RESPA's anti-kickback rule is one of the least understood and least policed rules in the mortgage, title and real estate industries. Many businesses bend the rule simply to stay competitive with businesses that flaunt the rule. HUD is increasing RESPA enforcement efforts every year. It is no longer statistically safe for settlement service providers to "do what everyone else is doing" based on the assumptions that most businesses are complying with the law, there is safety in numbers, and someone else who is acting worse will be caught, sued, or fined. Title underwriters learned this lesson the hard way in the past few years by paying well over a hundred million dollars in fines and court settlements for violations of state and federal anti-kickback laws. Settlement service businesses need to understand the law so that they can market their services properly and avoid legal conflicts.   

This course provides an analysis of RESPA’s anti-kickback rules (Sections 8 and 9 of RESPA), and describes various methods of establishing affinity relationships between a settlement service provider and a referral source that do not violate the prohibition against paying referral fees for settlement services.