Category Archives: Real Estate

Real Estate Agents: New Housing rules aimed at saving widowers from foreclosure

Posted on August 7, 2016 | Leave a comment

Consumer advocates say widows and widowers nationwide are falling into a bureaucratic black hole.

Although servicers will generally accept their loan payments, surviving homeowners who are not on the mortgage face significant resistance when they seek loan modifications once they’ve fallen behind on payments — often because they’ve lost their spouse’s income.

“They are being told they can’t do anything to prevent foreclosure,” said Charles Evans, an attorney with pro bono law firm Public Counsel, which is assisting Sequeira.

The problem is growing, advocates say, and has caught the attention of federal regulators and state lawmakers.

In just the first three months of this year, the Housing and Economic Rights Advocates, a statewide advocacy group, had handled 16 such cases.

In a 2013 survey, conducted by the California Reinvestment Coalition, 44% of housing counselors said that servicers “always” or “almost always” declined to discuss loan modifications with widowed clients when they weren’t on the loan. Last year, housing counselors across the country surveyed by the National Housing Resource Center gave servicers a poor rating for communication with widows, widowers and others in similar circumstances.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is preparing to release regulations this summer that will assist widows and other so-called successors-in-interest. And the state Senate Judiciary Committee is set to vote Tuesday on a bill designed to give surviving spouses, domestic partners and children the same protections borrowers have in the Homeowner Bill of Rights, including the right to sue to stop a foreclosure or for economic damages after one occurs.

The bill, SB-1150, by Sen. Mark Leno (D-San Francisco) and Sen. Cathleen Galgiani (D-Stockton), would prevent servicers from moving forward with a foreclosure before requesting “reasonable” documentation of the borrower’s death and the identity of the survivor.

Dual tracking would be barred and servicers would be required to give accurate information about mortgage assumptions and foreclosure-prevention programs, while appointing a single point of contact for survivors.

Although the bill doesn’t require a modification be given — applicants must be able to show they can afford even the smaller loan payment — the intent is to give survivors a fair shot at getting one. It would, for example, allow delinquent survivors to get a loan modification without first getting current on payments.

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Emotional clutter can be biggest obstacle to home sale

Posted on August 6, 2016 | Leave a comment

It’s

not the cracked tile in the kitchen or yesteryear’s fixtures in the bathroom. Agents say that the biggest obstacle to a sale is often the seller.

In short, sellers have to get out of the way, literally and figuratively.

That’s no easy task, because people are often still living in a home that’s now on the market. There’s an emotional attachment that needs to be unraveled even when people think they are thoroughly prepared to sell.

Don’t just declutter – depersonalize

Lynne Hart Herrera of Keller Williams Realty said, “The way a buyer looks at a home is very different than the way a visitor looks at your home. Think about a hotel. It looks really simple, clean, and there’s no personal or religious items. Some people like taxidermy, but if a buyer walks into a home they might only see dead animals on the walls and now that’s what they remember.”

Rajeev Tailor of Portica Real Estate said, “Personalisation is a barrier to the buyer. They don’t see the great space and crown molding because they leave the property distracted by, ‘Oh, that’s the house with them in the photo with President Obama or whatever. They leave with the impression of what was in the house versus the impression of the house. You can’t have a successful sale, if someone can’t connect to the property.”

Wight, of Dielmann Sotheby’s International Realty, said, “It can feel sterile to remove all of your family photos, wedding photos and pare down to a simpler life, but I tell people to focus on their goal and keep mementos away.”

He said they have to imagine that they don’t live there anymore, and that extends to the kitchen. Depersonalising can relate to the smells from last night’s meal when a potential buyer is walking through. You don’t want them focusing on what you had for dinner, he said. “That doesn’t mean don’t cook, it just might mean you should use the barbecue outside not the stove” for dishes with a lingering odour.

How to spot a property lemon

Posted on August 1, 2016 | Leave a comment

So, you’re about to purchase a dream home (or have already), and it looks like a sound investment … but as the old adage goes, ‘buyer beware’! The first thing you should do is hire an expert to look through the property, but in Australia, many houses and apartments are sold without the purchaser having had the home inspected for structural damage or pest problems. In fact, 80 per cent of Australian property transactions take place without such checks. In all cases, I highly recommend having an independent, reputable and experienced inspector come and help you diagnose the problem and suggest remedies. But even still, it’s good to know what they will be looking for and to try to identify the problems yourself. Here are the top six structural issues that can affect a house, how to identify them and what to do about the problem.

1. Floor framing and stumping
In Australia, the majority of homes have been built on a ‘suspended floor’, generally timber framed, that is, up until the 1980s when concrete slabs became more common. A suspended floor generally consisted of timber stumps sunk into the ground, with timber bearers and joists crisscrossing the stumps, creating a stable platform for the flooring and remainder of the house.

THE PROBLEM: The timber stumps are susceptible to rotting from exposure to moisture and damage by timber pests like termites, sometimes known as white ants. The damage could be contained in one area of the floor, or it could affect a large portion of the house, giving the floor a slope in one direction. In extreme cases, the doors and windows no longer open or close properly due to movement in the frames brought about by stumping problems. Fortunately, modern suspended floors now use concrete stumps, but if you are purchasing an old home, there could be an issue with the frame.

WHAT TO LOOK FOR: As you walk through a house, the most common way to detect this problem is to feel for movement under your feet as you walk – a ‘springy’ floor suggests problems down below. You may also notice glasses or crockery rattling in the sideboard or flowers shaking on the table when you walk through the home. My favourite, though, is the ‘marble test’. Put a marble on the floor (assuming it’s not carpeted) and if it runs off in one direction, you have an uneven floor. This often indicates deterioration in the stumps or floor framing. Check other areas of the house as well.

NEXT STEPS: If you are uncertain about your flooring, it’s time to get an inspector in to do a thorough check for you. Look for an inspector who is independent – in other words, not someone who also has a vested interest in selling you a solution. Make sure you ask for a report that includes: the state of the sub-floor area; specific detail of any problems; and recommendations as to how to rectify the problem. Be prepared for some form of building work such as re-stumping.

read more at: http://www.domain.com.au/advice/spot-property-lemon/