I went to a state housing task force meeting this week at the state capital. It was attended by representatives from the Mortgage Bankers, State Appraisal Association, Realtors BOD, State Bar Assoc, Termite Assoc, Title Companies, Home Inspectors, etc. Several professions discussed various licensure bills. The recent one for HI’s was brought up. Several groups indicated they thought regulation of HI’s would be beneficial (to whom??).
I mentioned we did not have mandatory seller disclosure, mandatory code inspections in 3/4 of the state and no state wide mandatory licensing of contractors, builders or trades people - so why us???
A representative for the HBA made a short but very straightforward comment that really impressed me. He said something along the lines of:
“We believe regulation of OUR group should be done at the local levels by the builders themselves as they see fit. If the builders of one city or county wants it - good for them, we’ll support them. If the builders of the next city or county doesn’t want it - good for them, we’ll support them. The HBA does not believe that at the state or national level we should be meddling in the **BUSINESS **of our members. The HBA also feels that any other trade, group or profession should not EVEN THINK about dabbling in OUR business or doing something like introducing regulation that could restrict or affect the way OUR members earn a living, do business OR increase their costs of home building”. “If some other group trys to interfere in OUR business we will AGGRESSIVELY oppose them, and they will be very sorry.”
I wonder where we would be today if when the real estate community, etc 1st started pushing regulation at us, we had taken a strong stance like this - rather than the type stance that we did.