At Home In Scottsdale | Your Guide to Scottsdale Real Estate

Today, at the State of the State Address, Governor Janet Napolitano announced her three-step plan to address Arizona’s “subprime-lending debacle.”

In her address, she outlined a 3-step plan:

First, the Department of Real Estate, at my direction, has created the Homebuyers’ Bill of Rights. It is available now, on the Web and in print, and it gives homebuyers information about roads, water, police and fire services and more. It’s a tool for making educated financial decisions, and it’s step one.

For step two, you need to pass the Arizona Home Equity Theft Protection Act, to license “equity purchasers.” There are some in this category who prey on vulnerable homeowners and use deceptive practices to cheat them out of their homes. Let’s pass the bill and put the bad guys out of work.

The third step is to license loan officers. When an Arizonan sits down to talk about buying a home – usually the biggest investment they’ll ever make – the person on the other side of the table should be experienced, educated and ethical. Once they’re licensed, that license can be removed for behavior that violates the law or the ethical rules of the profession. Our state’s lenders want high standards in their field, so let’s work with them and get this done this year. We will live through this housing-market downturn, and we will mitigate those that come in the future.

For the full text of the governor’s speech, go to www.azgovernor.gov.

To see the Homebuyer’s Bill of Rights that the Arizona Department of Real Estate worked cooperatively with Industry and the Public, please click on the quick link at www.AZRE.gov. 

In some ways, this Bill of Rights is very similar to the Arizona Buyer’s Advisory, a resource that I share with all home buyers to use as a research tool when researching and buying a home.  However, the new document has many more links for the whole state of Arizona, and gives buyers even more data to make a smart, informed home buying decision.