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Buyer stuck with convicts next door

By Tara-Nicholle Nelson, Friday, October 9, 2009.

Q: I live in a gated community of upscale, luxury homes. I bought my house directly from the builder, brand-new about two years ago. Our homeowners association (HOA) is just getting up and running, as the development gets close to being sold out.

Recently, my neighbor discovered on the Web that a sex offender was registered as living in the house next door to me. We did some research with the county and found out that the house has been converted into something similar to a halfway house for convicted sex and other violent offenders! So, now there are 10 men living there who all have criminal records (it's a five-bedroom house). I'm retired, so I feel like I'm trapped behind the gates with these guys all day every day, plus there are kids in a lot of these houses, and I'm fearful something very bad might happen. more...

Homebuying for the faint of heart

By Tara-Nicholle Nelson, Thursday, October 8, 2009.

Q: I have been house-hunting for months, making lots of offers and getting outbid by all-cash investors. Finally, I found a house I really liked, and the seller accepted my offer. Right before my inspections, the seller got sued by a former owner of the property, and it tied the house up in litigation.

About a month later, the matter was cleared up and my transaction was back on. During that time, I drove by the place once or twice, and a little side window had been broken, and someone had dumped some debris in the backyard (the house is vacant).

Now I'm very nervous about moving forward with the deal. I still like the house a lot, but I'm going to have to put $20,000 down on it, and that's almost every cent I have. I'm very afraid of making a bad decision. What should I do? more...

Wider access denied for landlocked lot

By Tara-Nicholle Nelson, Wednesday, October 7, 2009.

In the case Stevens et al. v. Parker, a lot owner subdivided the lot into two, carving out a 10-foot-wide easement for the landlocked parcel across the other parcel to get to the public road. The easement was too narrow to meet municipal code requirements for emergency vehicle access, so the lot owner signed a document releasing the city from all liability for damages arising from the inability of emergency vehicles to access the lot, in order to obtain the city's approval for the subdivision. The lot owner sold both lots.

The owner of the non-landlocked lot (the Parkers) desired to fence their lot up to the edge of the easement. The easement holders (the Stevenses) filed suit, seeking to prohibit the fence and asking the court to declare ... more...

Common-sense guide to mortgages

By Tara-Nicholle Nelson, Tuesday, October 6, 2009.

Image courtesy of <a href="http://www.benbellabooks.com/bookstore/cart.php?m=product_detail&p=585" target=blank>Benbella Books</a>.

Mortgage brokerage owner Jason Biro is on a mission: a mission to help Americans save and protect their homes from the threats of foreclosure and the other disastrous financial and life consequences of predatory mortgages. In Biro's new book, "Saving Your American Dream: How to Secure a Safe Mortgage, Protect Your Home and Improve Your Financial Future," he launches a two-part campaign to save Americans' homes through education and through an actual online fund, to which readers can apply (using a code they must obtain from the book) to obtain an actual hard, cold cash bailout from their individual foreclosure nightmares.

This book is simple and elegant, serving in many ways as the antithesis of its shelfmates, the complicated analyses of how mortgage derivatives and Wall Street arrogance precipitated the mortgage meltdown, and the "how to get rich quick buying and flipping and renting," oh my. more...

Foreclosure and debt: Contagious?

By Tara-Nicholle Nelson, Monday, October 5, 2009.

Flickr photo by <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/nyllows/3490494812/" target=blank>Dan Queiroz</a>.

In my leisure time reading lately, I've noticed that several concepts just seem to keep coming up over and over again. And they're not just garden variety topics, either. One, for example, social contagion theory, is a growing area of study in social science that I read about in Psychology Today ("Is Depression Contagious?"), on Deepak Chopra's blog and in a couple of other places, all over the course of a couple of weeks.

The most in-depth article I read on the topic was a 10-screen New York Times article detailing the results of a new re-analysis of some of the data from the six-decade-long Framingham Heart Study, which resulted in the eureka-style epiphany that "good behaviors -- like quitting smoking or staying slender or being happy -- pass from friend to friend almost as if they were contagious viruses." more...

Buyer's agent fumbles repair request

By Tara-Nicholle Nelson, Friday, October 2, 2009.

Q: My husband and I recently bought a move-up home. During our inspection period, we were told that there were some problems with the furnace (the home has central heating). We got bids from an HVAC contractor who was recommended by our agent, and the bid was almost $2,000. The sellers agreed to do the work, but wanted to use their own contractor, who agreed to do it at a lower cost. We didn't care who did it, as long as they were licensed -- and they were.

We closed escrow and moved in. Now that it's starting to get cool at night, we decided to just run the heater and see how it worked -- and it didn't work! more...

Seller stall tactics

By Tara-Nicholle Nelson, Thursday, October 1, 2009.

Original image by <a href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6c/A_&_E_Design_nr.jpg">Holger.Ellgaard</a>.

Q: I have been making offers for a couple of months now. In my town, most low-priced listings get lots of offers. In fact, every home I've made an offer on, I've been up against at least a couple of other buyers. Sometimes, the seller will say there's no offer before we make ours, but then we'll send it over and they'll call back and say that they heard another offer is coming in the next day, and again the next day, so that they may wait a week before they give us an answer. Why are they taking so long to get back to us?

A: Traditionally, the preventive for your problem was simply to set a short offer expiration time frame and essentially force the seller to either respond to your offer, forgoing other potential offers that might come in, or forgo your offer on the wish/prayer that others will come in and be better than yours. more...

Lot owners lose fight to limit street access

By Tara-Nicholle Nelson, Wednesday, September 30, 2009.

Flickr photo by <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/23682502@N04/3897873581/">tiffa130</a>.

In Callahan, et al. v. Point Clear Holdings Inc., the lot owners' sole route of access to their homes was via a street that was originally owned by a resort developer.

Lot owners held a "private easement for streets." The resort developer's successor, a residential developer, planned to build new homes in the area, and planned to open the private street to public use by residents and guests of the new-home community.

Lot owners amended the restrictive covenants governing their subdivision and sued for declaratory relief to enjoin the successor developer from using the street to benefit any properties that didn't exist at the time the easement was created, and to further enjoin the developer from converting the private street to public use. more...

A guide to Mortgage Rules 2.0

By Tara-Nicholle Nelson, Tuesday, September 29, 2009.

If you're familiar with Bill Maher's HBO talk show, "Real Time," you're familiar with his "New Rules" segment at the close of each episode, in which he articulates the rules he'd lay down if he ruled the world -- hilariously or outrageously, depending on your particular political leanings.

Dale Robyn Siegel's new book, "The New Rules for Mortgages," might not be quite as entertaining as Maher's New Rules, but it is certainly more usable by the average mortgage consumer. more...

'Green' homes come in many shades

By Tara-Nicholle Nelson, Monday, September 28, 2009.

Flickr image by <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/35577089@N00/3598981080/" target=blank>annnie</a>.

I'm always fascinated by how new words -- or new, off-label definitions for old words -- permeate the popular lexicon. If you called an object "green" five years ago, the average listener would have thought you were referring to its hue. These days, the label of "green" implies something comprised of sustainable or recycled materials, something energy efficient or an object that otherwise empowers its user to live in a manner that is environmentally friendly and promotes well living.

When it comes to what homebuyers want and what home sellers tout in this day and age, a green house is less likely to be a house with green exterior paint or a glassy outbuilding for cultivating plants than it is an eco-sensitive abode. more...

Don't put mortgage in the wrong hands

By Tara-Nicholle Nelson, Friday, September 25, 2009.

Q: I just finished moving, with my husband and three kids, into an apartment, after owning our own home for more than 15 years. I have no idea how we ended up here. I'm a well-educated psychologist, and my husband has worked for the same company for 20 years.

Years ago, when we divided up our household duties, he took the bills and finances and I took all the kids' doctor appointments and arranging extracurricular activities. more...

High offers not translating into sales

By Tara-Nicholle Nelson, Thursday, September 24, 2009.

Q: I'm in the middle of selling my home. Houses are selling like gangbusters in my neck of the woods, so after waiting for almost two years I decided to put my place on the market. We had several offers, and it really was a small bidding war.

I accepted the highest offer and signed the contract, but the appraisal came in $50,000 below the contract price! I have no idea why -- my home has lots of upgrades, and several homes in my neighborhood are currently in contract above the asking prices. I suspect the buyer might have done something to keep the appraisal low, because now they're asking me to lower the price. My agent doesn't think they did anything underhanded, but is also telling me to lower the price. What are my options? more...

Early mortgage payoff shocker

By Tara-Nicholle Nelson, Wednesday, September 23, 2009.

In the case Madura v. Countrywide Home Loans Inc., Full Spectrum Lending mailed borrowers loan documents to sign and the borrowers signed and returned the documents via mail.

(Of the borrowers, the husband signed the loan documents, and the wife only signed to exclude herself from the transaction.) Based on this, Full Spectrum extended a loan of $87,750 that was secured by the borrowers' principal residence. Five days later, Countrywide Home Loans purchased the loan from Full Spectrum. more...

The short-sale action guide

By Tara-Nicholle Nelson, Tuesday, September 22, 2009.

Image courtesy of <a href="http://www.mhprofessional.com/product.php?search_crawl=true&isbn=0071635580" target=blank>McGraw-Hill</a>.

If you're an active participant in today's real estate market, you know that the recent drop in housing values -- right after a couple of years of unprecedented borrowing against home equity -- has forced us all to get much more familiar with short sales than ever before.

(A short sale, for your information, is a transaction in which the homeowner is selling the home for less than he or she owes on it. This requires that the lender or lenders involved agree to forgive some portion of the outstanding mortgage debt in order to consummate the transaction.) more...

Misguided by 'media market mania'

By Tara-Nicholle Nelson, Monday, September 21, 2009.

I awoke one recent morning to the news of the results of a hot-off-the-presses Pew study: 63 percent of Americans polled believe that media news stories are often inaccurate. Sixty percent feel the media is biased in its reporting, and 74 percent said news organizations tend to favor one side in their dealings with social and political issues.

Call me a cynic, but this public sentiment seems neither surprising nor off-base to me. Keeping in mind that I hail from the San Francisco Bay Area ... more...

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