Can a Sacramento Short Sale Agent Give Legal Advice?

Not only am a top producer who sells Sacramento real estate, but I also have a second job. I just returned from an About.com conference in San Francisco over the weekend. Some of you may not know that I write for About.com as its Guide to Home Buying, and I’ve been building and maintaining that website for 6 1/2 years. Whenever About.com hosts a conference west of the Mississippi, I try to attend. I always learn something new. One of the new things I learned at the About.com conference is Google no longer rewards SEO efforts in the same manner that it used to. Now, rankings are based more closely on authority. Which is excellent news for me. I’m not a big keyword stuffer.

But I am consistent. I write every day no matter what. I write about real estate in Sacramento and mostly about short sale transactions because short sales are what’s selling in Sacramento. I rank in the top 1% of agents at Lyon Real Estate, which is the largest independently owned real estate company in Sacramento. If I lose a ranking spot in Google to, say, HUD, it’s not that important to me. I am still found in the top 10 results on page 1 for hundreds and hundreds of real estate searches and real estate questions. To my readers, that makes me a real estate authority.

The problem with this is I am easily locatable. Thousands of people across the United States annually write to me and ask questions about short sales and real estate. I am a Sacramento real estate broker, so my phone number and email is in plain view. However, I am not a lawyer. I don’t practice law. I don’t give legal advice. Even if I know the answer, I can’t tell anybody. I sell real estate. I am paid a commission to sell houses, one by one. If I am selling a short sale, I am still paid a commission from the proceeds of sale. The law is very clear about what a real estate agent can and cannot do, and we can’t talk about legal matters with authority.

When I explain this to clients, they nod, say they understand, and then they ask me a legal question. Hypothetically speaking, you understand. Nope, still can’t answer it. If you need legal advice about a real estate matter, you absolutely, positively, without question, need to obtain that advice from an entity capable of giving it to you. That entity is not a Sacramento REALTOR. That entity is a real estate lawyer.

Will the bank release me from liability? Legal question. Does this short sale approval letter contain verbiage that protects me from a deficiency judgment? Legal question. Will doing a short sale stop the foreclosure process; how does SB 458 apply to me? Legal questions. If you don’t know the answers, you need a lawyer, not a REALTOR.

When I go to a client’s house, it’s to put that home on the market. I shoot professional photographs. I prepare my agent visual inspection. If there are ways to improve the showing condition, I share those thoughts with the sellers. Perhaps we want to do a bit of home staging or prepping. I generally find a good spot for the lockbox. We sign listing paperwork. We don’t discuss the legal aspects of the real estate transaction because I am not a lawyer. I suggest to all clients that they obtain legal and tax advice. Do they need it? I dunno. Maybe, maybe not. That’s for each client to determine.

If they need a terrific Sacramento real estate agent, they’ve come to the right place. I’ll get that home sold, and I guarantee my performance. Have over 30 years in the business. But I do not give legal advice. No reputable real estate agent would ever try to perform a service that she is not licensed to perform.