February/March 2004 Issue
Page 3

STATE NEWS

The Indiana Association of REALTORS has confirmed with NAR that for referral licenses to be exempt from the dues formula, TWO requirements must be met.

• The DR who is holding the referral licenses must have a separate entity, and
• The DR must certify in writing the names of those licenses he is holding in the referral entity. This applies whether it is one person or 100.

Because Indiana has a unique situation with a referral status license, we are asking NAR if there should be an exception for us. However, until such time as NAR modifies its dues formula policy, the above applies. It appears that Indiana may be the only state which has a referral license status.

- Taken from IARAE@mail-list.com

New Seller Disclosure forms and Purchase Agreements

The new Seller Disclosure form is now available at the Board office and on ZipForm. The Seller Disclosure form is regulated by the real estate commission and requires licensees to use the new form upon it's effective date. The effective date for this change was January 1, 2004.

The new Sellers Disclosure form has the following three questions added: 1. Is the access to your property via a private road? 2. Is the access to your property via a public road? 3. Is access to your property via an easement? These questions on are the 2003 form in a combined format so they are not entirely new to our form.

The question is: Do we have to re-issue the new Seller Disclosure Form for our existing listings taken before December 1, 2004?

Answer: The law does not specifically mandate the new disclosure form be re-issued. Some offices have decided to leave the existing form in place and re-certify at closing. However, the state association is recommending the new form be re-issued for all active listings to be on the safe side.

The new Purchase Agreement will be available in the Board office within the next 30 days. The use of the new Purchase Agreement will be up to the individual offices. The main changes to the form are the additional of environmental contaminant Advisory/Release language, revision of the Title Approval paragraph and rearranging and renumbering several paragraphs. The new Purchase Agreement is currently available on ZipForm.

Principal Brokers Meetings

Principal Broker's meetings are back in 2004. The Board of Directors has scheduled several information style meetings which began with the January business meeting. The two additional meetings will be for Principal Brokers and will be held on May 25th and October 7th at the Elkhart Chamber of Commerce. The meetings will begin at 1:00 p.m. and are scheduled for approximately 1 hour.

The May meeting may run longer as the VOW program will be the main topic of discussion. Others topics for discussion in May are the MLS Rules & Regulations and an update on the South Bend/Elkhart County shared service situation. If you have anything you would like to discuss please feel free to submit your ideas to Julie at julie@ecbor.com.

Principal Broker meetings are a great way to communicate important information to our Principal Brokers. We hope we have a large attendance and much discussion.

RPAC Update

The 2003 RPAC Campaign was a great success. We would like to thank all those who continued so generously.
2003 RPAC Campaign Contributors List