Real Estate Information

Social Media History Becomes a New Job Hurdle
 
ONLINE, SOCIAL MEDIA, JOBS, CAREERS, JOB SEARCH, INTERNET, INTERVIEWING, CNBC, NYT
The New York Times
| 21 Jul 2011 | 09:59 AM ET
Companies have long used criminal background checks, credit reports and even searches on Google and LinkedIn to probe the previous lives of prospective employees. Now, some companies are requiring job candidates to also pass a social media background check.
A year-old start-up, Social Intelligence, scrapes the Internet for everything prospective employees may have said or done online in the past seven years.
Then it assembles a dossier with examples of professional honors and charitable work, along with negative information that meets specific criteria: online evidence of racist remarks; references to drugs; sexually explicit photos, text messages or videos; flagrant displays of weapons or bombs and clearly identifiable violent activity.
“We are not detectives,” said Max Drucker, chief executive of the company, which is based in Santa Barbara, Calif. “All we assemble is what is publicly available on the Internet today.”
The Federal Trade Commission, after initially raising concerns last fall about Social Intelligence’s business, determined the company is in compliance with the Fair Credit Reporting Act, but the service still alarms privacy advocates who say that it invites employers to look at information that may not be relevant to job performance.
And what relevant unflattering information has led to job offers being withdrawn or not made? Mr. Drucker said that one prospective employee was found using Craigslist to look for OxyContin. A woman posing naked in photos she put up on an image-sharing site didn’t get the job offer she was seeking at a hospital.
Other background reports have turned up examples of people making anti-Semitic comments and racist remarks, he said. Then there was the job applicant who belonged to a Facebook group, “This Is America. I Shouldn’t Have to Press 1 for English.” This raises a question. “Does that mean you don’t like people who don’t speak English?” asked Mr. Drucker rhetorically.
Mr. Drucker said his goal was to conduct pre-employment screenings that would help companies meet their obligation to conduct fair and consistent hiring practices while protecting the privacy of job candidates.
For example, he said the reports remove references to a person’s religion, race, marital status, sexual orientation, disability and other information protected under federal employment laws, which companies are not supposed to ask about during interviews. Also, job candidates must first consent to the background check, and they are notified of any adverse information found.
He argues the search reduces the risk that employers may confuse the job candidate with someone else or expose the company to information that is not legally allowable or relevant. “Googling someone is ridiculously unfair,” he said. “An employer could discriminate against someone inadvertently. Or worse, they are exposing themselves to all kinds of allegations about discrimination.”
Marc S. Rotenberg, president of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, based in Washington, said that employers were entitled to gather information to make a determination about job-related expertise, but he expressed concern that “employers should not be judging what people in their private lives do away from the workplace.”
Less than a third of the data surfaced by Mr. Drucker’s firm comes from such major social platforms as Facebook, Twitter and MySpace. He said much of the negative information about job candidates comes from deep Web searches that find comments on blogs and posts on smaller social sites, like Tumblr, the blogging site, as well as Yahoo user groups, e-commerce sites, bulletin boards and even Craigslist.
Then there are the photos and videos that people post — or find themselves tagged in — on Facebook and YouTube and other sharing sites like Flickr, Picasa, Yfrog and Photobucket.
And it is photos and videos that seem to get most people in trouble. “Sexually explicit photos and videos are beyond comprehension,” Mr. Drucker said. “We also see flagrant displays of weapons. And we see a lot of illegal activity. Lots and lots of pictures of drug use.”
He recalled one man who had 15 pages of photos showing himself with various guns, including an assault rifle. Another man included pictures of himself standing in a greenhouse with large marijuana plants.
Given complex “terms of service” agreements on most sites and Web applications, Mr. Rotenberg said people do not always realize that comments or content they generate are publicly available.
“People are led to believe that there is more limited disclosure than there actually is, in many cases,” he said, pointing out that Facebook’s frequent changes to its privacy settings in recent years may have put some people at risk in getting a job now because of personal information they might have inadvertently made public.
“What Facebook was doing was taking people’s personal information that they made available to family and friends and make that information available more widely to prospective employers,” said Mr. Rotenberg, whose organization has several pending complaints at the Federal Trade Commission about Facebook’s privacy settings.
Joe Bontke, outreach manager for the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s office in Houston, said that he regularly reminds employers and human resource managers about the risks of violating federal antidiscrimination employment rules and laws by using online research in hiring decisions.
“Things that you can’t ask in an interview are the same things you can’t research,” he said, which includes the gamut of information covering a person’s age, gender, religion, disability, national origin and race.
That said, he added that 75 percent of recruiters are required by their companies to do online research of candidates. And 70 percent of recruiters in the United States report that they have rejected candidates because of information online, he said.
Dave Clark, owner of Impulse Advanced Communications, a telecommunications company in Southern California, began relying on Social Intelligence for background screening because he said the company needed a formal strategy and standards before assembling online information about job candidates. “They provided us with a standardized, arm’s-length way of using this additional information to make better hiring decisions,” he said.
About half of all companies, based on government and private surveys, now use credit reports as part of the hiring process, except in those states that limit or restrict their use. As with social media background checks, there are concerns about information that is surfaced. The equal employment agency filed a lawsuit last December against the Kaplan Higher Education Corporation, accusing it of discriminating against black job applicants in the way it used credit histories in its hiring process.
But it is not unusual for senior-level executives in many companies to undergo even more complete background checks by a private investigating firm.
“We are living in a world where you have an amazing amount of information and data on every executive,” said Ann Blinkhorn, an executive recruiter in the converging technology, media and communications industry. “I think that puts the burden on the recruiter and the hiring manager to be really thoughtful about what is important and not important when making the hiring decision.”
This story originally appeared in The New York Times

The Congressional Oversight Panel says in a report released Wednesday that the administration projects only one million families will end up with lower monthly payments as a result of the program. The report says six million families are more than two months behind with their payments, and 200,000 more families receive foreclosure notices each month.

A year and a half after launching the program, "Treasury is still fighting to get its foreclosure programs off the ground," Elizabeth Warren, who heads the independent panel set up by Congress, told reporters Tuesday.

"Re-default signals the single worst form of failure" by the Treasury Department, said Warren, who is a professor at Harvard Law School. "Billions of taxpayer dollars will be spent and families will nonetheless lose their homes."

"We strongly agree with the (panel's) assessment that foreclosures are at an unacceptable high rate, which is why this program has been designed to prevent avoidable foreclosures," Treasury spokeswoman Meg Reilly said in a statement. She said the program was not designed to prevent every foreclosure, and "we cannot help those who simply bought a home they could not afford."

The executives told lawmakers on Tuesday they are reducing the amount that troubled borrowers owe on their home loans only in limited cases. That's because consumers who are paying their mortgages on time are likely to see such reductions as unfair, they said.

Such programs "could raise issues of fairness," said Sanjiv Das, Citigroup's top mortgage executive, who appeared in front of the House Financial Services committee with top executives from Bank of America, Wells Fargo & Co. and JPMorgan Chase.

David Lowman, chief executive of Chase's mortgage business, told lawmakers that large-scale mortgage principal reduction "could be harmful to consumers, investors and future mortgage market conditions."

Republicans, however, say the Obama administration should abandon the effort and focus on creating jobs.
 
"The market needs to find its own footing free of government intervention and manipulation so we can revive our economy and get on with a full housing market recovery," said Rep. Spencer Bachus of Alabama, the committee's senior Republican

The Home Affordable Modification Program, Treasury's TARP-funded mortgage modification program, was originally intended to keep 3 million to 4 million homeowners in their homes by modifying mortgages to sustainable levels, Barofsky noted. "But it appears that it may never come close to meeting that goal," he said. There have been fewer than 230,000 permanent modifications more than a year into the program.

Failings of the program include problems with transparency, Treasury's execution of the program and problems with the program's design, Barofsky said. In many cases, borrowers who receive modifications are still unable or unwilling to continue to make payments because they're too high or their homes are "hopelessly under water," meaning the properties are worth far less than what is owed, he told the committee.

Office vacancies hit 16-year highs

 
Office vacancy rates are now at their highest level in 16 years, according to a report published Monday, as elevated unemployment levels across the country continue to temper the demand for space.

 1. This is the REAL barometer of the future in Real Estate!

2. Employees fill the vacant offices= JOBS

3. You have to have a job to buy a home!

4. Any hype of a bottom in the Real Estate market is just that.

5. How can we have a decent housing market without jobs?

6. When office space shows some improvement in vacancy rate we will then begin to see the bottom in housing

7. Don’t get caught in the hype!

Roughly 700 million square feet, or 17.2%, of the more than 4 billion of available office space nationwide was unoccupied as of the end of March, according to the real estate research firm Reis. The last time office vacancies were this high was in 1994.

The number of empty offices has been on the rise since the start of 2008, as soaring unemployment and a wave of business failures have crushed commercial real estate.

The trend however, has not just been isolated to those parts of the country that have been particularly hard hit by the recession.

In fact, nearly three-quarters of the country's major metropolitan areas experienced an increase in office vacancies in the first quarter of 2010.

California Legislature approves tax break for people in

foreclosures, short sales.

The measure, which is expected to be signed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, would waive state

taxes on mortgage debt that has been forgiven in a foreclosure or short sale.

April 9, 2010 By Patrick McGreevy

Thousands of Californians whose homes were foreclosed on or sold at a loss would get tax relief under a

measure approved Thursday by the state Legislature.

The bill would waive state taxes on mortgage debt that has been forgiven in a foreclosure or short sale. It is expected to affect about 34,000 taxpayers.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said he would sign the measure, which would also provide about $60 million in tax credits to green-energy companies, when it reached his desk. Californians can already claim the tax breaks on federal returns. Lawmakers passed the measure in time for people to take advantage of it by the April 15 deadline for filing tax returns.

"The mortgage-debt tax relief provision in this bill will provide financial shelter for tens of thousands of Californians who have lost their hopes and dreams in the housing market crash, and it's about time we gave these folks a helping hand," said state Sen. Ron Calderon (D-Montebello).

The short-sale provision would mean about $34 million less in tax revenue for the state over three years, according to the Franchise Tax Board. The "green" credits are a response to the federal American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, which provides grants to firms for power plants that produce renewable energy. The federal government does not tax the grant money. Under the bill approved Thursday, California would provide similar relief. Other parts of the measure, SB 401 by Sen. Lois Wolk (D-Davis), were called tax increases by Republicans. Even though they supported the tax-relief element, several GOP members of the Senate and Assembly voted against the bill, which was opposed by the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Assn. The Republicans objected to a provision that would reduce deductions for charitable gifts, and to changes that would allow the state to tax more income earned by minor dependents. The changes would also make it harder to qualify a home as a principal residence for purposes of escaping capital gains taxes when the property is sold, and some penalties and interest charges to corporations would be increased, according to Therese M. Twomey, a principal consultant for the Senate Republican Policy Office. These changes would bring in more than $10 million in new revenue over five years, Twomey said. "It's an issue of fairness," said Sen. George Runner (R-Lancaster). "You are giving money to one group of people and taking it away from another group of people." With the plunge in the real estate market, many Californians have found themselves owing much more on their mortgages than their homes are worth. Some have been foreclosed upon or asked their lender to approve a short sale, in which a home is sold for less than the debt, some of which is waived.

The amount waived has been considered taxable income under California law. The measure passed Thursday would eliminate that tax when a bank agrees to accept less than what is owed on a home.

The governor vetoed a similar bill last month because it included a provision, since removed, that would have increased penalties against businesses and wealthy individuals who abuse tax credits.

Business groups including the California Chamber of Commerce and Western States Petroleum Assn. complained that the provision would have made businesses reluctant to claim the tax breaks for fear of making a costly error. The businesses also said California's tax penalties were already tougher than those in other states.

Wolk said the penalties would not have applied to honest mistakes. The new measure would lift a great burden from the shoulders of Valarie Wood and her husband, who were facing a $10,000 state tax bill on debt that was forgiven in a short sale of their property in Ventura.

The 10-acre property, which included an avocado grove, had plummeted in value far below what they owed. Health problems and a "mortgage gone awry" forced the couple to renegotiate their loan with their bank, which agreed to waive about $300,000 of debt on the house and property, Wood said.

"We've lost our dream home. We are in our 60s, and it was going to be our retirement," she said, her voice choking with emotion. "This bill is crucial for people like us. We are extremely relieved."

Schwarzenegger said during a news conference Thursday that he wants to give homeowners and businesses "the relief they need." "We want to be helpful in every way we can, so we will sign it," he said.

A Bad Option: The Coming Threat of Option ARMs

By Charles Feldman Mar 22nd 2010 @ 1:45PM

Hold on to your Zoloft, yet another wave of bad real estate news is about to wash our already underwater housing market. This time, it's Option Adjustable-Rate Mortgage loans -- or Option ARMs, for short.

What the heck are Option ARMs, you say? Simply put, they are mortgage loans that give homeowners the option to make minimum payments that are so small, they don't even cover the interest, never mind that the principal. The teeny payments eventually reset, but at a much later date.

Option ARMs have been around since the 1980s, but really came into their own in that two year period between 2005 and 2007, when they were peddled by the likes of Countrywide Financial and Washington Mutual to hard-up homebuyers, and some well-to-do ones, too. Who could resist buying a big home for pocket change every month, even knowing that the monthly payments would someday increase? Of course, by that time, the balance would have ballooned as well.

Well, the time of reckoning has come.

The initial period of low rates, called the optional minimum-payment period, typically lasts five or ten years. Now, and is starting to expire -- on an estimated 900,000 home loans, says the Los Angeles Times. That translates into roughly $300 billion of real estate loans.

The director of the Center for Responsible Lending in California (funny, I didn't know there was any "responsible lending" in California!), Paul Leonard, tells the paper, " Unless option ARMs are restructured proactively, large proportions of them could end up in foreclosure, leading to a potential double dip in housing prices in many California markets."

I keep talking about California because, although Option ARMs were marketed from sea to subprime sea, about 44 percent of all Option ARMs 9representing 55 percent of the dollar value) happen to be here in California -- of course! When you add Florida, Arizona and Nevada to the mix, that represents roughly 75 percent of Option ARMs written nationwide.

Now, you want to hear something truly amazing? Well, listen to this:

"The Option Adjustable Rate Mortgage might be the riskiest and most complicated home loan product ever created.. the less a borrower chooses to pay now, the more is tacked onto the balance."

That from a BusinessWeek cover story----in 2006! And, still, suckers (OK, poor suckers, but suckers nonetheless) were sold these bills of good (evil?) as a way to finance their individual American dream. So much for that.

More recently, Time magazine noted that, according to Standard & Poor's, 37.5 percent of option ARMs written in 2007 at the height of the bubble will eventually go bad. Time (always quick to recognize impending doom) asked in its headline: "Is the Option Adjustable-Rate Mortgage the next subprime disaster?"

And, what do you think the magazine's answer to that question is? Well, they'd hardly do a story on it if they thought the answer was no, now would they?


Charles Feldman is a journalist, media consultant and co-author of the book, "No Time To Think-The Menace of Media Speed and the 24-hour News Cycle." He has written about real estate related issues for several years

Some information on the new HAFA program

I'm often asked if this is a good time to buy a home. Some clients are concerned that home prices may fall further than they have already. They are assuming that the best course of action is to wait for the bottom in the market and then buy. The problem with this approach is that you don't know where the bottom is until you see it in the rear view mirror, meaning until you've missed it!

Home prices are one factor in determining your cost of ownership, but so are interest rates and financing availability. Even though interest rates have gone up in the last six months, they are still near historic lows. Since your monthly mortgage payment is a combination of paying down your principal and paying the interest owed, if home prices come down a little further but interest rates go up, it could cost you even more to service a mortgage on an identical home!

While a home is a major investment, it is also the center of your personal life. It's important to live in a home that reflects your taste and values, yet is within your financial "comfort zone." To that end, it may be more important to lock in today's relatively low interest rates and low home prices, rather than to hope for a further break in prices in the future.

Please give me a call if I can be of any assistance in determining how much home you can afford in today's market.