All Forum Posts by: Brandon K.

Phoenix does a good job following up if you let them know of problem properties like that.  Not so sure they have a good record of getting people to clean up their messes after the city goes to visit it. You can review the case history of a property here and see if they've already tried to do something:  http://jphxprd.phoenix.gov/tm_web/search-case-init...  and you can submit a case here: https://www.phoenix.gov/nsd/report-blight.  I typically wouldn't buy too near houses like that unless it comes at a good discount or I thought it could get it cleaned up.

@Guy Gimenez  Thanks for the input.  So while it does appear they are in violation of the RESPA rule, it seems its basically like speeding - everyone does it.

I submitted a SFR contract that got accepted as-is over the weekend except with an addendum (counter) that we use the seller's title company that was specified on the private section of the MLS listing. We'd prefer to use our own that we normally use instead of their title company that we haven't heard of that has pretty bad Yelp reviews. We tried negotiating the seller to cover our title costs to use their place but they are unwilling to either cover our title costs or let us use our title company.

It seems according to the RESPA rules we should be able to choose our own title company: "Section 9 of RESPA prohibits a seller from requiring the home buyer to use a particular title insurance company, either directly or indirectly, as a condition of sale."

The deal is probably not worth walking away from over this but is there any other avenue we can pursue?