from giving or accepting any fee, kickback, or thing of value pursuant to any agreement or understanding that business incidental to or part of a real estate settlement service. In addition, RESPA prohibits fee splitting and receiving unearned fees for services not actually performed. Violations of Section 8’s anti-kickback, referral fees and unearned fees provisions of RESPA are subject to criminal and civil penalties.

Over-Leverage: With the prevailing market scenario of increasing interest rates, a buyer must not take much debt for buying out the distressed asset. It is important to understand the existing debt against the asset, which the buyer will need to take on post the purchase of the property. This debt should ideally be bifurcated into short-term and long-term debt, with a holistic understanding of any security that may be backing the debt.

Future growth perspective: Attractive valuations is the main draw of a distressed asset acquisition. However, a clear development plan or utilization of the asset with a vision on the eventual monetization of the asset would make the deal worthwhile. The asset must intrinsically have the potential to grow and yield returns for the buyer.

Question 2:

Exploring The Web

Please visit   Kiplinger’s at http://www.kiplinger.com/ (Links to an external site.). Explore the site and locate an article that interest you and share it with the class (please include the link to the article).

Student 2:

An article that I found interesting would be “Now’s the Time for Estate Tax Planning”. I tried to search about real estate related news or articles but with no luck on this website. It said” Site Error, It appears there is an error with the site. Apologies! Our team has been notified. Please reload and try again.” So, I found this article alternatively since real estate related ones can not be located.

The reason I found this interesting is that it has some real world links with my past experiences. I am the type of college students who care much more about real world applications over concepts and grades. It does not mean the latter two are not important but because real world applications are 10 times more important. One type of estate or gift form would be form 3520 that I filed before. The applications of real world experiences with the online articles make more impressions for me to strength the memory. I believe different types of gifts will be filing different types of forms. When I google for gift tax form, it all suggests form 709 instead of the one I prepared form 3520. I further googled it and it seemed like form 3520 is for some foreign related gift only. Articles in the class are always more helpful to me that can enhance some past or future work experiences than simply knowing the concept. Prior to studying the class, I did both tax returns with real estate rental and real estate gain and losses. I also participated in real biddings and closing of the property. It always seem to me that it does not matter how much concepts you learn, going to a real world transaction is when the learning really strengthens. Therefore, I tend to look for articles that have such connections and build my real life experiences further.

Sources:

https://www.kiplinger.com/retirement/601406/nows-the-time-for-estate-tax-planning