@properties announced the promotion of Branden Lopez to the position of General Counsel. This move comes as @properties aims to expand its business and enhance legal support across its portfolio of enterprises.
Lopez, who joined @properties in November 2022 as Director of Legal, has proven herself as a key member of the leadership team for @properties and Christie’s International Real Estate. In her new role, she will be responsible for overseeing various legal aspects of @properties’ fast-growing business.
As the second-largest privately held brokerage firm in the United States, @properties boasts an impressive array of businesses under its umbrella, including the renowned Christie’s International Real Estate global luxury brand, the @properties franchise brand, multi-state title company Proper Title, and other real estate ventures.
@properties was ranked No. 8 by both transaction sides and sales volume in the 2023 RealTrends 500 brokerage rankings.
Among her core duties, Lopez will handle legal matters related to affiliate agreements in the U.S. and internationally for both @properties and Christie’s International Real Estate. Additionally, she will ensure compliance with local licensing laws and General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) laws concerning marketing in Europe. The management of outside counsel and the protection of @properties’ intellectual property portfolio will also fall under her purview.
Lopez brings extensive expertise to her new role, with more than 17 years of experience as a corporate attorney, including 15 years in the real estate industry. She is a member of esteemed professional organizations such as the Florida Bar Association, the D.C. Bar Association, the Commercial Real Estate Women Network (CREW), and the International Council of Shopping Centers (ICSC). Lopez holds an undergraduate degree from Florida State University and a J.D. from the Stetson University College of Law.
Housing discrimination continues to be a serious problem plaguing renters, homebuyers, and homeowners throughout America.
There were more than 31,200 fair housing complaints filed in 2021, the most recent year where data was available, according to the National Fair Housing Alliance’s 2022 Fair Housing Trends Report. That was the most complaints filed in at least 25 years. The majority, 82%, involved rentals.
“Housing discrimination is pervasive in housing markets across the country,” says Morgan Williams, general counsel of NFHA. “Discrimination is significantly underreported. It’s hard to get good data.”
In 1968, the federal Fair Housing Act was passed to make the rampant discrimination in the housing market illegal. It initially protected people based on race, color, national origin, and religion. Familial status, disability, and sex, which includes sexual orientation and gender identity, have since been added as protected classes.
This is meant to ensure that everyone is treated equally when renting or buying homes, receiving home loans or insurance, and having their homes appraised. However, people are still being denied housing based on their race or sexual orientation, and pregnant women are being denied mortgages.
The NFHA commissioned a report in 2004 that estimated that there were likely more than 3 million fair housing violations against Black, Hispanic, Asian, and Native Americans in the rental and for-sale housing market. This didn’t include violations against other protected groups or in the mortgage, appraisal, and other facets of the real estate industry. When adding those in, he expects there are more than 4 million victims of housing discrimination a year.
Much of the discrimination goes unreported. Many people don’t realize they are victims or are unaware of how to file a fair housing complaint. Those who do often face an uphill battle in proving that they are victims. And some worry about losing their housing if they complain.
“It is a real problem in the market,” says Williams.
What are the most common fair housing complaints?
The bulk of the fair housing complaints received in 2021 were related to disability, according to the NFHA report. These made up about 54.2% of complaints. It was followed by race, familial status, sex, national origin, color, and religion. The report captured complaints filed with nonprofit fair housing organizations and government agencies, including the Department of Housing and Urban Development.
“There is still a tremendous amount of ignorance, as well as conscious and unconscious bias regarding people who are differently abled,” says Stephen Beard. He is an Oakland, CA, real estate agent with Keller Williams who specializes in working with people with disabilities. “Some landlords and other decision-makers do the minimum they can get away with.”
Some of the issues faced by those in the disabled community include being denied rentals because of the way they are perceived, not receiving reasonable accommodations for ramps, chairlifts, and closer parking spaces, as well as landlords not allowing service support animals. Sometimes light fixtures and countertops are out of reach for those in wheelchairs, or kitchens aren’t wide enough to accommodate a chair.
“There simply is not enough accessible housing stock for people with physical challenges, as well as bias against people with cognitive challenges such as autism or who have mental health issues,” says Beard. Many people “can’t find housing. If they have housing, they sometimes can’t afford to move or make their own homes accessible.”
Securing housing is also often a challenge for members of protected classes. For example, families might report that their landlords illegally prohibit their children from accessing amenities in their complexes. People of color are denied mortgages or charged higher fees for loans compared with white borrowers with similar financial pictures. Transgender renters report being evicted due to their gender identity.
“Housing affects absolutely everything you do,” says Marlene Zarfes, executive director of Westchester Residential Opportunities. The civil rights agency works on fair housing complaints in Westchester County, NY, which is located just north of New York City. “If you don’t have suitable housing, how do you get to your job? How do your kids go to school?”
Non-QM originator Angel Oak Companies has appointed former Goldman Sachs executive Timothy Saunders (pictured) as the new chief legal officer and general counsel for Angel Oak and its affiliates. Saunders, who brings more than two decades of legal experience, will head all of Angel Oak’s legal affairs and regulatory compliance measures, as well as overseeing … [Read more…]
As head of structured finance, Newman will oversee the development and execution of asset capital strategy, finding the best market fit for the company’s home equity investments (HEI). She joined Hometap after nearly six years as managing director and head of structured finance at Redwood Trust. Newman is also currently the vice chair of the … [Read more…]
A former employee of nonbank mortgage lender The Change Company, has filed a lawsuit alleging the company founded by former banker Steve Sugarman has mischaracterized home loans in certifications to the Treasury Department.
The lawsuit, filed Tuesday in Superior Court in Orange County, California, was brought by Adam Levine, CEO Sugarman’s former chief of staff. Levine is a former vice president at Goldman Sachs and former assistant White House press secretary in the George W. Bush administration. Before his stint in the White House, he had been a senior aide to Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan.
The lawsuit seeks damages for alleged wrongful termination, whistleblower retaliation and breach of contract. It also alleges that Change Co., a community development financial institution based in Anaheim, California that originates loans to minority and low-income communities, has made false representations to investors about the underlying characteristics of the mortgages it securitizes.
The lawsuit states that Levine reached out in March to Change Co. Chairman Antonio Villaraigosa, a former mayor of Los Angeles, and asked for an independent investigation into certain practices and issues at the company. When Levine “reported his concerns to government regulatory authorities,” he was terminated, the lawsuit states.
Alan Wayne Lindeke, Change Co.’s chief legal officer and general counsel, called the lawsuit “without merit.”
“Multiple third-party diligence firms have verified the accuracy of Change Lending’s Target Market data and the corresponding assessment methodology has been verified by outside counsel,” Lindeke said in an emailed statement.
David Lizerbram, a lawyer in San Diego who represents Levine, declined to comment.
Sugarman served as Chairman and CEO of Banc of California before resigning in 2017. He formed a new company focused on originating loans to borrowers with non-traditional credit needs.
In 2018, Change Co. was certified by the Treasury Department as a community financial development institution. CDFIs are government-certified lenders with a mission to provide financing to disadvantaged communities. Because they provide credit and financial services to underserved Black, Hispanic and low-income communities, they are exempt from certain mortgage regulations.
Specifically, CDFIs do not have to abide by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s ability-to-repay rule, which requires that mortgage lenders document a borrower’s income, assets, employment and credit history. Those so-called qualified mortgage rules were put in place after the subprime mortgage crisis in an effort to prevent a reprise of the low-documentation and no-documentation loans that were rampant before 2008.
Change Co. states on its website: “Our regulatory certification enables us to serve prime, creditworthy borrowers who struggle with burdensome documentation requirements.”
In just five years, Change Co. has catapulted ahead of competitors largely because, as a CDFI, it is not bound by traditional underwriting requirements. This year, Scotsman Guide, which ranks mortgage lenders by size, ranked Change as the largest non-qualified mortgage lender in the U.S. with $4.2 billion in lending volume.
The company lends to people “with unpredictable or hard-to-document income,” but looks for compensating factors such as loan-to-value ratios below 80%, Change Co says on its website. Its borrowers have FICO scores above 640 and typically have more than a year’s worth of cash reserves to bridge gaps between paychecks, the website states.
All CDFIs have to demonstrate that they are serving at least one eligible target market — either a specific area or targeted population. They are required to provide annual certification and data collection reporting to the Treasury Department, attesting that 60% of their loans, both in number and dollar volume, are made to target markets.
In the lawsuit, Levine claims that he has documentation showing that the company is “mischaracterizing the race, ethnicity, and income level of borrowers,” and that it “falsifies information on its annual certification by mischaracterizing its loans.”
CDFIs represent a regulatory tradeoff. They are exempt from some government requirements to collect borrowers’ income documentation, which can be difficult for both the lender and the customer and can eliminate the ability to serve borrowers who don’t have a stable job or whose income comes from a business they own.
A company that wasn’t bound by these underwriting restrictions could shoot ahead of peers that were subject to the rules, so to compensate, CDFIs are required to restrict the majority of their lending to demographic groups considered underserved. If a CDFI was not following the rules and sticking to its target population, it would essentially operate as an untrammeled lender while its competitors were tied to stricter underwriting regulations.
Mortgage lenders typically bundle their loans and resell them to investors as residential mortgage-backed securities. The lawsuit alleges that Change Co. “makes false representations” to the buyers of its mortgage-backed securities “by mischaracterizing the underlying loans.”
“These misrepresentations are material, as many investors choose CDFI securitized products as part of a broader policy that promotes socially responsible investing,” the lawsuit states. “For example, investors who believe they were supporting loans to low-income members of the community would not choose to purchase a [Change Co.] security if they knew that the company falsely characterized its loans to wealthy individuals and even celebrities as low-income loans.”
Change Co. and its subsidiary Change Lending closed a $307 million securitization of home loans in June. The company said at the time that since becoming a CDFI five years ago, it has funded over $25 billion in loans to more than 75,000 families.
Left to right: Keith Futrell, Tani Lawrence, Angel Romero, Kathy Gault
Atlanta-based Down Payment Resource, the housing-assistance data provider serving home buyers, lenders and brokers, recently added four new members to advance its sales and relationship-management efforts. Tani Lawrence joins as enterprise sales executive, tasked with driving growth of DPR tools through outreach to housing professionals. She comes to the firm after serving in senior-level sales positions within fintechs and housing technology firms, including Black Knight’s Optimal Blue, where she worked in business development.
Also new to DPR is Angel Romero, housing finance agency relationship manager. In the role, she will be responsible for maintaining relationships with HFAs across the country. Romero most recently served at Cherry Creek Mortgage in roles, such as post-closing manager and housing program expert, helping to drive the lender’s growth in underserved markets and building awareness of down payment assistance programs.
The company also added Keith Futrell and Kathy Gault as DPA program specialists. With previous roles as a mortgage account manager, processor and underwriter with specialized knowledge of down payment programs, Futrell comes to DPR after most recently serving at Allen Tate Cos. Gault starts at DPR following a tenure at Mountain West Financial, where she curated and managed the company’s DPA program roster, ensuring originators were properly trained on their utilization
As with the rest of the nation, the state of Massachusetts is looking for solutions to temper inventory shortages and high housing costs. While state lawmakers are currently debating rent control legislation as one potential answer to the issue, the Massachusetts Association of Realtors (MAR) is advocating to increase housing construction instead, according to reporting by the Massachusetts’ State House News Service.
“Rent control tries to attack a symptom of our lack of building. And that’s not the way to fix the issue,” said Justin Davidson, general counsel and director of government affairs for MAR. “We need to build more housing.”
The legislation currently being debated would impose more rent control on multifamily units in Massachusetts, Davidson told association members, and that additional rent control would ultimately prove “harmful.”
“If we build enough housing, if people have the options of where to live and what type of home to live in, we don’t need rent control,” he said.
The association also noted that the state recently increased funding for its rental voucher program, which requires that recipients pay 30% of their net monthly income toward rent. The voucher pays for the remainder of the rent.
The association also supports state legislation that would establish a tax-deductible, first-time homebuyer savings program to help residents save up to $5,000 per year to put toward their first home purchase.
In addition, the association touted a bill introduced to the State House in February as a top priority. If passed, the bill would widen the state’s multifamily zoning rules to better accommodate more multifamily units and the construction of accessory dwelling units (ADUs), but the bill has remained in committee since its introduction.
Transfer tax and rent control bills that are currently being debated in the chambers are opposed by the association, according to Davidson, who added the bills to the list of “harmful” policies.
In addition to Massachusetts, other states have been working to address affordable housing and supply issues this year.
In New York, Gov. Kathy Hochul has been pushing the state’s government to override local zoning laws and mandate more housing construction in the state’s suburban counties.
Last month, Washington state Gov. Jay Inslee signed a series of bills designed to encourage more affordable housing construction, with a focus on the elimination of single-family zoning. Similar measures have been introduced in states like Florida and Minnesota but were ultimately reversed.
Homebridge Financial Services will lay off 139 employees as the company sheds what’s left of its retail operations following the sale of that channel to CMG Mortgage last month. The Iselin, New Jersey-based lender will terminate 139 workers including at least nine loan officers by June 26, according to a Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification … [Read more…]
Lumpkin brings extensive knowledge of the residential real estate industry to her new role, having spent nearly 10 years at Lennar. She joined the homebuilder in 2013 as an associate general counsel and was promoted to deputy general counsel in 2021. Before joining Lennar, Lumpkin focused her practice on advising public and private companies – … [Read more…]