To varying degrees, investors are largely painted into a dark picture of "predatory home buying practices [which] target the most vulnerable in the community" with investors causing homelessness, erosion of communities and an end to generational wealth opportunities and legacies.
REIA adamantly disagrees with the characterizations of Real Estate Investors in our community. Though there are deceptive practices to some extent in virtually every industry, we rarely find them among Real Estate Investors in the Puget Sound. It is even more rare that we find them within the REIA Membership.
The majority of the very people lawmakers have painted as "predatory" focus their "solicitations," or marketing, on zoning, potential profits, visual appearances of properties and the like. We do not focus on the ages of homeowners or their race, neither of which is known to us when we knock on a door or send a letter. It seems to be lost on the lawmakers that ours is a numbers game focused on potential profits, not the targeting proclaimed by the laws, particularly those spawned by the City of Seattle.
The properties many of us "solicit" are often condemned, horrifically run down, boarded up and can be riddled with infestation and/or contamination. We often find liens, sometimes significant, that could ultimately cause the owner to lose the property. They are largely blights on neighborhoods, havens for the homeless and places for drug use and crime. Neighbors are afraid of some of the people and activities within the homes. We are extraordinarily grateful for the licensed professionals who perform the tasks we cannot or will not do. Our roles are often not glamorous but are among the most rewarding. Communities are reinvigorated and delighted when their safety and property values are restored as the properties are rehabbed and resold to new neighbors in their community. They typically thank us profusely, bring food for long days, bring coffee to weary crews and bring addresses of other properties in the community they hope we will bring back to life.
Most of us do not pursue owner occupied properties to any extent. Many of us have counseled property owners, paid legal costs so they could have our contracts reviewed and helped them remove personal property they wanted from the homes. We have had dumpsters of debris, including drug paraphernalia, hauled away. They say business is not personal. It is all personal and affects our unique approaches to finding, structuring, negotiating and closing deals. Many of those deals were located through "solicitations." In the process, we have improved many lives throughout the Puget Sound and removed burdens property owners did not have the means of resolving without us.
Beyond the mischaracterization of Real Estate Investors and our investing activities, we are disappointed that, as a Real Estate Investors Association, we were not contacted for public comment. The reach by our elected officials was simply too far. There are workarounds within the laws to make those laws less costly and less perilous, topics REIA will cover in upcoming meetings and classes, including the REIA Wholesaling Class. Complain as we will, we still have an obligation to move forward legally, ethically and profitably.
Whether we love the laws or hate them, one thing remains: we must comply with the laws. We've been called unethical, predatory, deceptive and more. Prove them wrong. Get and stay in compliance.