New Oklahoma Law Aims To Protect Buyers From Unfair Real Estate Agreements

A new law went into effect in Oklahoma at the beginning of November that lawmakers say will protect consumers from predatory real estate agreements.

Joy McGill, the State Director for Advocacy for AARP, explained that the organization fought House Bill 3318 after hearing about unfair real estate service agreements popping up across the country.

"Earlier this year, we began hearing about these unfair real estate service agreements that were starting to pop up across the country, and what was happening is real estate brokers were enticing people to sign on to unfair real estate agreements that were up to terms up to 40 years long, which is crazy, if you think about it," McGill said.

She noted that these long-term agreements often included high penalties for breaking the contract, and in some cases, even liens being placed on people's homes.

"And what was happening is that they were enticing people with an advancing cash and preying on individuals who are low income, oftentimes elderly individuals and people who maybe were short on cash and would take advantage of that cash advance," McGill said.

Oklahoma was the 20th state in the country to pass this type of legislation, which McGill said was important to get ahead of these predatory practices before they started occurring in the state.

"We had not heard of that specific instance happening in Oklahoma while it was happening in states all around us. And so we took the opportunity to reach out to Representative Steve Bashore from Miami and Representative Coleman from Ponca City, and they were bill authors and took that on," McGill explained.

The new law received strong bipartisan support in the Oklahoma legislature, and McGill said AARP is proud to have played a role in getting it passed to protect Oklahomans.