LEGISLATION ISSUES

Fri, Apr 04
This is your Legislative Update for April 11, 2008.

The Sheet Metal Workers Union filed a ballot initiative to require sellers and real estate licensees to provide, among other things, a 10-year home warranty for workmanship (a warranty that is NOT even available for older homes). These ballot petitions, referred to as “The Homebuyers’ Bill of Rights”, are currently on the street and are gaining signatures.

SB1176 PURCHASER DWELLING ACTIONS; DEFINITIONS clarifies the definition of "seller" in statutes pertaining to dwelling actions (civil suits brought by buyers of a dwelling unit against the seller for defects in design or construction) and changes it to exclude the real estate salesperson or broker who provided services in connection with a sale or resale of a dwelling unit. Basically, this would remove real estate licensees from the requirement to provide a 10-year warranty for workmanship – a product that is not even available for older homes.

AAR is proactively moving this legislation through the legislature. It passed out of the Senate 25-0 in favor and has passed out of the House Commerce Committee on March 26th.

As many of you are aware, especially members living in rural districts and their local communities, there is substantial concern around the ongoing efforts by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Forest Service to revise the current inventory of public roads traversing national forests in Arizona.

This is a growing problem across the country as the Forest Service is planning on closing down a large portion of the public access and rights of way in many of our national forests.

Less than 18 percent of our state is held privately. The local economies of some of our towns and cities are interdependent with the variety of uses on these public lands, including tourism, therefore resident and visitor access through existing public rights of way is a critical secondary infrastructure that we cannot afford to lose.

Also at issue is a considerable amount of confusion regarding private inholdings within the National Forest that property owners may no longer be able to access without violating the new closure provisions of the draft U.S. Forest Travel Management Rule.

SB1264 RIGHTS OF WAY; PUBLIC LANDS is a bill sponsored by Senator Karen Johnson to assert Arizona’s existing rights of way and those if its counties and local communities because of the potential economic impact to nearby private property owners and the local businesses in communities across the state that are adjacent to these forests.

AAR feels that the potential economic impacts are not receiving sufficient attention in the Forest Service’s application for an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS).

The bill is being heard this morning by the House Natural Resources and Public Safety Committee. AAR sent a letter to the members of this committee stating its support of the bill on behalf of our more than 45,000 members statewide.

For years past legislative efforts have always tried to make the seller and/or the REALTOR® responsible for providing and disclosing water adequacy information; putting them in a possibly litigious position in explaining water adequacy. HB2270 WATER SUPPLY; DISCLOSURE is another water supply disclosure bill but this one is a proactive effort by AAR to place water supply status disclosure on the accurate party-The Water Provider This legislation will require the water utilities to provide, in writing, the water supply status to buyers within 3 business days if requested.

This bill passed out of the Senate Natural Resources Committee on Wednesday.

The ADRE has received a request from an outside vendor asking that the department provide him a list of the email address for every real estate licensee in the state of Arizona. To date, the ADRE has not provided the vendor with this information.

AAR is concerned about SPAMMing amongst other issues if this list is provided to an outside vendor. AAR has therefore added an amendment to SB1232 REAL ESTATE DEPT; BUSINESS BROKER DESIGNATION to prohibit statutorily the delivery of licensee email addresses to any person or entity other than a court of law or other government agency or for a legitimate government purpose.