Real Estate Agents Face New Perils As Small Business People By Federal Government
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Real estate agents are the truest example of small business people in the country. They work hard without a safety net, they only make money if there is a sale, and they take tremendous risks for themselves and their families in the hope of a better life.
And that life is going to be getting much harder in the coming days.
The federal government is no friend to the entrepreneur. Bailouts and special programs abound for the well connected, but the small business person is never in that class. What started with President Bush and is now expected to be accelerated under President Obama is a race to dig as deeply into your pocketbook today and strip it clean in the future.
Read this excerpt and weep:
Small businesses are facing the most hostile climate in a generation, and it is not just the slumping economy and credit crunch. With the quiet scrapping of the $3,000 job creation tax credit — which was “never set in stone” according to a senior Obama adviser – there is no more small business tax relief on the horizon. (Clearly, campaign pledges are only valid if chiseled into tablets, Ten Commandments-style.)
Instead, American small businesses face not only tax increases on individual income, dividend income, and capital gains as the 2003 tax cuts expire, but new environmental fees and regulations, health care “pay or play” mandates, and a significant expansion of new “rights” for workers that may well include compulsory unionization. The entrepreneurs we are counting on for future economic growth have only higher expenses and reduced flexibility and opportunities to look forward to.
Still, that’s no problem because small businesses can just send their CEOs and lobbyists to Washington D.C., by private plane to pick up their bailout checks, right? No, instead they can only watch on C-SPAN as their bloated and well-connected competitors cash in their political favors. via Pajamas Media
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Comment by Dan on 24 January 2009:
This is an interesting post. I voted for Obama last year, and I have high hopes that he’s the right person for the country at this time. But I admit, as someone who is running his own small business, I do get envious at times over all the federal assistance passed out to big companies and businesses. We always read that small businesses and entrepreneurs are what really make the U.S. economy go. Yet, it’s these same folks who receive so little outside help.
Dan
Comment by Mike Regan on 25 January 2009:
I’m a real estate appraiser and have seen appraisal management companies like Landsafe operate since I started 17 years ago. They are like vultures and they typically charge borrowers $375 to $475 for an appraisal. They then turn around and find an appraiser who will work for the least money, typically an inexperienced appraiser is the patsy, and pays them $150 to $175. The management company pockets typically $200+ for doing nothing more than ordering an appraisal. Landsafe appraisal management is a subsidiary of Countrywide. So basically Countrywide the lender makes more money from the appraisal fee than the appraiser! Unbelievable, a new law goes into effect in 5/2009 which will now require an appraisal used in a loan sold to fannie mae to be ordered through a third party like Landsafe. The politicians have now effectively taken 50%+ of the appraisal fee and mandated that it be given to third party management companies like Landsafe.