Deeds.com

June 1, 2022April 25, 2024

Should I Buy a Foreclosed House?

Prices Up, Mortgage Rates Up…

It’s tough to find a home these days. Some hopeful buyers just won’t give up. Some are buying with housemates; others are searching online for REO homes. (Foreclosed homes go into auction and become real-estate owned, or REO, if the bank hasn’t managed to sell them at auction.)

Looking for REO sales can be one way to get a house in some markets. And many foreclosed homes have come into the market in 2022. While millions of homeowners received mortgage forbearance during the pandemic, in 2022 that assistance is winding down.

Is buying one of these homes a good idea? It depends. A foreclosed home comes with its own set of potential risks and rewards.

Some buyers will ask what they really have to lose at this point. Rents are skyrocketing. The high monthly housing costs are ravaging renters’ incomes — making it harder and harder, the longer this goes on, to ever buy a house. REO is the best answer for some buyers. Knowledge and preparation is, of course, vital.

May 30, 2022April 25, 2024

Bitcoin or Real Estate for the Investor: Which Is Better?

If you ask J.P. Morgan, you might be surprised at the answer.

At a time when real estate and other private investments are undergoing a valuation reset, a recent J.P. Morgan report highlights cryptocurrency. It says digital currencies have overtaken real estate as a “preferred alternative asset class.” (Alternative assets are investment choices that don’t fall into the stocks-and-bonds category.)

Bitcoin is quite a bit down (~60%) from its all-time high. In the “crypto winter” of 2017-18, it lost more than 80% of its value and took three years to rebound. In 2022, crypto assets are showing jittery reactions to inflation and rising interest rates.

But with bitcoin trading around $30,000 in May 2022, J.P. Morgan’s latest note to investors indicates “significant upside for digital assets from here.” The bank ascribes a fair value of $38,000 to bitcoin.

J.P. Morgan stands out among large banks for its early and significant investments in the world of crypto. This, although Jamie Dimon, the CEO of JPMorgan, called bitcoin out in 2017 as “worthless.”

May 27, 2022April 25, 2024

Real Estate Market Predictions: The Next Five Years

What is going on? Property values might level off, but the mortgage rate is the latest thing to soar. The typical rate is up by 2% over December 2021. So the hopeful home buyer continues to face difficult decisions.

Many people are wondering how long it will take for a normal market to return. Here’s what we can tell now.

May 25, 2022April 25, 2024

How Delayed Financing Can Help an All-Cash Buyer

Buy With Cash and Borrow Later

Some buyers wonder if they should stretch themselves and make all-cash offers to get homes in this seller’s market. When cash buying is a necessary strain, there is a solution: buy with cash, and borrow soon after. Delayed financing can make it happen in the right circumstances.

Delayed financing is a special type of cash-out refinance. After paying cash for a home, the buyer uses delayed financing to get some cash back. Then the buyer starts making monthly payments, much like someone who purchased the home with a mortgage in the first place.

Even for those in the position to readily buy with cash, taking a loan out on the house makes financial sense when interests rates are reasonable. Today’s interest rates are indeed a reasonable cost to pay for access to home equity. Plus, interest on home loans are tax deductions.

Not every mortgage company is familiar with delayed financing. Interested buyers need to know what to ask for. Here are the basics.

May 23, 2022April 25, 2024

Can Home Renovations Affect My Real Estate Title?

Avoiding Surprises With Home Construction

Renovating a home can indeed have an impact on the title. Or maybe two impacts. These concern liens and permits.

Whether you are buying a renovated home or plan to remodel the house yourself, be mindful of liens. Contractors place liens on homes for unpaid bills. Liens are clouds on a home’s title, and they usually have to be cleared before the owner can sell. And if you ever want to refinance, you’ll have to resolve the lien(s) to clear up the title.

There is also the matter of whether the work was carried out under the correct permit process, in compliance with the building code. If not, title insurance coverage can get complicated. So can the process of rectifying any mistakes the previous owner might have made.

These two issues can have further impacts. For example, does title insurance protect a new owner for problems related to poor renovations? How will unpermitted work in the house impact the homeowner who goes to sell?

Here, we take a look at these various connections between renovations and the house title.

May 20, 2022April 25, 2024

How to Do a Home Sale Between Family Members

The Non-Arm’s Length Transaction

Most home purchases are arm’s-length transactions. That is, they normally happen between people who didn’t know each other before the house sale. When strangers sell and buy, each side is motivated to negotiate in a self-interested way. This tends to result in a price (and mortgage) that reflects the home’s fair market value.

But sometimes friends, relatives, or business associates sell real estate to each other. A parent might sell to a child, or vice-versa. An owner might sell a rental house to a tenant. A company might sell a house to someone it employs.

The dynamics of these transactions differ from the norm. On one hand, the process can be simpler. On the other hand, it can be hard to diligently inspect and negotiate for property, or sell it for the right price, when personal relationships are implicated.

Here, we walk through a few of the potential benefits and drawbacks in a home sale between people who know each other.

May 19, 2022April 25, 2024

Blockchain Makes Headway in Carbon-Busting

Not Ready for Prime Time in Mortgages, But…

Despite the growing pains and the volatility, crypto assets (the good ones, at least) are finding their use cases. Numerous financial and tech giants are offering customers digital asset options, and investing in the sector in various ways. The federal government recently put all hands on deck to find ways of keeping crypto assets useful, fair, and secure.

The mortgage industry, though, has done no more than dip a toe into distributed ledger a.k.a. blockchain technology. But the industry has to get to grips with the digital age. It has to smooth out the experience for borrowers of mortgages and home equity financing. Today’s mortgage applicant has to submit stacks of paper statements. Underwriters reject copies of webpages because they could be falsified. Title searches involve multiple sources of data when one ought to be enough. And so on. The process is antiquated and stressful, to put it mildly. “We’ve always done it like this” seems to be the only justification for much of the mortgage and title processes. Perhaps distributed ledger technology can help reinvent it. We’re not there yet.

Meanwhile, blockchain and real estate seem to be meshing quite well in the area of greenhouse gas emissions tracking.

May 18, 2022April 25, 2024

What Is an Implied Easement, and Could Your Property Have One?

An easement gives someone the right to use or control part of somebody else’s land. An easement can be deliberately created through the land owner’s permission. The parties can formalize this by writing up a grant deed, a quitclaim, or an easement deed.

Permanent easements can also be created by a court order, or through deed restrictions.

But sometimes, an easement is just a mutual understanding that the person next door is using part of the owner’s land. An implied easement might exist, then. But only when the land is divided and transferred.

Here, we look at the making of an easement — and the signs that an implied easement has been created.

May 16, 2022April 25, 2024

Does the Government Seize People’s Homes?

Rising Profile Ahead for Eminent Domain

When you think of eminent domain, what comes to mind? Perhaps you think of land that suffered some kind of toxic dumping or spilling, so that the government has to take it in order to restore it, if possible, to a non-hazardous state. And that does happen.

But sometimes, city governments move to take property under eminent domain for other reasons. Maybe the owner has racked up more back taxes than the home is worth. Or maybe the owner’s mortgage has gone underwater. But can the government legally take such property? When do governments really resort to eminent domain?

As some financial observers are predicting a recession in the midst of a housing shortage, now is a good time to review eminent domain. And in the coming decade we’ll be seeing more of a new eminent domain issue — one driven by climate change.

Read on as we explore these issues.

May 13, 2022April 25, 2024

Divorce, Property Division, and the Quitclaim Deed

Parting of the Ways

Co-ownership of a house can unwind in several ways. One way is through divorce proceedings. You might be wondering how this works, and what kind of decisions have to be made.

You might have questions about passing the home to your ex using a quitclaim deed. Here are some of the key issues that arise, and what steps need to be taken in each case.