Love Letters to Sellers

Love Letters to Sellers 

Full Video Transcript Below

[00:00:00] Good afternoon. Real estate fans, Alice Lema here, broker John L. Scott and beautiful Southern Oregon. Another edition of the weekly podcast. And today we're going to talk about the Oregon love letters, again. I just can't believe it, but here we go. The law has been overturned by a judge. And if you don't know what we're talking about, stay tuned.

[00:00:17] This is going to be a great episode. But before we get to that one to give you a quick minute to, like the channel, subscribe to the channel sent us some questions, some comments share with your friends, anybody who's buying and selling right now in the state of Oregon. You need to hear this podcast.

[00:00:30] Okay we talked about it in a couple of radio shows ago, but here, now that we have this new judge ruling and the state of Oregon super, super timely, and everybody needs to know what do you do with the Oregon love letters? So to our podcast, what do you do with the Oregon love letters? So if you don't know what we're talking about, here's what we're talking about.

[00:00:48] When people are buying and selling houses, especially if there's multiple offers, the buyer sometimes writes a letter, dear so-and-so. I love your house. This is what I would do with your house. This is who I am. My family is going to grow up here. My grandma's going to visit me. I'm going to bake apple pies, whatever, whatever we call them, love letters, jokingly in the industry.

[00:01:06] So now somewhere along the line, state of Oregon and some real estate people got in trouble, because guess what? Fair housing rules were broken. And can you tell it was race? It was religion. It was sexual orientation. It was family status. It was age, it was gender. All those things are known in real estate land.

[00:01:28] And did you know that in some states, these letters are illegal? So here we are in Oregon we used to send them to people. Then it was ruled you can't. And now we have a judge recently who says not only can you, but its a violation of free speech to interfere with them. Okay. So what do we do? Here's my suggestion and this is just one agent, but I'm highly uncomfortable with these letters.

[00:01:51] Anyway I don't think they're a good idea. I think you should win a bid or you should accept it on the merits of the deal, not if your neighbors are going to like the people or it's the same kind of family structure you had. I think none of that should come into play. So I kind of agree with the former decision, which is making these letters illegal, but now that they're legal again, you have to decide personally if you think you want to do this or not Yeah.

[00:02:18] So that's kind of where we're at. I just wanted to raise the flag that this issue has raised its head again. And some people are going to be tempted to write these letters and might get in trouble later. If you're a seller and you get these letters, you don't have to accept the letter. That's the other thing, if you're a seller and you, and somebody wants to send you this letter, you might tell your agent if somebody does that, I don't want to see it.

[00:02:41] You might tell in the listing, do not send me any letters. I just want to make a decision based on the merits of the deal. But for this a judge has said it's fair game. So there you go. But yeah, I'm still not sure that they are a good idea. Okay. So just wanted to put that word out. I'm Alice Lema, broker John L. Scott. I'm around all weekend. If you've got any real estate questions anything you want to buy or sell? Give me a call 541-301-7980 that's 541-301-7980. Make it a great day. See you next week. Bye now.