In the News: HOME and Wells Fargo begin effort to Increase African-American home ownership

Article Originally Appears in Virginia Business

Housing Opportunities Made Equal of Virginia Inc. (HOME) and Wells Fargo Bank announced on Monday a partnership agreement aimed at increasing homeownership opportunities and expanding mortgage lending for African-Americans and African-American neighborhoods in the Richmond area.

The partnership provides for more than $4 million in financial support to HOME. It was described as one of the largest agreements ever between a financial institution and an individual fair housing organization.

“Differences in homeownership between African-Americans and white Americans are the foundation of wealth inequality in Richmond and across the country, and HOME is committed to rooting out these differences in opportunity to reduce racial gaps and inequities and build a strong middle class,” Heather Crislip, president and CEO of HOME, said in a statement.

Brad Blackwell, a Wells Fargo executive vice president who is head of housing policy and homeownership growth strategies, noted that Wells Fargo announced a nationwide $60 billion lending commitment earlier this year to create at least 250,000 African American homeowners by 2027. “Our efforts with HOME in the Richmond area will be a perfect complement to the broader national commitment and establish the foundation for what we expect will be a long and substantive relationship with one of the country’s pre-eminent fair housing organizations,” he said in a statement.

The agreement provides HOME with $3 million over four years to enhance and support its foreclosure prevention, financial literacy, and homebuyer education and counseling programs.

The Wells Fargo investments are designed to allow HOME to expand access to credit in Richmond’s underserved communities and make homeownership available to qualified, first-time homebuyers throughout the region.

Wells Fargo also will provide $1 million over four years in down payment assistance to low- and moderate-income, first-time homebuyers in the region. As part of the partnership, HOME will work with Wells Fargo to conduct fair-housing compliance testing at Wells Fargo branches and provide other monitoring and training assistance.

HOME had investigated regional mortgage lending activity and brought concerns it had to government regulators and Wells Fargo about underserved minority communities in the Richmond area. “As the largest lender in our region, we believe this initiative by Wells will set the standard for other lenders to follow,” Crislip said.

Amherst Historic Mill will be turned into a hydro-powered brewery

AMHERST COUNTY, Va. (WDBJ7) The 200-year-old Historic Mill of Amherst Milling Company is getting new owners and a face-lift.

Waukeshaw Development, a Petersburg-based company, purchased the Mill and will re purpose it into the country's first hydro-powered brewery, making use of the Mill's old water wheel.

The Mill has been owned by the same family since 1941, providing Amherst County residents with many products including hay, feed, and flour.

The development company's president, Dave McCormack, plans to keep the building preserved while bringing in new elements. In addition to the brewery, he hopes to maintain the Mill's upper level to give tours.

"This wonderful mill might just go out of existence, period," said Victoria Hanson, Executive Director of the Amherst Economic Development Authority. "And instead, we're going to have this new creative idea that's going to bring a lot of people to Amherst County."

The mill will be closing July 6th, and the family will be holding auctions to sell the rest of the inventory. The brewery hopes to be open by this time next year.

RP "Share This Consumer Alert: Beware of Wire Fraud Schemes When Buying a Home"

June 22, 2017

Buying a home is an exciting time. You’ve saved, found the perfect home and planned the move. Now, the closing day for your home is just around the corner.

The American Land Title Association wants to make sure your home purchase doesn’t get derailed by a dangerous threat that could keep you from getting the keys, painting walls and decorating. Criminals have stolen money meant for the purchase of homes through malicious wire fraud schemes targeting consumers across the country.

Criminals begin the wire fraud process way before the attempted theft occurs. Most often, they begin with a common social engineering technique called phishing. This can take the form of email messages, website forms or phone calls to fraudulently obtain private information. Through seemingly harmless communication, criminals trick users into inputting their information or clicking a link that allows hackers to steal login and password information.

Once hackers gain access to an email account, they will monitor messages to find someone in the process of buying a home. Hacks can come from various parties involved in a transaction, including real estate agents, title companies, attorneys or consumers. Criminals then use the stolen information to email fraudulent wire transfer instructions disguised to appear as if they came from a professional you’re working with to purchase a home. If you receive an email with wiring instructions, don’t respond. Email is not a secure way to send financial information. If you take the bait, your money could be gone in minutes.

“Attorneys and title companies have taken many steps to combat this problem, such as putting consumer warnings on websites and communications, securing email communications and sending notices to consumers and real estate agents informing them of the scams,” said Michelle Korsmo, chief executive officer of the American Land Title Association. “But the criminals are smart and constantly alter their tactics to steal information and money.

“Everyone involved in real estate transactions must also be aware of the potential losses as criminals phish for information and stalk home closings, hoping someone makes a mistake. If someone does mess up, it could cost your savings or retirement.”

Here are five tips to protect against wire fraud:

1. Call, don’t email: Confirm all wiring instructions by phone before transferring funds. Use the phone number from the title company’s website or a business card.
2. Be suspicious: It’s not common for title companies to change wiring instructions and payment info
3. Confirm it all: Ask your bank to confirm not just the account number but also the name on the account before sending a wire.
4. Verify immediately: You should call the title company or real estate agent to validate that the funds were received. Detecting that you sent the money to the wrong account within 24 hours gives you the best chance of recovering your money.
5. Forward, don’t reply: When responding to an email, hit forward instead of reply and then start typing in the person’s email address. Criminals use email address that are very similar to the real one for a company. By typing in email addresses you will make it easier to discover if a fraudster is after you.  

More Homebuyer Tips & Information

The American Land Title Association helps educate homebuyers about title insurance so they can protect your property rights. Check out www.homeclosing101.org to learn more about title insurance and the home closing process.

Contact ALTA at 202-296-3671 or communications@alta.org.

Misconceptions about purchasing a home that is over $1 million

In addition to residential real estate, Safe Harbor Title Company manages multimillion dollar commercial real estate transactions on a daily basis.  Our expertise handling these transactions combined with our regulatory knowledge, makes Safe Harbor Title uniquely qualified to provide settlement and title services for luxury home buyers.

There is a misconception that if you are purchasing a home that is over $1 million you need a lawyer.  There are two reasons why that is not necessarily true: 1. Residential mortgage lending, even jumbo loans, is highly regulated by the federal government.  The loan documents “are what they are,” and cannot be negotiated.  Additionally, the terms of the contract are typically worked out among the Realtors and it is rare for contractual issues to arise.  2. As mentioned, we handled transactions with lots of zero’s on the end every day.  We understand that in these situations we may be receiving money from investment accounts (sometimes multiple), as well as from Seller’s and loan proceeds.

Recently we provided settlement and title services for a home in the West End that sold on May 1st for $1.9 million, one of the highest transactions for Residential Real Estate in the month of May. We suggest that you take a moment to read this article from Richmond Biz Sense about that property, it's a pretty great read!

June 2017 Hard Hat Happy Hour - Richmond Biz Sense

We love compliments!

We got an awesome letter from a client who was very pleased with Candace's work. She's an awesome worker and an integral part of our team. These folks are out of Seattle, WA so you can imagine how thrilled we were when we got this in the mail. 

Looking forward to doing more businesses with Marcus & Millichap in the future! 

Double vision: Chesterfield craft brewery to open second spot in city

Original article appears in WVTR

Posted 6:32 pm, May 4, 2017, by Alix Bryan, Updated at 06:46PM, May 4, 2017

Siblings Brittany and Brad Cooper, co-owners of Steam Bell and Canon & Draw. (Mike Platania of Richmond Biz Sense)

RICHMOND, Va. – The Cooper family has double vision; they founded Steam Bell Beer Works in Chesterfield in 2016 and just announced plans to open craft brewery Canon & Draw later this year in the Fan District.

Brad Cooper, who opened Steam Bell after losing his mining job, said they happened along the location at 1529 Main Street, near the Virginia Commonwealth University Monroe Park Campus, during a search around the area which also included Brookland Park and South Richmond neighborhoods.

“We fell in love with it,” he said of the 5,000-square-feet building that has sat empty for years – downstairs, at least.

Blackwood Development has been slowly using historic tax credits to renovate the former Eclipse Linen Service and Laundromat. There are 16 apartments upstairs, above the commercial space.  Canon & Draw will occupy two retail spaces in the recently renovated building.  Nolen Blackwood said the renovation of the building cost around $3 million, reported RichmondBizSense. There are 16 apartments above the commercial space, ranging from 550 to 950 square feet, according to the BizSense report. 

Canon & Draw will have a partition dividing the tasting room area for private events. (Mike Platania of RichmondBizSense)

Things continue to take shape for a family who name is rooted in the craft itself. Traditionally, a cooper’s work included assembly of casks and barrels. A steam bell is used to cover a barrel and helps ply the wood into shape.

Building upon that branding, canon is French for barrel (though related more to artillery), and a drawknife is used to shape hoops for barrels. And when the soon to be released craft soda line is released, it will be called Trussing Craft Fizz, as a nod to the initiation ceremony that all cooper apprentices go through to become a journeyman.

The sodas will be the only product sold at both places; otherwise, they will be completely separate entities. The farmhouse ale focus of Steam Bell will “hop forward” on this side of the river.

“I’m looking at doing some lagers as well,” Brad said.

“Canon & Draw is an opportunity for us to create a brand that is a perfect fit for the area,” said Brittany Cooper, who moved back to Richmond to help her brother with the marketing side of Steam Bell, and who stayed on as a partner while continuing to work remotely at her IBM gig in New York.

“It’s really a completely a different concept,” she added. “It will be higher end, with leather couches and darker wood – cool, eclectic, old Southern atmosphere.”

Canon & Draw or C/D will be open six days a week and have over 10 taps for smaller batch, experimental varieties. Cooper will use a seven-barrel brewing system, and seven-barrel fermenters.

“We are really excited and already working on pilot batches,” he said.

The opening is set for late summer or fall of this year, though the lease details are still being finalized.

The specific area is surprisingly void of any craft breweries, though plenty of bars and restaurants are nearby. Garden Grove in Carytown is over 1.5 miles away, and in the other direction, Triple Crossing is over a mile away on Foushee.

Steam Bell crew. Left to Right.
Bryan Hicks, Maggie Pearson, Jacob Morgan, Connie Cooper, Brittany Cooper, Jody Brunner, Brad Cooper, Joey Johnson, Jeff Stoker and Tom Cooper

There are close to 30 breweries in the Richmond-metro, with more opening this year, but the Coopers see room for more, and aren’t worried about the brewery boom going flat.

“I believe there is, especially with the rise of the tasting room,” Brittany said. “But with distribution, there is only so much shelf space.”

The local bottles and cans still duke it out for space against the regional and national beers in a distribution scenario, Brad pointed out.

“The distribution market is really competitive,” he said.

Brittany added that the business is “market driven” and that you’ve “got to win a customer.”

Something the Coopers seem to have accomplished in Chesterfield. Right out of the gate, Brad said he hit the goal he had proposed in his original business plan.

“I had this dream of what we would start with and then scale it up over years,” he said.

Canon & Draw is near VCU, in the 1500 block of W. Main Street.

“It’s very humbling to get that level of support from people,” his sister added.

“We were getting a lot of support, so we put our heads down — we knew what we wanted to do the next few years — and went aggressively for it,” Brittany said. “In the first six months we released 40 different beers — we never dreamed we would do that.”

In late January 2018, the Coopers will take over space next door and use the extra 3,000-square-feet as a bottling line for beer and Trussing Craft Fizz. Look for flagship flavors like mint/tea and ginger/lime, along with seasonal varieties like apple/sage and blueberry/basil.

Meanwhile, the one-year party to celebrate the success found on Oak Lake Boulevard is June 3. The anniversary beer, a Brett Rye Saison, is currently fermenting in white wine barrels and awaiting it commemorative 500ML bottles – their first bottle release.

“I still have to order the bottles,” Brad said, as he laughed.

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Canon and Draw
1529 W. Main Street, Richmond
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Steam Bell Beer Works
1717 Oak Lake Blvd, Midlothian
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Map of Richmond-metro breweries