Real Estate

Wait, Sign What?

We’re back in Florida for our fourth year snowbirding from cold Minnesota. We toured models at the giant Latitudes Margaritaville/ Daytona Beach development yesterday.

A weird thing happened when they asked us where we were from. Being from Minnesota, we had to sign an “Out-Of-State Non-Solicitation Affidavit” to acknowledge that we arrived “voluntarily”.

What? Yes, apparently it is against Minnesota law for a Florida developer to encourage (solicit) you from moving to Florida!

We needed to sign this note saying we didn’t arrive in response to any “advertising or communications” delivered within our home state. Yes – they are creating a roadblock fir people who might want to move out of the state – by censoring real estate ads from people in other states.

It’s not just MN, either. They had a map of which states require it. I wish I had taken a picture of it, but I didn’t. Most of the blue/high-tax states seemed to be the ones requiring this … California, Illinois, and NY among them.

I have to say, I was shocked to see this. I know real estate is a highly regulated field with lots of licenses and requirements. Still, it seems to me that blue states have been losing the “net domestic migration” game for some time (recent chart below) and might be trying to simply squelch ads & communications from one state to another.

You might think that MrFireStation is getting too political here, but trust me when I say I’m as politically independent as you get. I’m simply frustrated to think that my state is blocking me from hearing a relevant message! It just seems positively un-American!

Have you encountered this regulation before?

Image Credit: (c) MrFireStation.com

14 thoughts on “Wait, Sign What?”

  1. Wow. I mean….I can’t say I’m not surprised given the level of governmental overreach we’ve seen over the last few years, but still. Wow.

    I wonder if this is even legal? I thought our Constitution restricts states from doing things that impact “interstate commerce,” and it seems like this would fit the bill. Also seems like a pretty clear First Amendment free speech violation.

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    1. A friend that is in real estate suggested this “protects” agents that are licensed in MN from competing with agents / developers from other states. Businesses love to fence out competition – government is happy to help them.

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  2. I just finished a book by Yeonmi Park titled “In Order to Live”. The book describes her life in North Korea up to age 13 until she escaped by being human trafficked into China, and was finally helped by missionaries to escape into South Korea at age 16. She described life in North Korea as always being on the brink of starvation. Yet, the North Korean Communist Government propagandized people by trying to block access to outside information and media. This is so they could control the information flow. North Korea’s information flow was that people were fortunate to live in North Korea because they were much better off than those who live in greedy Capitalist countries.

    I am shocked that Leftist States such as Minnesota and The Peoples’ Republic of California are attempting to block people’s access to information. Sure sounds like a 1st Amendment Violation to me. Think about it, instead of competing for high income high tax payers by providing better services to the people who pay the majority of their taxes, these states are attempting to block the flow of information that their money will receive better treatment in another state.

    When visiting the Reagan Presidential Library recently, a soldier standing next to me pointed out that the states the Republicans won, which were all except Minnesota by the way, were Blue. Sometime afterwards, the lame stream media made Republicans Red and the Demonrats Blue. My theory and you will not find an exact definitive answer is that the Demonrats were trying to rebrand themselves away from being associated with Communism whose color is clearly Red despite drifting leftward.

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    1. Yeah – that whole red/blue state confused me for a long time. The politicians even seem to wear neckties representing their “team”. Minnesota has gone Democrat in Presidential elections all the way back to Nixon. It’s the longest US streak of any state.

      The Twitter files have been showing how involved government has gotten in the flow of information. It’s been nonstop – all in the name of “protecting us from misinformation”. They are the central source of misinformation, of course!

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      1. Very concerning that workers in government agencies including the IRS and FBI think it is okay to do their jobs in a partisan manner. The Twitter files are shining a light on this. Hopefully, allow this information to surface and be exposed to sunlight will disinfect these agencies that have strayed from their charter.

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      2. Government is filled with a good number of self-proclaimed political activists. It doesn’t take many.

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  3. I’d not heard of this. Not surprised. Censorship and restraint of free trade are hallmarks of big government, state and local. You are a cash cow. They want cows to remain in their pasture. Next step will be legislating “exit taxes” on income, wealth and assets. If you leave, they will make it hurt. Caveat Cattle!

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    1. The People’s Republic of California tried to tax 401-K distributions of those who had moved out of state, with the argument that the funds that funded it were earned in state and represented missed state income taxes. A much more Liberal Supreme Court than today’s ruled against it. There are rumblings about the People’s Republic looking at wealth taxes and having a ten year look back period.

      Ironically the US government has exit taxes on their cash cows. This was put in place by Abraham Lincoln during the American Civil War. It wasn’t really enforced until Jimmy Carter was President. The US is one of the few industrialized countries in the world that taxes its Ex-pat citizens.

      The government seems to see the cash cows as their property.

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    2. Yes – those “exit taxes” being discussed in California have also been discussed in Minnesota. Our “progressive overlords” aren’t as progressive as they pretend to be.

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      1. The name of the game is nailing a small percentage of the people for the majority of the taxes, while promising something for nothing to everyone else. The problem with this model is that us cash cows may just pick up our checkbooks and move to somewhere else. Looking forward to your trip repot to Latitude Margaritaville. I have read that the residents are super friendly and nice.

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      2. Agree – Your first sentence describes politics perfectly. We visited Latitude Margaritaville a few days ago. Saw a very nice model home, but probably not the development for us. It actually was the first 55+ community that we’ve ever toured. I’ll post more reactions.

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  4. A long time ago, in another decade, many Minnesotans did get sold fraudulent properties down in the sunny state of Florida. This scam was so successful that many fell prey to it, especially elderly. The good state of Minnesota passed a law to help protect from this. I don’t recall the decade, but do remembers photos of gorgeous neighborhoods, that were never built — were never intended to be built. I’m hoping this is why you had to sign that form.

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    1. I’m not a big fan of government pretending to protect people at the expense of their freedom!

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