General question, and yeah, the guy is a dick. Cite: he negotiated (via email) a sale price on the house of a elderly couple who were moving permanently to Mexico. Knowing full well that the husband is dying of ALS, he then tried to lowball the offer price when she flew up here to sign the papers, figuring that she would just unload it so she could get back to her husband, who needs full time care. Luckily, she’s a pretty tough customer.
He’s done other dickish things that I won’t go into, but I probably could have left off the descriptive when posing my question.
There are tons of marijuana retail and medical places all over the city. Someone in city government proposed a “green mall” downtown so that tourists will flock here. I don’t doubt that it will gain traction, this being a place where government doesn’t really think things through. But I’m very curious about any fallout from having all this cash lying about, and legal problems trying to clean it up so that the banks will take it. We’re talking millions of dollars, which is a lot to stuff in your mattress.
Slight hijack, but related topic: States that allow recreational marijuana tax the sales. How are the taxes paid if dispensaries can’t use a bank? Does the state just accept stacks of cash?
Yes, although apparently in Washington 75% of marijuana businesses find another way:
This might be one of the few situations where cash being legal tender is relevant to anybody. I don’t think the state could actually refuse to accept cash payments for tax bills.
It’s not so cut-and-dryas that. There are many state chartered banks and credit unions whose primary oversight comes from State banking regulators. The only Federal regulation of these institutions comes from the Federal Reserve Bank if the bank is a Federal Reserve System member or the FDIC if not. Neither of those agencies has nearly the muscle of the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), which monitors nationally chartered institutions.
Even with a minimum of Federal oversight, however, state chartered institutions may well be reluctant to deal with cannabis companies.
Of course not. You hand the money to the seller at a closing. Some large portion of it is usually taken by a mortgage company. Perhaps you’ve forgotten, cash is money, just as good as checks and credit cards
Or will intensify when the FRB/FDIC decide to play hard ball. I’m not sure which way the Feds will go on this one. neither are the banks, and therein lies the rub. No one wants to be the test case.
Cash draws a whole lot more scrutiny, though. Financial institutions, brokerages, car dealers and real estate companies, among others, are required to report to the Federal government any transaction that includes $10,000 or more in cash - or any combination of transactions within “X” timeframe that equal $10k cash, or any transaction for any amount of cash that that the company deems ‘suspicious’.
Right. I bought a house without a loan, and no banks or HUDs were involved. Of course, any home with an existing mortgage would involve a bank, but only one getting repaid, not one loaning money.
The scrutiny over income sources has nothing to do with the HUD anyway. It has to do with the loan underwriter making sure they’ll get repaid. I recently bought a house and due to a few things that the loan officer said “no problem” the underwriter scrutinized me like I’d never seen in 5 earlier home purchases. I was about to say “Never mind, this is too much hassle, I’ll find another bank” when the approval finally came.
Believe me, banks are two steps ahead of you. If something would bring in tons of money after compliance costs and potential regulatory fines, they’d already be doing it. But honestly, they don’t even want your deposits right now anyway, so why bother?
