This post is from a email from Jeff Watson, ESQ, Attorney for the SellerFinanceCoalition.org
Last week I had the opportunity to spend two days in Washington, DC briefing various members of Congress as to HR-5301, the Seller Finance Enhancement Act. In briefing after briefing, the same thing occurred. We’d hand over the one-page briefing to the member of Congress or to his/her legislative aide, and they would quickly begin to read the top paragraph in the briefing. You could see them shake their heads and do a double-take.
You see, the first paragraph of that briefing listed the various members of Congress who have already agreed to co-sponsor HR-5301. You have conservative Congressmen like Roger Williams of Texas and Mick Mulvaney of South Carolina who have joined with liberal Congressmen like Alan Grayson of Florida and Bobby Rush of Illinois. As one member of Congress said, “You have the most conservative and the most liberal people in Congress on this bill. Of course I’m going to support it.”
I won’t go into all the details of the hard work it took in order to get that kind of broad, bipartisan support in place. Instead I want to give you more information about HR-5301 and ask you to take action in two ways.
I want you to take a few minutes to go to SellerFinanceCoalition.org and register to be a grass-roots member with a 1-time donation at a mere $100 of support. Why do I think every legitimate real estate agent and/or investor in America can afford at least $100? Because every real estate investor/agent I know is either now selling or soon will be selling a house using a land contract, note and mortgage, installment sale, or take-back of a second mortgage.
HR-5301 will allow you to do that up to 24 times in a rolling 12-month period. Two seller finance deals per month is a pretty good thing considering that Dodd-Frank currently has us limited to just three in a year. We stopped at 24 because of an agreement made with the National Association of Realtors. They would remain neutral relative to this bill if we limited it to 24 times rather than ask for it to be unlimited (as I believe it constitutionally should be).
The ability to do 24 seller finance transactions in a year is going to satisfy the needs of 98% of all the real estate investors out there, and it will serve as a platform from which we can launch other efforts to help the remaining 2% of investors.
Once you have indicated your support as a grass-roots member for a minimum of $100 at SellerFinanceCoalition.org, the next thing I want you to do is to contact your member of Congress at their local office this week and ask them to co-sponsor HR-5301. To make that easier for you, you can use the 1-page PDF of SFC’s full press release, which you can find by clicking HERE and scrolling all the way to the bottom of that page, and fax that press release to your local member’s office. A few minutes later, please call and follow up with their office to make sure they received the fax and to thank them for considering co-sponsoring this broadly bipartisan legislation that enables free enterprise to move forward and continues to correct the residual problems from the great housing crisis.
Your action, involvement and support are crucial to continue building the momentum that already exists on behalf of real estate investors across America.