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The real estate sixth sense

By Tara-Nicholle Nelson, Monday, July 20, 2009.

Flickr photo by <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/bearpark/2505033427/">Menage a Moi</a>.

At this point in this series, we've explored sight, smell and sound -- the primary physical senses involved in sensory or, more accurately, multisensory homebuying. Taste is, obviously, implicated much less frequently (although I did swipe a staging apple from a bowl a few weeks back during my third back-to-back appointment without a break on a day of "cardio house hunting" -- and yes, I did check first to ensure that it was a real apple, not a staging prop).

The other physical senses, touch and balance, are similarly tough to use on a house hunt, except to the extent that we perceive things like a funny wall texture, distinguish between hardwoods and laminate by feeling for wood grain, or sometimes feel slightly off-kilter when our footsteps alert us to an older home's sloping floor. more...

Blind faith in loan mod backfires

By Tara-Nicholle Nelson, Friday, July 17, 2009.

Q: I haven't made the payment on my house in 11 months. Shortly after I bought it a couple of years ago, I became ill and it has been a struggle to keep it with my health problems and having to stop working on occasion. It is a two-unit property; I live in one side and rent the other side out, but my tenants have already given me notice that they're moving out in a couple of weeks. I've been applying over and over for loan modifications, but the bank refuses to bring my loan balance down in line with what my house is currently worth. So, I gave up.

I met with my real estate broker to list it as a short sale last week, but the day after we met, I received a notice of trustee sale in the mail. It says I have only three weeks before the bank auctions my home off. more...

Avoiding mortgage rip-offs

By Tara-Nicholle Nelson, Thursday, July 16, 2009.

Q: I read in the newspaper that a particular bank had been targeting bad loans at members of my ethnic community. How do I know if my bank is swindling me, before I sign on the dotted line?

A: In the aftermath of the foreclosure, housing market, mortgage or whatever you want to call the real estate corner of the economic crisis, there have been lots of investigations and findings about various banks targeting ethnic minorities with subprime mortgages. While your right as an American is to vote with your dollars, I would encourage you to avoid jumping to conclusions about an entire institution or industry being good or evil on the basis of blame-era spin and hindsight applied to marketing strategies and campaigns that were, undoubtedly, thought of at the time as promoting and enabling homeownership amongst people who hadn't always been given a fair shot at the American Dream. more...

The home construction 'moral hazard'

By Tara-Nicholle Nelson, Wednesday, July 15, 2009.

In the case Westfield Insurance Co. v. Sheehan Construction Co., defective work by one of Sheehan's subcontractors resulted in a $2.8 million construction-defect judgment against Sheehan. Sheehan wanted Westfield Insurance to indemnify the expense of the judgment under Sheehan's general commercial liability policy, which expressly covered accidental bodily injury and property damage, but expressly excluded property damage caused by Sheehan's own work.

The trial court found that numerous definitions and exclusions in the policy weighed against Westfield's liability, and ruled in favor of Westfield. more...

A plan for a mortgage-crisis-free future

By Tara-Nicholle Nelson, Tuesday, July 14, 2009.

Image courtesy <a href="http://www.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-0470402199,descCd-tableOfContents.html" target=blank>Wiley</a>.

Reading "Confessions of a Subprime Lender: An Insider's Tale of Greed, Fraud and Ignorance," by former subprime mortgage lending company co-owner Richard Bitner, was reminiscent of reading Antonia Frasier's "Marie Antoinette" -- the historical facts and anecdotes woven together create an excruciating sense of dread and suspense, despite the fact that every reader knows from the outset exactly how the story ends. "Confessions," the trade-published edition of a formerly self-published book, is a historical retelling of the rise and fall of the subprime lending industry, which just so happened to take America's homeowners and economy along with it for the ride -- in both directions. more...

Soundtrack to a buyer's heart

By Tara-Nicholle Nelson, Monday, July 13, 2009.

Flickr photo by <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/flattop341/1657626179/" target=blank>flattop341</a>.

Intuitively, it would seem that views -- whether of the mountains, the ocean, the bay or even the neighbor's rusty, leaf-crammed gutters -- are the most influential sensations originating outside of a given home on a prospective buyer's impressions of the property.

I submit that this intuition is dead wrong.

Sound, in my experience, is the single sensory factor that poses the most substantive deal-making or -breaking power within the mind of a homebuyer of those sensory elements that are largely external to the property itself. more...

Going halfsies on home repairs?

By Tara-Nicholle Nelson, Friday, July 10, 2009.

Q: We were trying to buy a home that is owned by a credit union. We had a home inspection done and found that the furnace, roof and water heater all need to be replaced as soon as possible. The credit union did not agree to pay for any of the repairs and we walked away from the house, which we hated to do. Wasn't it reasonable to think that the seller should cover at least half of these expenses if not all of the costs?

A: Reasonable? Sure. But reason matters not when dealing with a bank or other institution selling a foreclosed home.

Banks are not people. They do not negotiate with the same types of motivation, flexibility, logic or reason that individual people do. more...

The down-payment-assistance pickle

By Tara-Nicholle Nelson, Thursday, July 9, 2009.

Flickr photo by <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/shelaya/3139965525/">ayalehs</a>.

Q: I was recently told I don't have enough "open lines of credit" to qualify for my town's down-payment-assistance program for first-time homebuyers. But I have three credit cards -- one with a balance -- and a school loan, which I pay on time. Isn't that enough?

A: As a young child, my Dad taught me that she who has the money makes the rules. Whether that was an appropriate lesson for a young child notwithstanding, it certainly was an accurate one!

Mindset Management

As you've discovered, when you're applying for any sort of home financing, you have to shift into the mindset reflected in the financing program's guidelines. more...

Homeowners group wins fence dispute

By Tara-Nicholle Nelson, Wednesday, July 8, 2009.

In the case Phillips, et al. v. Westlake Board of Zoning Appeals, the board granted a use variance to the homeowners association (HOA), allowing the HOA to build a fence around an oddly shaped lot within 1.5 feet of the sidewalk when the current zoning rules required a setback of 35 feet.

The fence was replacing an old, worn fence, and the HOA stated that the setback variance was required for the safety of passing children.

The homeowners, Robert and Karen Phillips, whose property is immediately adjacent to the fence, appealed the grant of the variance to a trial court. more...

Where homeownership went wrong

By Tara-Nicholle Nelson, Wednesday, July 8, 2009.

As the real estate crisis evolved, popular media explorations of what caused the problem grew common, but have largely been characterized by finger-pointing sound-bite duels, one industry or interest group vs. the other, e.g., Wall Street vs. real estate brokers, and so forth. Whether or not you agree that further finger-pointing is constructive, you will find that "Our Lot: How Real Estate Came to Own Us," by real estate journalist Alyssa Katz, breaks the mold of surface-skimming blame-gaming.

Though its raison d'etre is to seek out the root causes of the mortgage crisis, "Our Lot" is an extraordinarily researched, deeply thoughtful argument that the government-powered social aim of increasing homeownership "in partnership" with the mortgage banking industry's mission to sell homes and loans created an alchemy from which the current state of the housing market was a virtually inevitable, albeit eventual, result. more...

Relying on listing agent is mistake #1

By Tara-Nicholle Nelson, Tuesday, July 7, 2009.

Q: I've lived on the West Coast my whole life, but in 2006 decided to buy a place on the East Coast to move into. I found a place on the Web, called the listing agent and bought it (I did get an inspection from a contractor she knew, but he didn't find any big problems.)

I moved there for one month before I had to move right back out because I was constantly sick. After extensive testing, I learned that the house was riddled with mold from a leaky, unsafe addition that the previous sellers had put on the house without permits. When we went to get the permits for all the mold repairs, the city actually ordered me to tear the addition off -- the problem was, the addition was about a third of the house's square footage! more...

Some smells make or break a sale

By Tara-Nicholle Nelson, Monday, July 6, 2009.

When my boys were young, one of our good-behavior mantras for shopping expeditions was to "look with your eyes, not with your hands." As I wrote last week, in the first installment of this series on sensory homebuying, I've been watching and learning as my buyer clients have evolved far beyond looking with just their eyes, and into house hunting with all of their senses, including a sixth sense we'll get to in a couple of weeks.

Beyond sight, which we covered last time, is smell -- not a sense that seems related to homebuying in more than a superficial manner. I take that back: OK, every novice real estate agent has been told to throw some ready-bake Toll House cookie dough in the oven before an open house, to create a warm, yummy aroma (and correspondingly positive associations with the property) to woo attendees. more...

Erase black mark from credit report

By Tara-Nicholle Nelson, Monday, July 6, 2009.

Q: I have had a judgment of $8,600 on my credit report for the past six years. Although the judge ruled in favor of the plaintiff, I never owed that money and I believe I lost only because I didn't have an attorney. Now, I wish to become a first-time homebuyer.

My credit union tells me I could qualify based on my credit score and income, but I would have to pay off the judgment or arrange to make payments with the creditor before the credit union would preapprove me for a loan. I contacted the creditor's attorney, who was sarcastic and said he couldn't force his client to respond to my payment proposal. I asked him to counteroffer if necessary, but I haven't heard from them in two weeks. I really want to buy a home but this presents an obstacle. What should I do now? more...

Building repairs don't pay off for owner

By Tara-Nicholle Nelson, Wednesday, July 1, 2009.

In 2003, Kristine Hennessy noticed that the stucco on her property, a commercial building, had separated from the building's wall. In 2005, the remaining stucco on the building had virtually no adhesion remaining to the building's concrete walls, except on the 20 percent of the building where the underlying wall was concrete masonry blocks. Hennessy removed and replaced the damaged stucco and filed a claim with the insurance company, Mutual of Enumclaw, which later denied the claim.

In the trial of Hennessy v. Mutual of Enumclaw, a judgment was entered for Hennessy, awarding her more than $98,000 for the costs of removing the stucco and installing a new exterior. more...

'Think outside the hammock'

By Tara-Nicholle Nelson, Tuesday, June 30, 2009.

As one of the few other real estate broker/writers on the scene, I've consumed much of what Barbara Corcoran has written since I laid eyes on the mere title of her first book, "If You Don't Have Big Breasts, Put Ribbons on Your Pigtails" (Portfolio Trade, 2003), full of the homespun wisdom she used to create one of the country's most profitable real estate firms (located, counterintuitively perhaps, in New York City).

Years before she became the "Today" show's resident real estate guru, Corcoran grew to believe that the "real measure of (her) success … was (her) innate ability to match up the right person with the right place based on his or her unique needs and personality." more...

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