The 30-year fixed-rate mortgage has long been a tradition in the U.S., but for many Millennials buying homes, this old-hat loan product just won’t cut it anymore. Instead, this cohort is gravitating toward a historically less-used product: the adjustable-rate mortgage. Offering lower up-front costs and the flexibility to up and move without taking a huge […]
Sometimes all you need is a little break when you find yourself struggling to make your mortgage payments. A loan modification program can provide relief by making permanent or temporary changes to your loan, such as by reducing your interest rate or extending your payments. You don’t have to default entirely—you can make a few […]
If you’ve heard about banks offering homeowners the option for a deed in lieu of foreclosure over a short sale, you might ask yourself why anybody would want to give a bank a deed to their home instead of going through the short sale process. Essentially, if the bank rejects your short sale, the bank […]
Buying a home will probably be the largest and most significant purchase you will make in your life. It also involves the law of real property, which is unique and raises special issues of practice, and problems not present in other transactions. A real estate lawyer is trained to deal with these problems and has […]
Short sales and foreclosures are two distinct types of transactions that share the common denominator of being distressed properties, which involve a mortgage lender. (They are not interchangeable terms — although most people don’t realize it, there is a distinction between the two.) Many home buyers start a search for short sales and foreclosures in […]
Easement agreements often have legal effects that convey benefits to the easement company or person through the landowner that still retains the rights to the land and all property benefits. Knowing how these legal effects impact both parties is important before becoming part of the agreement and binding the legal contract to the land. Easements […]
When you buy a home, you hope the value will appreciate over time so you’ll be able to build equity. Of course, it doesn’t always work out that way. Home values in neighborhoods can rise sharply for relatively simple reasons such as a major improvement in public transportation. Home values can also plummet. These fluctuations […]
Mixing assets between a company and a personal estate is often not advisable because of the potential to remove the legal protections in place by the limited liability company that can prevent personal liability in injuries and other claims against the owner. However, if the owner still wants to pursue the avenue of sale, he […]
Leases often contain options to renew the lease between the landlord and tenant provided that specific conditions are met. Options to renew can be worded in a variety of ways, but what may seem to be small semantic differences can have a dramatic difference in the meaning a court places on a particular clause. Where […]
The Penguin Club sat at the least-used end of Sunset Beach — a squat ring of solid poured concrete tents encircling a thatched cabana and a 12×14 poolette. It had the frantically cleaned and single coat-over-chipped-paint look of an aging property whose owner wanted out. Jim McGinty whistled as he drew himself out of his […]
