A: As the property owner and landlord, you bear some, if not most, of the responsibility for the damage your tenant caused to the neighbor. Despite your lack of knowledge about the unauthorized addition to the plumbing, as the property owner, you will likely be held accountable for the damages.

‘Property owners are legally obligated to maintain their property to a standard that prevents damage to others, and you may have to cover the repairs your tenant’s actions caused.

Upon learning about this, your first step is to visit the apartment and ensure the plumbing issue has been resolved. Inspect the rest of the property to ensure there are no other problems; if there are, have it properly fixed.

Put your tenant on notice that he violated the lease and will be held responsible for the damage. Find out if he has rental insurance.

Realistically, making the tenant repay you for the damage he caused will be difficult, but you can at least try.

You will also need to decide if this situation is a reason for you to evict your tenant. Like not paying the rent, breaking the rules set out in the lease, such as making unauthorized renovations, can also lead to the tenant being evicted.

Your next step is to inform your insurance company about the situation. Discuss the damage with your neighbor to determine its extent and find out who their insurance company is, as your insurance company will need this information. Your neighbor’s insurance will likely coordinate directly with your insurance company to make the repairs.

This will be more difficult if one or both of you do not have insurance, but the repairs and reimbursement will need to get done in any case.

While it is better if everyone cooperates, there is a realistic possibility this will end up in court, so make sure to take pictures and make good notes along the way.

Board-certified real estate lawyer Gary Singer writes about industry legal matters and the housing market. To ask him a question, email him at gary@garysingerlaw.com, or go to SunSentinel.com/askpro. 

After graduation and a short stint as a fashion writer, she started working as an analyst in the male-dominated Silicon Valley tech ecosystem. Now her third novel, May the Best Player Win, is scheduled to come out this fall.

Q: Can you talk about how you came up with the ideas for your most recent book, Valley Verified?

A: A few months after graduation I made the switch from the high fashion industry to the high tech industry. With that came a lot of impostor syndrome and a massive confidence crisis.

I was feeling really down about myself, and I didn’t think I could really confide in anyone, because all my friends seemed so successful and accomplished.

So I kept it all bottled up within myself. But at some point, I just had to get all these feelings out of me, so I started writing this story of this young woman who works in fashion in New York City, but because of circumstance, she’s forced to move across the country to Silicon Valley to take on a new role and a tech startup. And she’s like a fish out of water.

Q: How does the book touch on themes from your own life experience?

A: There’s just so many amazingly smart people here [in Silicon Valley], I think impostor syndrome is a lot more common than we realize.

I expected that only people around my age would relate to my book. But then I realized that people from different ages, from different stages of their careers, saw how much my story resonated with them. That’s honestly the best feeling because I wrote this book by myself, and it’s in some way inspired by my own experience. To know that my experience is something that other people could relate to as well, that’s a really awesome feeling for any writer.

Another theme that’s really important to me in this book is exploring what it means to be a woman in a very male-dominated industry. And especially how women can support one another.

I think growing up, women or girls have been taught to see one another as competition. Only one girl gets to be the homecoming queen, only one girl gets to be the prettiest, only one girl gets to date the most popular guy. And so from a young age, we think of it as a zero sum game. In order for one of us to succeed, it means that another woman cannot succeed.

That’s why in my book, you have this cast of female characters, they are very different on paper, but they learn to accept one another, and they learn to come together to support one another.

Q: Many people will be going on vacation in the next few weeks, and might be looking for something to read while they’re laying on the beach. Why might someone want to pick up Valley Verified?

A: I describe it as Legally Blonde set in Silicon Valley. It’s about a woman who goes from fashion to tech. These are two fascinating industries, and because I have personal experience with both I’m able to craft an authentic portrayal of these two worlds and all the niche references.

A lot of people have told me that my main character is someone who is very relatable. She’s not perfect, she doesn’t always make the right decisions, but she does try her best. And she has a good head on her shoulders.

Because this is set at a tech startup, you have this ensemble cast of characters who are all very quirky in their own ways. Even though people might recognize some stereotypical features of the tech industry in them, they are much more than a caricature of what people imagine tech people to be like.

Tech billionaires are becoming more mainstream celebrities. You see Jeff Bezos rubbing shoulders with the Kardashians, and Elon Musk is just doing what Elon Musk does. People are getting so much more fascinated with the ecosystem, but it can be very opaque sometimes, and my book is just like a really nice entryway into that. You see this ecosystem through the eyes of an outsider who is sometimes just as bewildered by what is going on as the rest of us.

Q: You graduated from Stanford and got a job working in tech, so what made you want to be an author as well?

A: I never saw myself becoming an author, but during the pandemic I was in my third year at Stanford University, then the pandemic broke out, and I wanted to go home to be with my family in Singapore but this was also a time when every country was shutting down borders, so I decided to stay put in California. For most of 2020 I was living alone and I got very homesick, very lonely, and also just kind of depressed.

I just got so tired of seeing Asians like myself be portrayed in such a negative, derogatory manner. I really wanted us to be portrayed in a more vibrant and fun and joyful manner. That’s when I got the motivation to start writing my own story, set in my home country of Singapore, it became my very first novel, The Fraud Squad, published in early 2023.

It’s kind of like Crazy Rich Asians meets The Devil Wears Prada. It’s really fun.

Q: Your next book is coming out soon, what will May the Best Player Win be about?

A: I describe my next book as a family-friendly version of The Queen’s Gambit, without the drugs and everything, so parents can read it with their kids. It is also set in the Bay Area. It’s about a chess player who makes a bet with a sexist rival, that girls can be as good as boys at the game. That is coming out in September.

I actually wrote the first draft over one month in November 2020, the election month. I just felt very jaded and cynical, seeing grown men say such hateful things, so I really wanted to write a book that was from the perspective of someone younger, someone who still has that youthful innocence.

I grew up playing chess, I was on Singapore’s national junior squad, so I think the commonality between this book and Valley Verified is that it explores what it’s like to be a girl, or woman, in a very male-dominated space.

My main character in this next book also has to deal with people doubting her abilities just because of her gender. She has to find a way to prove herself, but as she tries to prove herself and as she tries to win the bet, performance anxiety begins to creep in. I hope that kids in Silicon Valley, or even adults, can relate to some of what my main characters going through.

Kyla Zhao

Age: 26Position: Author, tech workerEducation: Stanford UniversityResidence: San Jose, CaliforniaFamily: Parents in Singapore, brother at UC Berkeley

Five things about Kyla

1. Has to have three drinks when writing: coffee, water, and something special2. Loves cold desserts: if it’s cake, it should be ice cream cake3. Goes to a pilates studio where she is the youngest but least fit4. Writes in size seven font, so she doesn’t get tempted to edit before a full draft is done5. Comfort movie is The Devil Wears Prada

Wading through unnecessary paperwork is no one’s idea of a good time. Same goes for being forced to hear a dreaded loop of Muzak while waiting on hold for what feels like eternity.

In the hopes of removing some of the suffering from the pain of customer service interactions, the Biden administration announced a new bundle of government-wide actions today nicknamed “Time Is Money.” The administration says the hassles that Americans face are often designed to deter people from activities that could hurt a company’s bottom line, such as refunds or subscription cancellations.

“This work came from scores of conversations with people — consumer advocates and others — about practices that are really designed to get people crazy and, honestly, they’re really designed for you to give up.” says Neera Tanden, director of the Domestic Policy Council of the United States.

During his presidency, Biden has addressed a bevy of corporate-instituted annoyances that everyday Americans face, including things like junk fees. These new actions also provide a glimpse into what areas of consumer protection Vice President Kamala Harris is likely to emphasize on the campaign trail.

The consumer pain points that the administration is targeting include things most people have encountered such as chatbots, doom loop phone menus, fake reviews and enigmatic subscription cancellation practices.

But first, a caveat: When the White House announces any “actions,” it can take a long time to actually happen. Certain actions might require movement through regulatory processes, other agencies or Congress. Businesses may have perfected red tape, but the government invented it.

Stop “doom loops” and connect consumers to humans

The pipeline from consumer-to-human representative is often littered with unhelpful robotic menus that don’t recognize when you’re helplessly yelling “customer service” into the receiver.

“I myself have had experiences where you call and the thing you need is not in the recommended options,” says Tanden. “And then you hit a button that sounds like it’s close — like it could get you access to a human — but it’s not close. And they keep just giving you the same list over and over again. What that’s fundamentally doing is wasting your time in order to make it difficult to realize the choice that you want.”

To combat this frustrating experience, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) is expected to create a rule that would require companies it oversees — such as banks and lenders — to streamline connecting consumers with human customer service agents.

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is considering requiring the same of phone, broadband and cable companies. The Health and Human Services department and Department of Labor are also expected to call on health plan providers to improve this path.

Simplify subscription and membership cancellation practices

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) proposed a rule that would require companies to make a subscription or membership cancellation as easy as it was to sign up.

The “click to cancel” proposal was first made in March 2023 and is still in the “rulemaking” process, which Tanden says should be completed sometime in the fall. This action doesn’t require congressional approval.

Stop companies from masking bad reviews or creating fake ones

The FTC has also proposed a rule that would ban marketers from deceptive review practices, including suppressing honest negative reviews and propping up fake positive reviews. This rule was proposed in June 2023 and is in the rulemaking process.

Crackdown on customer service chatbots and A.I.

The CFPB is expected to issue rules or guidance against using automated chatbots or artificial intelligence voice recordings as customer service in scenarios when people are led to believe they’re communicating with a person.

Improve health care coverage customer service

The HHS and the DOL are both calling on health insurance companies “to take concrete actions to save people time and money when interacting with their health coverage,” according to a White House press statement. That proposal is as opaque as the next promise that these departments will identify additional ways to improve how the health care system interacts with people.

Tanden says one practice the Office of Personnel Management wants to address is making it easier to submit paperwork online rather than through mail or fax. “Some people don’t really have access to a fax machine,” says Tanden. “These practices really do seem designed to make it difficult to get prior authorization or claim a particular benefit.”

The Office of Personnel Management is also planning to require all federal and postal service health benefit plans to simplify submitting out-of-network claims online, finding information on appealing claim denials and help people figure out which providers are in-network.

Require airlines to provide automatic cash refunds

The Department of Transportation now requires airlines to pay customers back the airfare when a flight is canceled or changed significantly for any reason. A passenger would be entitled to a refund if they do not rebook a flight. All refunds must be automatic. This rule was announced in April and will be implemented soon, according to Tanden.

Streamline communications between parents and schools

The Department of Education is expected to issue guidance to schools to make it simpler and less time-intensive for parents and schools to do things like communicating with teachers and completing required forms and permission slips. It’s unclear what this guidance would look like, but the White House says it would “include new resources for schools to address time-wasting technology and offer more streamlined processes for engaging and communicating with parents.”

What’s next?

Tanden says the administration is hoping to do more to ensure consumer choices “drive the market” and prevent companies from gaming the system at the expense of consumers.The White House is soliciting suggestions from Americans for how they’d like consumer service to better serve them including things like how refunds are delivered; dealing with human agents instead of robots; canceling subscriptions more easily; and how technological features can actually make their lives easier. You can submit your suggestions here.

Anna Helhoski writes for NerdWallet. Email: anna@nerdwallet.com. Twitter: @AnnaHelhoski.

The article Biden Official: Lousy Customer Service ‘Designed For You to Give Up’ originally appeared on NerdWallet.

LOS ANGELES — About four months after a notorious hacking group claimed to have stolen an extraordinary amount of sensitive personal information from a major data broker, a member of the group has reportedly released most of it for free on an online marketplace for stolen personal data.

The breach, which includes Social Security numbers and other sensitive data, could power a raft of identity theft, fraud and other crimes, said Teresa Murray, consumer watchdog director for the U.S. Public Information Research Group.

“If this in fact is pretty much the whole dossier on all of us, it certainly is much more concerning” than prior breaches, Murray said in an interview. “And if people weren’t taking precautions in the past, which they should have been doing, this should be a five-alarm wake-up call for them.”

According to a class-action lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., the hacking group USDoD claimed in April to have stolen personal records of 2.9 billion people from National Public Data, which offers personal information to employers, private investigators, staffing agencies and others doing background checks. The group offered in a forum for hackers to sell the data, which included records from the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom, for $3.5 million, a cybersecurity expert said in a post on X.

The lawsuit was reported by Bloomberg Law.

Last week, a purported member of USDoD identified only as Felice told the hacking forum that they were offering “the full NPD database,” according to a screenshot taken by BleepingComputer. The information consists of about 2.7 billion records, each of which includes a person’s full name, address, date of birth, Social Security number and phone number, along with alternate names and birth dates, Felice claimed.

National Public Data didn’t respond to a request for comment, nor has it formally notified people about the alleged breach. It has, however, been telling people who contacted it via email that “we are aware of certain third-party claims about consumer data and are investigating these issues.”

In that email, the company also said that it had “purged the entire database, as a whole, of any and all entries, essentially opting everyone out.” As a result, it said, it has deleted any “non-public personal information” about people, although it added, “We may be required to retain certain records to comply with legal obligations.”

Several news outlets that focus on cybersecurity have looked at portions of the data Felice offered and said they appear to be real people’s actual information. If the leaked material is it what it’s claimed to be, here are some of the risks posed and the steps you can take to protect yourself.

The threat of ID theft

The leak purports to provide much of the information that banks, insurance companies and service providers seek when creating accounts — and when granting a request to change the password on an existing account.

A few key pieces appeared to be missing from the hackers’ haul. One is email addresses, which many people use to log on to services. Another is driver’s license or passport photos, which some governmental agencies rely on to verify identities.

Still, Murray of PIRG said that bad actors could do “all kinds of things” with the leaked information, the most worrisome probably being to try to take over someone’s accounts — including those associated with their bank, investments, insurance policies and email. With your name, Social Security number, date of birth and mailing address, a fraudster could create fake accounts in your name or try to talk someone into resetting the password on one of your existing accounts.

“For somebody who’s really suave at it,” Murray said, “the possibilities are really endless.”

It’s also possible that criminals could use information from previous data breaches to add email addresses to the data from the reported National Public Data leak. Armed with all that, Murray said, “you can cause all kinds of chaos, commit all kinds of crimes, steal all kinds of money.”

How to protect yourself

Data breaches have been so common over the years, some security experts say sensitive information about you is almost certainly available in the dark corners of the internet. And there are a lot of people capable of finding it; VPNRanks, a website that rates virtual private network services, estimates that 5 million people a day will access the dark web through the anonymizing TOR browser, although only a portion of them will be up to no good.

If you suspect that your Social Security number or other important identifying information about you has been leaked, experts say you should put a freeze on your credit files at the three major credit bureaus, Experian, Equifax and TransUnion. You can do so for free, and it will prevent criminals from taking out loans, signing up for credit cards and opening financial accounts under your name. The catch is that you’ll need to remember to lift the freeze temporarily if you are obtaining or applying for something that requires a credit check.

Placing a freeze can be done online or by phone, working with each credit bureau individually. PIRG cautions never to do so in response to an unsolicited email or text purporting to be from one of the credit agencies — such a message is probably the work of a scammer trying to dupe you into revealing sensitive personal information.

For more details, check out PIRG’s step-by-step guide to credit freezes.

You can also sign up for a service that monitors your accounts and the dark web to guard against identity theft, typically for a fee. If your data is exposed in a breach, the company whose network was breached will often provide one of these services for free for a year or more.

As important as these steps are to stop people from opening new accounts in your name, they aren’t much help protecting your existing accounts. Oddly enough, those accounts are especially vulnerable to identity thieves if you haven’t signed up for online access to them, Murray said — that’s because it’s easier for thieves to create a login and password while pretending to be you than it is for them to crack your existing login and password.

Of course, having strong passwords that are different for every service and changed periodically helps. Password manager apps offer a simple way to create and keep track of passwords by storing them in the cloud, essentially requiring you to remember one master password instead of dozens of long and unpronounceable ones. These are available both for free (such as Apple’s iCloud Keychain) and for a fee.

Beyond that, experts say it’s extremely important to sign up for two-factor authentication. That adds another layer of security on top of your login and password. The second factor is usually something sent or linked to your phone, such as a text message; a more secure approach is to use an authenticator app, which will keep you secure even if your phone number is hijacked by scammers.

Yes, scammers can hijack your phone number through techniques called SIM swaps and port-out fraud, causing more identity-theft nightmares. To protect you on that front, AT&T allows you to create a passcode restricting access to your account; T-Mobile offers optional protection against your phone number being switched to a new device, and Verizon automatically blocks SIM swaps by shutting down both the new device and the existing one until the account holder weighs in with the existing device.

Your worst enemy may be you

As much or more than hacked data, scammers also rely on people to reveal sensitive information about themselves. One common tactic is to pose as your bank, employer, phone company or other service provider with whom you’ve done business and then try to hook you with a text or email message.

Banks, for example, routinely tell customers that they will not ask for their account information by phone. Nevertheless, scammers have coaxed victims into providing their account numbers, logins and passwords by posing as bank security officers trying to stop an unauthorized withdrawal or some other supposedly urgent threat.

People may even get an official-looking email purportedly from National Public Data, offering to help them deal with the reported leak, Murray said. “It’s not going to be NPD trying to help. It’s going to be some bad guy overseas” trying to con them out of sensitive information, she said.

It’s a good rule of thumb never to click on a link or call a phone number in an unsolicited text or email. If the message warns about fraud on your account and you don’t want to simply ignore it, look up the phone number for that company’s fraud department (it’s on the back of your debit and credit cards) and call for guidance.

“These bad guys, this is what they do for a living,” Murray said. They might send out tens of thousands of queries and get only one response, but that response could net them $10,000 from an unwitting victim. “Ten thousand dollars in one day for having one hit with one victim, that’s a pretty good return on investment,” she said. “That’s what motivates them.”

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©2024 Los Angeles Times. Visit at latimes.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

WASHINGTON — Donald Trump and Kamala Harris are in a tax policy arms race, copying and one-upping each other’s proposals in a bid to court key battleground state voting blocs ahead of a looming battle in Washington to rewrite the tax code.

The duel highlights the central place of the economy in November’s vote, with American households battered by high costs and the campaigns seeking to emphasize pocketbook issues.

The back-and-forth over taxes has escalated in recent days. In an interview with CBS News over the weekend, Republican vice presidential nominee JD Vance tried to outflank Democrats by floating a $5,000-per-child tax credit — $3,000 more than the size of the current credit and even larger than President Joe Biden has proposed.

Harris, rallying supporters in Nevada, endorsed a version of Trump’s own promise to exempt tipped wages from taxes.

Her pitch, in the same battleground state where Trump made his proposal two months ago, drew the ire of the Republican presidential nominee, who accused his Democratic rival of stealing his idea.

“The tit-for-tat here is amazing,” said Marc Goldwein of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget in an interview with Bloomberg’s Balance of Power.

“Joe Biden wants a child tax credit, so JD Vance wants a bigger child tax credit. Donald Trump says, ‘No tax on tips,’ so Kamala Harris says, ‘no taxes on tips,’ ” he said.

Goldwein, though, raised a critical question: “Who’s going to pay for all this?”

The scope of the tax changes being floated by the candidates could be budget-busting. While the Trump campaign has not released key details of its proposals, increasing the child tax credit could cost $2 trillion over the next decade. If the tax credits are refundable — meaning taxpayers would get money back even if they don’t owe taxes — it could be closer to $3 trillion.

“Detached from reality”

Trump has also proposed ending the tax on Social Security benefits entirely, replacing current policy that gives targeted tax breaks to lower-income seniors. His proposal could cost as much as $1.8 trillion and ultimately endanger the Social Security trust fund itself, according to nonpartisan budget watchers.

Largely absent from the discussion, for now, are the tax cuts from Trump’s 2017 tax law that will expire at the end of 2025. Extending those cuts carries a $4.6 trillion price tag.

“We’re not dealing with the elephant in the room, which is the expiration of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act,” said Erica York of the nonpartisan Tax Foundation. “It’s scattershot, and it’s really detached from reality.”

None of the proposals being floated give any consideration to how the tax cuts will shift the tax burden — from older taxpayers to younger ones, from parents to people without dependent children, and from tipped workers to salaried ones.

“I wish we were in a situation where they were trying to one-up each other on serious tax proposals,” York said. “But instead the entire discussion is on the silly side of things.”

Election-year politics is driving the frenzy of proposals.

Trump won voters 65 and older by 5 percentage points in 2020, according to network exit polls. A recent New York Times/Siena College poll showed him in a dead heat with that demographic against Harris.

Vance’s child tax credit proposal came during a round of weekend interviews in which he tried to deflect a barrage of attacks over past comments that the U.S. was run by “childless cat ladies.” Saying the tax code should support “pro-family” policies, Vance proposed a massive expansion of the child tax credit, with no income limits. That means middle- and upper-income families will get a bigger benefit from a tax provision that was originally designed as an anti-poverty program.

And it’s no coincidence that Trump first made his no-tax-on-tips pledge at a rally in the critical battleground of Nevada, a state with the largest proportion of food service and accommodations workers in its workforce. Those employees have historically relied on tips.

Guerrilla marketing

Trump has made “no tax on tips” a centerpiece of his stump speech, and his campaign is employing guerrilla marketing tactics to promote the policy. Donors to his campaign can receive stickers that read “VOTE TRUMP FOR NO TAX ON TIPS” to put on their restaurant checks.

Harris, too, chose Las Vegas to make a similar campaign promise to cut taxes on tips — although her proposal would apply only to federal income taxes and leave payroll taxes for Social Security and Medicare intact. That largely accounts for the difference in price tags: about $250 billion over 10 years for the Trump plan, perhaps half that for Harris.

The Trump campaign responded by giving Harris a new nickname: “Copy Cat Kamala Harris.” But the proposal was already generating bipartisan support in Congress, especially among Democratic members of the Nevada delegation.

Vance’s proposal to increase the child tax credit marked an abrupt departure from his party’s orthodoxy. In a Senate vote this month, only three Republicans voted to increase the amount of the refundable credit.

Vance, who was campaigning in Arizona, skipped the vote. He blamed Harris for the measure failing, telling CBS’ Face the Nation that she “failed to show fundamental leadership.”

_____

(With assistance from Joe Mathieu.)

_____

©2024 Bloomberg L.P. Visit bloomberg.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

The changes were prompted by a series of antitrust lawsuits filed against the National Association of Realtors that claim it enforced practices that made it more expensive to sell a home. The industry group is also facing a $418 million settlement.

For decades, sellers have used money from the home sale to pay a commission fee that gets split between their agent and the buyer’s agent. Typically the fee is around 5-6%, though the National Association of Realtors says that number has always been negotiable.

This long-running practice could be wiped out by two new rules from the National Association of Realtors that set stricter standards for how commission is determined.

Some speculate this could lead to lower earnings for agents, sparking an exodus from the industry.

“This is really a revolutionary change,” said MaryDell Penney, a market manager for Redfin who oversees agents in Tampa and Orlando. “It’s going to require everyone to have a mindset shift.”

What will change?

Starting Aug. 17, listing agents will no longer be allowed to advertise commission when posting a home to the Multiple Listing Services, a collection of centralized databases that members of the National Association of Realtors use to find available properties.

Previously, agents were required to list compensation on the Multiple Listing Services. Plaintiffs who sued the National Association of Realtors argued that this practice drove up commission rates.

Buyers will also have to sign a written agreement with their agents outlining how much the agent will get paid. The contracts could normalize the practice of buyers paying their own agents.

What does it mean for buyers and sellers?

For some people, nothing will change. Sellers can still offer to cover the full commission fee like they always have.

But some will choose to have each party pay their own agent instead, said Lei Wedge, a professor of finance at the University of South Florida’s Muma College of Business. Now, everything is up for negotiation.
“It’s not going to be as consistent as it was before,” she said. “Now you’re dealing with everyone’s individual preferences.”

Sellers could see more cash in their pocket at closing if they opt not to cover the buyer agent’s fee.

Buyers may be burdened with a new expense. Wedge suspects that many will take more time to shop around for an agent who offers a lower commission rate or flat fee. Some may forego using an agent altogether.

Buyers will also have to reach a written agreement with their agents. Adam Grenville, a Re/Max agent and president of Greater Tampa Realtor, warned this could be especially tricky, since there’s no universal blueprint for how these contracts should look yet.

“You need to make sure you understand what you’re signing,” he said. “Ask a lot of questions.”

What does it mean for the future of the industry?

The United States has some of the highest real estate commissions in the world. Wedge said these rules could bring us closer in line with other countries if more buyers and sellers start negotiating their agents down from the traditional 6% fee.

Since the settlement was announced in March, average buyer’s agent commissions have already seen a slight decline, according to research from Redfin.

Facing a potential threat to their earnings, some agents may choose to leave the industry. One report from investment firm Keefe, Bruyette & Woods predicted that changes to the commission structure could eventually cause as many as 1 million agents to abandon the profession.

While there’s always going to be turnover after a major change in the market, Penney said there are steps agents can take to adapt.

At her brokerage, buyer’s agents are already being trained to ask for agent compensation as part of the deal when making an offer on a property.

“I think there are a lot of agents that came into the industry in crazy COVID years when it was fairly easy,” she said. “Now it’s going to be tougher. They’re going have to have super sharp negotiation skills.”

©2024 Tampa Bay Times. Visit tampabay.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

Then the Fellmans watched a court in Miami side with condo owners there who waged a similar fight. Yet the couple say they can’t use the ruling to compel their district court to reconsider its decision.

And now the investor who terminated the condominium has sent a letter to the Fellmans’ longtime tenant telling her to stop paying rent to the couple. “We, as the new owner, would like to offer you a NEW LEASE so you may continue to occupy the Leased Premises without any interruption,” the letter says.

Court records and correspondence provided by the Fellmans present a story of a long legal battle to prevent The Scully Company, a Pennsylvania-based operator of rental communities, from taking over a condo unit the couple purchased for $65,000 in 1992 — back when the condominium’s declaration stated it would take 100% of unit owners to approve any termination.

But after buying 175 of the Mission Viejo Condominium units — all of them except the Fellmans’ — the investor took over the governing association and voted to reduce to 80% the threshold of unit owners required to approve the termination, court records show.

“I am still not sure what I did wrong and/or what Melissa and I could have done differently to have kept the free-and-clear condo in our possession,” Howard Fellman wrote Gov. Ron DeSantis on July 16 in an email begging him to intervene.

“Simply put, we bought a beautiful condo 32 years ago that was supposed to be our forever home. We have never been late on a mortgage, a monthly condo fee, a special assessment, an insurance premium or a tax. My wife and I worked very hard for the right to make that claim. This is so unjust.”

But a spokeswoman for The Scully Company, which operates the complex under the name Complex Palms Apartments, contended in a statement to The South Florida Sun Sentinel that the company made the decision to terminate the condominium “after years of enduring Mr. Fellman’s dissonance as it related to him sharing financial responsibilities associated with his rental unit.”

Howard Fellman cites a list of issues with how money at the condominium has been spent and reported, including its use of association property for what he says is the operation of the apartment complex.

When The Scully Company filed notice of its intention to seek termination in 2021, it offered the Fellmans $210,000 for their unit, saying the price was determined by an appraiser it had hired, Howard Fellman said.

While the Scully spokeswoman said the price offered was “above market value plus closing costs,” Howard Fellman contends that a Zillow search shows his property is worth more than $300,000.

On Monday, Howard Fellman’s attorney sent a letter to Scully objecting to its acquisition price and other terms of its proposed settlement, including the fact that the appraisal was conducted more than three years ago and the offer fails to credit him with 2.5% of the association property that includes Fellman’s building and all of the recreation areas and offices.

The Fellmans sued in 2021 to prevent the termination. But two courts have since upheld the investor’s right to terminate with 80% approval.

A Palm Beach County circuit judge agreed in 2022 that the bylaws did not prohibit the association from enacting future amendments to reduce the voter threshold. In April 2023, the Fourth District Court of Appeal in West Palm Beach affirmed the earlier order with no comment.

Fortunately for the couple, they won’t be homeless regardless of how their fight concludes. They bought a house in Boca Raton in 2005 to accommodate their growing family and have since been renting the condo unit to tenants. But they said they always planned to retire to the condo unit and spend the rest of their lives there.

Miami court rules for holdout unit owners

Last March, the Third District Court of Appeal in Miami sided with a group of condo owners who sued to prevent termination of Biscayne 21 Condominium, a waterfront community about a mile and a half north of the Kaseya Center in downtown Miami.

That court found that language in the condo declaration incorporating all future amendments to the state’s Condominium Act, “as amended,” did not override a specific provision that was intended to give every unit owner veto power over any termination plan.

The appellate ruling found that the unit owners “have shown a substantial likelihood of success” to prevail in their lawsuit to stop the termination. It reversed a lower court order that denied the owners a temporary injunction but did not settle the case, which is ongoing.

According to a recent story by the Wall Street Journal, the case is being watched closely by developers who are planning to use termination to take over numerous high-rise condo buildings in South Florida and build even larger projects on their sites.

The Fellmans cited the Miami ruling in a motion filed in March asking a Palm Beach County circuit judge to vacate the 2022 order. The judge denied the motion, saying the plaintiffs failed to cite a case in which a ruling by a trial court was affirmed by an appellate court, then vacated by the trial court based upon a contrary decision from another district.

Regarding a possible appeal of the Fourth District Court of Appeal ruling, Fellman said he was told by the supervising partner of the law firm that argued his case, Kaye Bender Rembaum, that the couple has no grounds to seek a reversal by the state Supreme Court.

The reason is the appellate court provided no written statement explaining its affirmation of the lower court ruling, the partner said.

In a letter provided by the Fellmans, the partner cited a decision in an earlier case that noted such rulings occur “when the points of law raised are so well settled that a further writing would serve no useful purpose.”

A possible way forward

Andrew Schwartz, a Palm Beach County based attorney who specializes in condominium issues, said while he is not familiar enough with the details of the case to offer an opinion, the Fellmans could file a separate motion seeking a written opinion from the Fourth District.

“The rule requires (the couple) to make certain allegations regarding the necessity of the written opinion, etc.,” Schwartz said.

Then the couple could “potentially seek review from the state Supreme Court based upon purported conflict resolution between the two district courts of appeal,” Schwartz said.

The couple’s current attorney, Mike Simon, declined to predict whether the Fellmans would try to reverse the appellate court ruling. Howard Fellman declined to reveal the couple’s next move, saying that the parties are still hashing out other issues, such as whether the investor is willing to reimburse them for recent improvements to the unit.

As of Monday, the Palm Beach Property Appraiser’s website still shows the Fellmans as owners of the unit, but the county’s Official Records shows a deed transfer filed on July 26 by the association to a group controlled by The Scully Company, asserting ownership through the “plan of termination.”

So far, the cost of the legal fight has exceeded the $210,000 that The Scully Company is willing to pay for the unit, Howard Fellman said. In addition to their own lawyers’ bills, the couple have been ordered to pay $82,624 for the investor’s legal fees, and they want another $60,816 for additional legal fees tied to the appeal.

According to a letter sent to the Fellmans, the investor is proposing to deduct $72,894 for legal fees and other expenses from the price of the unit, leaving the Fellmans with $137,124.

DeSantis’ office has responded to multiple letters from the Fellmans by referring them to the state Department of Business and Professional Regulation’s Division of Florida Condominiums, Timeshares & Mobile Homes. But a DBPR representative told them that the department lacks jurisdiction over termination issues, Howard Fellman wrote to a DeSantis spokesman.

“He said only your office has the power to intervene at this point,” he told the spokesman. “My wife and I kindly ask you to please do so.”

Ron Hurtibise covers business and consumer issues for the South Florida Sun Sentinel. He can be reached by phone at 954-356-4071, on Twitter @ronhurtibise or by email at rhurtibise@sunsentinel.com.

The Securities and Exchange Commission on Monday filed a complaint accusing Cynthia Petion and her husband Eddy Petion of operating a fraudulent investment program through their company, NovaTech Ltd., from 2019 to 2023.

According to an SEC news release, the Petions lived in Wellington, in Palm Beach County, during the majority of the time they operated the scheme. They have since moved to Panama, the SEC said.

The SEC accuses the couple of attracting victims by claiming NovaTech would invest their funds in crypto asset and foreign exchange markets. Cynthia Petion promised investors their money would be safe, the SEC said. “(I)n this program, you are in profit from day one, because again you have access to that capital,” she was quoted as saying.

Actually, only a fraction of investor funds were used for trading, the agency said. A majority was used to make payments to existing investors and to pay commissions to promoters, the complaint says.

Six of those promoters also are accused in the complaint. They are Martin Zizi of Kennesaw, Georgia; Dapilinu Dunbar of Miami; James Corbett of Mastic Beach, New York; Corrie Sampson of Fairburn, Georgia; John Garofano of Brooksville, Florida, and Marsha Hadley of Murrietta, California.

Because the complaint was filed so recently, no defense attorneys are yet listed in the case.

The release quotes Eric Werner, director of the SEC’s Fort Worth (Texas) Regional office, as saying: “NovaTech and the Petions caused untold losses to tens of thousands of victims around the world. As we allege, multilevel marketing schemes of this size require promoters to fuel them, and today’s action demonstrates that we will hold accountable not just the principal architects of these massive schemes, but also promoters who spread their fraud by unlawfully soliciting victims.”

The complaint states that the Petions, before forming NovaTech, became the top promoters for another multilevel marketing “scheme” called AWS Mining PTY Ltd. But that operation collapsed, the SEC said, after the Texas State Securities Board accused the company of violating Texas securities laws in a number of ways, including making false and misleading statements to investors and recruiting unregistered agents to sell them.

The Petions pivoted to creating and running their own crypto scheme called NovaTech, the SEC said, “which Cynthia Petion told prospective investors was created as a way for former AWS investors to recoup losses suffered when AWS collapsed.”

Cynthia Petion served as CEO and Eddy Petion serves as chief operating officer of the operation, which marketed itself to investors online and through social media, including Facebook, Instagram, Telegram and WhatsApp, the complaint states. Investors, it adds, were invited to fund their accounts with crypto assets worth a minimum of $99.

Solicitations employed religious overtones, including Cynthia Petion branding herself as “The Reverend CEO” and describing her founding of NovaTech as “God’s vision,” the complaint states.

The SEC reported that investors began experiencing delays in accessing their crypto assets from NovaTech by October 2022, which the company blamed on technical delays. Around the same time, the company came under scrutiny from regulators in the United States and Canada.

By February 2023, the company announced a 60-day “temporary freeze” on investor withdrawals, and by May it halted all U.S. operations and disabled its website, preventing investors from making further withdrawals, the complaint says.

According to the complaint, the small amount of investor proceeds that actually were traded in the crypto market lost $18 million, and the software that reportedly showed investors the results of their trading activity was operated manually by Cynthia Petion and was not connected to any actual trading system.

Meanwhile, Cynthia Petion transferred at least $5.8 million in crypto assets from NovaTech into accounts or wallets owned by her and Eddy Petion, and transferred another $35.2 million from crypto account wallets into accounts or wallets owned and/or controlled by Eddy Petion, the SEC claimed.

The complaint accuses the Petions and NovaTech of numerous offenses, including violations of federal securities and exchange acts for marketing unregistered investments.

The SEC seeks final judgments permanently barring the defendants from further violations. It also seeks a court ruling ordering NovaTech, the Petions and the promoter defendants to disgorge “ill-gotten gains” from the enterprise, and to pay interest and penalties.

Zizi has agreed to partially settle the complaint by consenting to a $100,000 civil penalty and agreeing not to further violate securities and exchange laws. Further penalties will be determined later, the SEC said.

Ron Hurtibise covers business and consumer issues for the South Florida Sun Sentinel. He can be reached by phone at 954-356-4071, on Twitter @ronhurtibise or by email at rhurtibise@sunsentinel.com.

UPSIDE Foods, Inc., contends, in part, that the law violates a constitutional prohibition on favoring in-state businesses over out-of-state competitors.

“We’re not looking to replace conventional meat, which will always have a place on our tables,” Uma Valeti, a cardiologist who founded UPSIDE in 2015, said during a conference call Tuesday with reporters. “We want to give consumers a choice, a choice so they can eat cultivated meat or conventional meat, any choice they can make in the future to keep up with the demand for meat that will double by 2050.”

The lawsuit, filed in the federal Northern District of Florida, names as defendants state Agriculture Commissioner Wilton Simpson, Attorney General Ashley Moody and four state attorneys. Simpson, a key supporter of the law, called the lawsuit “ridiculous” and said “lab-grown meat is not proven to be safe enough for consumers.”

“Food security is a matter of national security, and our farmers are the first line of defense,” Simpson said in a statement. “As Florida’s commissioner of agriculture, I will fight every day to protect a safe, affordable, and abundant food supply. States are the laboratory of democracy, and Florida has the right to not be a corporate guinea pig. Leave the Frankenmeat experiment to California.”

The Legislature this year approved the ban as part of a broader Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services bill (SB 1084), which Gov. Ron DeSantis signed on May 1. The lawsuit said Florida became the first state to ban the manufacture, distribution and sale of cultivated meat.

“In doing so, Florida did not cite concerns that cultivated meat is less healthy or safe than conventional meat,” said the lawsuit, filed by attorneys from the Institute for Justice legal organization. “Instead, Governor DeSantis announced that Florida was ‘fighting back’ against the ‘authoritarian goals’ of the ‘global elite,’ who he alleged would force consumers to eat cultivated meat. The governor also announced that the law was part of his administration’s ‘focus on investing in our local farmers and ranchers’ and an effort to ‘save our beef.’”

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the U.S. Department of Agriculture last year approved UPSIDE to manufacture and sell its products. Since then, the company has distributed cultivated chicken products, an alternative to plant-based meat alternatives, at restaurants and tasting events across the nation, including in Florida.

“Laws like this in Florida will absolutely make sure that this innovation will go outside the United States and make it very challenging for us to have food safety and food security in the future,” Valeti said.

Paul Sherman, an Institute for Justice senior attorney, said a motion for a preliminary injunction is pending. If approved, a preliminary injunction could allow UPSIDE to sell products in Florida while the lawsuit moves forward.

“The states simply do not have the power to wall themselves off from products that have been approved by the USDA and the FDA,” Sherman said, referring to the federal agencies. “And if consumers don’t like the idea of cultivated meat, there’s a simple solution. They don’t have to eat it. But they can’t make that decision for other consumers.”

The other defendants in the lawsuit are Jack Campbell, the state attorney in the 2nd Judicial Circuit, which includes Leon and surrounding counties; Bruce Bartlett, the state attorney in the 6th Judicial Circuit, which is made up of Pinellas and Pasco counties; Andrew Bain, the state attorney in the 9th Judicial Circuit, which is made of up Orange and Osceola counties; and Katherine Fernandez Rundle, the state attorney in the 11th Judicial Circuit in Miami-Dade County. They are defendants because they would be expected to enforce the law.

The law, in part, makes it a second-degree misdemeanor to sell or manufacture cultivated meat. The manufacturing process includes taking a small number of cultured cells from animals and growing them in controlled settings to make food.

The lawsuit contends Florida’s ban violates the Supremacy Clause in the U.S. Constitution by pre-empting federal laws regulating meat and poultry products and violates what is known as the “dormant” Commerce Clause by insulating Florida agriculture from out-of-state competition.

For example, the lawsuit pointed to March comments by House bill sponsor Rep. Danny Alvarez, a Hillsborough County Republican who said, “If you believe that we are doing this because we know that Florida’s agriculture can hold us down and provides plenty of safe, quality beef and agricultural products — you are absolutely correct.”

Alabama followed Florida in approving a similar law, which doesn’t go into effect until Oct. 1. Similar bans have been proposed in states including Kentucky, Iowa, Pennsylvania and Texas.

UPSIDE, which would like to distribute its poultry products at Miami Beach’s Art Basel event in December and the 2025 South Beach Food and Wine Festival, contends Florida’s ban has affected the company’s revenue, promotional opportunities and reputation.

DeSantis traveled to rural Hardee County in May to sign the measure with members of the cattle industry on hand. While behind a podium that featured a sign saying, “Save Our Beef,” DeSantis said the law would protect against “an ideological agenda that wants to finger agriculture as the problem.”

DeSantis also called the products “fake meat” and said Florida was pushing “back against the global elite’s plan to force the world to eat meat grown in a petri dish or bugs to achieve their authoritarian goals.”

The law doesn’t prohibit cultivated-meat research because of concerns that such a ban could affect Florida’s space industry, which is looking at cultivated meats for long-term space journeys.

If you’ve lost track of how many people in your orbit have recently posted pictures of themselves at a Formula One race or Taylor Swift concert, chances are you’re not alone. According to new research from Collinson International Ltd., which owns Priority Pass and LoungeKey airport lounges around the world, sports and music tourism are growing at unprecedented rates and are forecast to represent a $1.5 trillion industry by 2032.

Sports tourism represents the overwhelming majority of that figure. Valued at $564.7 billion in 2023, it’s expected to skyrocket to $1.33 trillion in the next eight years. Music tourism, meanwhile, is projected to contribute an additional $13.8 billion, more than doubling its current valuation of $6.6 billion.

For the purposes of its report, published on July 29, Collinson defined travelers as anyone who flew to an event, whether internationally or within their own country. Of 8,537 surveyed travelers from 17 countries, more than four in five (83%) have flown to a sporting event while 71% have boarded a plane for a concert in the past three years, or plan to in the next 12 months.

Collinson used those results to model how the industry has expanded and may continue to do so — assuming linear growth in spite of history-making events such as Swift’s Eras Tour or the first Summer Olympics in eight years to allow in-person spectators, which are currently underway in Paris.

“People are placing high value on experiences over objects,” says Christopher Ross, president of Collinson International EMEA. “If you are going to a sports or music event, the experience does not just start when you walk into the stadium. It’s the planning, travel itself and excitement.”

About 83% of people traveling for events are heading to soccer matches, basketball games, the Olympics, F1 races or tennis tournaments — the five most popular sporting events in descending order. In a world where streaming networks have created easily accessible pathways to fandom, Ross says, “the ability to become a global fan has become much more of a reality.”

Soccer captured 69% of the survey’s sportsgoers, who said they’d recently traveled to a live match or had plans to do so in the next year. That includes those who were among the more than 1 million fans in Qatar for the 2022 FIFA World Cup but not those who plan to attend the next World Cup, in 2026.

Formula One, meanwhile, has been surging in popularity with younger generations ever since Netflix Inc. premiered its Drive to Survive docuseries, in 2019; a full 30% of F1 fans attributed their interest in the sport to the show. In 2023 the average race weekend had more than 270,000 in-person spectators, up from 195,000 in 2019.

It’s not just that more people are interested in the sport; ticket prices are also on the rise. Tickets for races in the U.K. this summer have reached £600 ($765) for prime “grandstand” seats, with general admission often costing more than £400 per person — up from about £300 just two years ago — prompting British driver Lewis Hamilton to publicly criticize the rising price tag.

To Ross’ point, those tickets are just one aspect of the sports tourism economy, which also includes hotel stays, restaurant meals, taxi rides, merchandise and other expenses. Collinson data show that 77% of travelers arrive one or two days before a concert or competition, and some 80% will stay one to three days after. Sports tourists spend the most, with 51% exceeding $500 per trip per person on flights and other expenses, not including the event tickets.

Take Las Vegas, which hosted an F1 Grand Prix race in November 2023. The event brought $1.5 billion in economic impact to the city, 50% more than the Super Bowl would raise just three months later. “It’s a younger demographic,” Ross says of F1 fans, who are among the most likely to add extra expenses to their sports trips. “It seems counterintuitive, because you would think they have less disposable income,” Ross adds.

That doesn’t diminish the effect of other events. The Paris Summer Olympics, while less of an international tourism juggernaut than expected, are still attracting enough tourists to send Airbnb bookings up 133% from the same period last year. International tourists have been expected to pay around $5,000 for hotel stays, airfare and event ticket costs. And sports fans, Collinson says, are willing to spend in airports too — which is of note to the company. Over half of sports fans, its research shows, spend $500 or more in the airport alone; those aged 25-34 are the highest spenders, with a third of them spending in excess of $1,000 while waiting for their flights to board.

On the music front, Collinson cites major events including Rock in Rio, Coachella and Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour as tourism drivers. But the latter is an unprecedented anomaly. Swift fans have driven 45% year-over-year increases in airfare sales to destinations such as Milan and Munich during concert dates, according to United Airlines Holdings Inc., and the tour resulted in larger booking spikes for Paris’ top-tier hotels than even the Olympics.

For those in the hospitality industry, the question now is how to cash in on the trend. Marriott International used the Eras Tour as an opportunity to earn new members for its Bonvoy loyalty program, promising free tickets via raffles. By contrast Auberge Resorts Collection, which has 27 five-star resorts from Italy to Hawaii, is teaming with Mercedes-Benz to create a new concert series starting in October, with live performances so far featuring Kate Hudson, Maren Morris and LeAnn Rimes. At Tennessee’s iconic Blackberry Farm Resort, which has its own concert hall on-site, the events lineup includes performances by Kacey Musgraves, Emmylou and Friends, and Noah Kahan in the coming months, with general access tickets typically starting at $1,000 per person.

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