Hassle

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Hassle/19″/dt1st/mark2nd

By SARA FISHER

Staff Reporter

Businesses on top of the bull market in residential real estate are having a wild ride.

For some firms, especially those specializing in back-office operations such as escrow or appraisal, it is a struggle to keep pace with demand. Overloaded companies across Los Angeles are working long hours and hiring extra employees to cope, and in some cases, sale closures have been delayed.

“I just had a house close a week late because the underwriters were backed up on paperwork,” said Sylvia Long, assistant manager at Coldwell Banker Jon Douglas Co.’s Brentwood office. “Mortgages can be the biggest hold up, and appraisers are overloaded so they may take more time in getting out (to a house). I’m telling my clients not to firm up dates with the movers, cleaners, painters and such until almost the last minute. It can get very frustrating.”

With home sales in Los Angeles County up 18.3 percent in February from the like period last year, and with the volume of mortgages and refinances 14 percent higher in 1997 than the year before, mortgage companies are feeling the heat.

“We’ve never had so much business we’re running at about 120 percent capacity,” said Tom Irwin, a spokesman for BankAmerica Mortgage in Santa Monica, a division of BankAmerica Corp. “The good news is that our loan officers have a tremendous amount of business. The downside is that we are really overwhelmed. I’m seeing employees get in at 6 a.m., stay until 10 p.m. and work weekends.”

Irwin added that his company has bulked up its staff since November, when the market first heated up, although he declined to specify how many people have been added.

“Good people are hard to find,” he said. “If you’re an experienced loan officer, you’re facing a strong job market right now.”

West Los Angeles-based Fred Sands Realtors has added over 50 back-office staff members in the last six months and is looking for more, says President and Chief Executive Fred Sands.

“This company is known for its back-office operations, and we geared up in anticipation of the boom,” Sands said.

Kathy Marshel, regional manager for Chase Manhattan Mortgage Corp., said her staff also is working long hours to keep up with the busiest months, in terms of mortgage volume, in the company’s history.

“We’ve been adding temp staff steadily because we are very, very, very busy,” Marshel said. “But everyone involved in real estate now is working at a frantic rate. Look at appraisers. They are really backed up, and it now can take a couple weeks to get them out to a house.”

Kelli Amundson, president of Remax Beach Cities Realty and Westside Properties, said she hears from her agents that appraisers have slowed down but it hasn’t resulted in any significant delays in closing deals.

“I am certainly hearing that there are delays out there in the market, from both the appraisers and the mortgage side,” Amundson said. “We expect the delays to hit at some point, but we have good relationships with all the companies we do business with, so hopefully they should be minimal.”

L.A. appraisers confirm their breakneck pace, and say that they are doing their best to turn around appraisal reports as quickly as possible.

Wendy Lipin, owner of Lipin & Associates, an appraisal company in Beverly Hills, works on weekends and up to 14 hours a day. However, she says she turns down jobs if she doesn’t think she can complete them by the proposed deadline, in order not to hold up the sales process.

“I have thought about hiring more appraisers since it’s been insane,” Lipin said. “Business has increased by at least 25 percent over the last six months. I haven’t had a break since November.”

Also running hard to keep up with the market are inspectors, who report on the condition of the house at the time of sale. Several inspection companies said that business has jumped in proportion to home sales.

“Business was slow for so long, but it has doubled for us over the last six months,” said Yvonne Gutierrez, an employee at L.A.-based Accurate Home Inspection Services Inc. “To keep up, our inspectors are working seven days a week. As long as we get enough advance notice, we can turn the inspection around at a good rate.”

In addition to the work overload at back-office operations, real estate agents are feeling the crunch. Fred Sands is actively looking for sales agents.

“For the first time in our company’s 29-year history, we held two seminars to encourage people to join the company,” Fred Sands said. “We’ve never done any recruitment before. Business may already be booming, but we expect summer to be even busier.”

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