If you are buying residential property, you are probably aware that you should get a home inspection. This means you should hire a licensed home inspector to check out the house for you. Typically this is done within the first 5 days after the contract is signed by the seller. If you are not happy with the way the inspection turns out, your attorney can cancel the transaction or try to negotiate the repairs or a credit for you. Keep in mind, however, that a typical home inspection is not meant to cover cosmetic items. If you are walking through the house and notice chipped tiles or peeling paint, take all of that into account when you make your initial offer. The purpose of the inspection is to make sure that the home’s structure and systems are in good condition, not to find peeling wallpaper or dirty carpets. Make sure your home… read more →
According to data recently released by Zillow, Chicago was the best buyer’s market in the United States in the third and fourth quarters of 2012. Zillow studied 142 metro areas across the country, and found that buyers in Chicago have far stronger bargaining positions than sellers do. Cleveland came in second place, and the top five were rounded out by by Philadelphia, Cincinnati, and New York City. The top three seller’s markets, meaning metro areas in which the sellers had greater bargaining power than the buyers, were all in California: San Jose, San Francisco, and Sacramento. The top five were rounded out by Las Vegas and Phoenix. The formula Zillow used to determine the best markets had three components: 1) A comparison of how much a house sells for as compared to its last listed price; 2) the amount of time a house stays on the market; and 3) the… read more →
Landlords and tenants often end up fighting, and sometimes the arguments continue well past the end of the tenancy. You may have had a bad landlord, or a bad tenant, but the fact is, not all landlords are bad, and neither are all tenants. Periodically the state legislature makes little tweaks to various laws to acknowledge either or both of these assertions. Recently, for example, the legislature tweaked the Security Deposit Return Act. Pursuant to this Act, the landlord must give the tenant an itemized list of the damage the tenant caused to the landlord’s property within 30 days after the tenant leaves, along with the cost (either actual or estimated) of repairing the same. This notice must be given to the tenant personally, or at his last known address. Effective January 1, 2013, however, landlords have the option of sending this notice via electronic mail to an e-mail address… read more →
A few laws benefiting home owners and borrowers have been extended through December 31, 2013. First of all, the Mortgage Debt Relief Act of 2007 expired on Decembr 31, 2012. On New Year’s Day, however, lawmakers extended the act through 2013. This is good news if you are going through a short sale. Typically, any debt that is forgiven during the course of a short sale is taxable income to the homeowner who’s debt is forgiven. But pursuant to the Mortgage Debt Relief Act, such debt is not taxable. Second, mortgage insurance premiums will remain deductible, as they were in the past, as a result of the recent “fiscal cliff” laws. These deductions allow a sizeable savings for homeowners who pay mortgage insurance, so long as their income is less than $110,000 annually Third, in 2012, homeowners who made energy-efficient improvements were allowed to take a $500 tax credit if they… read more →