Your Voice: FHA May Resolve Insult to Colorado Home Owners by Realtors, Property Managers, and the CAI on HOA Transfer Fees

Realtors, more specifically, the Colorado Association of Realtors (CAR), is not only misrepresenting but insulting home owners with their support of the abusive HOA Transfer Fee .  This is the fee charged by HOA property managers that has never been justified by work completed, is not mandatory but if not paid you won’t be able to sell your home, the fee amount can range from $50 to $1,100+ and is not negotiable or even supported by a detailed invoice, and  the money is not pocketed or benefitting the HOA but is retained by the property manager to enhance profits off the backs of home sellers.  This fee costs home owners in Colorado upwards to $10 million a year
During its’ push for legislation to end or limit this fee in early 2014, the Colorado HOA Forum, www.coloradohoaforum.com ,  interviewed CAR.  Not only did CAR have a deflective non-opinion status on this fee but had the facts as stated above all wrong concerning this fee.  They didn’t realize the excessive amounts charged, who determined and retained the fee, and that the fee was not mandatory.  CAR apparently got its’ information not from its’ members but from the Community Association Institute (CAI) whose members pocket these fees each year and worked to oppose, change, and make ineffective this proposed legislation.  In an interview with the Denver Post in 2014 CAR couldn’t define its’ stand on Transfer Fees.  CAR’s position is a costly and insulting blow to their customer’s bank accounts.
Now the FHA is stepping forward with anticipated new guidelines for approving FHA home loans that would in part put an end to the abusive transfer fee.  Specific in their proposal is ending FHA home loans when transfer fees are involved.  Let’s hope influence groups such as the National Association of Realtors, CAR, and the CAI don’t get this positive action stopped.  These groups have petitioned the FHA to allow transfer fees on HOA home sales.  Note, a few years back it appears that the CAI worked to get an exception in Colorado law that made transfer fees on all residential home sales illegal except on, you guessed it, HOA home sales (CAR never objected).  Don’t these interest groups whose income depends on home owners understand how insulting it is to continue raiding people’s pocket books with these unjustified fees for their own selfish benefit?
The FHA proposal to end this unwarranted fee on FHA home loans is a beginning to rectifying this financial wrong in the real estate market where the customer (home owner) is not defended by the very folks (Realtors) who depend on them the most and who butter their bread.  The Colorado HOA Forum will again work this legislative session to pass a Bill to end or limit this fee.