Jodi Summers = Santa Monica Real Estate

Californians to Get Refunds From Kickback Suit

August 21, 2008 on 10:45 am | In Fascinating Information, Legal, Of Local Importance, Uncategorized, WOW | 10 Comments

Californians to Get Refunds From Kickback Suit

Hundreds of thousands of Californians are expected to share in a $35 million settlement of a lawsuit that accuses some of the nation’s largest real estate brokers of taking kickbacks.

A federal judge in Los Angeles still must sign the agreement.

The lawsuit accuses brokers from an array of major companies, including Coldwell Banker, Century 21, ERA and RE/MAX, of accepting kickbacks for referring business to Property I.D. Corp. Property I.D., is a Los Angeles-based company that provides fire, floods, earthquake, and landslide hazard reports.

The suit alleges that brokers received $25 for every client steered to straw companies set up to disguise the kickbacks.

Under the settlement terms announced Friday by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, the firms denied wrongdoing but agreed to give customers who bought the reports from 1996 to 2006 a full refund – typically about $100.

Source: The Associated Press (8/09/08)

http://www.realtor.org/RMODaily.nsf/pages/News2008081101?OpenDocument

10 Comments »

RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URI

So it’s like getting a free property inspection.

Comment by REI — August 21, 2008 #
Are you Prepared for a Disaster?

With concern that businesses and residents are not properly prepared for earthquakes, the Southern California Earthquake Center has organized the Great Southern California Shake Out. The group has dedicated Nov. 12-16 to educate the region, and especially businesses, about how to prepare for earthquakes. The week’s events will include the nation’s largest earthquake drill on Nov. 13 and the Los Angeles Earthquake Get Ready Rally on Nov. 14. Businesses can register for the earthquake drill at http://www.shakeout.org. Next month, drill organizers will release a 16-page booklet outlining seven steps businesses can take to survive and recover from an earthquake or other disaster.

Did you know that falling furniture or objects caused 55% of injuries during the Northridge quake (UCLA study)? To check your earthquake preparedness IQ, take the quiz at: http://www.daretop repare.org/why.

Comment by Southern California Earthquake Center — September 8, 2008 #
George L Engelke Jr. Ceo of Astoria Federal S & L should certainly know about mortgage fraud he hid four endorsed checks and stole two NYC condos from me.

Comment by Marilyn Lane — December 22, 2008 #
The Los Angeles metro area topped the list of most-searched areas in the U.S. at Realtor.com in December, parent company Move Inc. announced this week.

Chicago was second on the list, followed by the Riverside, Calif.; Phoenix, Detroit; Dallas; Tampa, Fla.; Philadelphia; San Diego, Calif.; and Boston metro areas.

Some of those metro areas have also been hot spots for foreclosure. RealtyTrac, a foreclosure data company, reported that the Riverside metro area had the third-highest rate of foreclosure-related filings in 2008 among metro areas it tracks nationwide, while the Phoenix area was fifth on the list and Detroit placed 10th.

Comment by Realtor.com — January 28, 2009 #
Where is the justice in the pure GREED that was exhibited by the banks and just WHY should future generations be paying for these greedy so called executives??

This view is absolutely right — there is no justice here. Taxpayers should not be in this position. But the bailout isn’t about justice. It’s about survival. The central thesis of the article was that without government help, there was a good chance that our banking system would collapse, and that would result in unbelievable pain for all of us

Comment by Richard Gibbons — February 21, 2009 #
Home-equity insurance. We want to have homeowners’ insurance, which protects against things like fires, updated so that it protects against a loss of market value. Fires were a big problem hundreds of years ago. Houses were burning down all the time. Now we’ve developed a different problem—the residential housing market has gotten much more volatile.

Comment by Robert Shiller — May 15, 2009 #
Learn about the six ways to plan ahead…simple things you can do to increase your
preparedness, like fastening shelves securely to walls or having disaster supplies
on hand. Find out what to do during an earthquake, whether you are indoors,
outdoors, in a moving vehicle – even trapped under debris. And, what to do after an
earthquake, as aftershocks may typically be less violent than the preceding quake
but they can still cause considerable damage.

Comment by Karl Susman/Susman Insurance Agency — May 23, 2009 #
help with foreclosure in california…

Your topic Santa Monica Property Blog ” Californians to Get Refunds From … was interesting when I found it on Thursday searching for help with foreclosure in california in Google…

Trackback by help with foreclosure in california — March 4, 2010 #
Homeless People…

Santa Monica Property Blog ” Californians to Get Refunds From … is an awesome blog post about homeless chicago statistics I recently ran across….

Trackback by Homeless People — August 9, 2010 #
Hiya!, Very interesting angle, we were speaking about the same thing at work and located your web site very stimulating. So simply had to com-ment a huge thank you for all of your effort. Please keep up the good work your doing!

Comment by Jessie Sevy — May 8, 2011 #