Q: My mother is 80 years old and lives in San Antonio, Texas. Her home is approximately 50 years old. The house needs some serious remodeling. It needs to be leveled and the beams from the roof poking into one of her bedrooms. She is still working but wants to retire. Are there any programs [...]
This week, the National Association of Realtors (NAR) sent a letter to Shaun Donovan, secretary of Housing and Urban Development, Timothy Geithner, secretary of the Treasury, and Gene Sperling, director of the National Economic Council. In the letter, the Realtors put forth their belief that “Stability in the housing market will lead to a quicker [...]
Q: I am a retired 63 year-old with a combined income of $37,000 annually. My wife will begin collecting an additional $704 per month in Social Security starting this November. We both have excellent credit scores of 800. Here’s our situation: We purchased our home in 2004 for $125,000, have a balance of $76,000 on [...]
Q: Here’s my question: Let’s say a husband and wife own a rental property with a joint tenancy and a right to survivorship deed. Later, they divorce without changing the deed, and 10 years later, one of them passes away. Does the remaining owner automatically pick-up the ownership for the deceased owner’s share? Does the [...]
Robert Bridges, a professor of clinical finance and business economics at the University of Southern California's Marshall School of Business, published an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal last week, in which he argued that "Today's young people would be foolish to imitate their parents and view [home] ownership as the cornerstone of personal [...]
When Weather Affects the Economy on the Ilyce Glink Show July 17, 2011: We are in the dog days of summer and I'm not sure what the situation is in your area, but we have had a series of crazy summer storms in the Midwest this year. Earlier this week, Chicagoland experienced hurricane-category winds of [...]
Q: Last summer we refinanced our farm home. Line 103 of the settlement statement indicated that we had settlement charges of about $4,000. A month or so later, we listed the property for sale and it closed at the end of last year. Our question is can we claim the $4,000 on our income tax [...]
In 2010, the official unemployment rate stood at around 10 percent, and there were 5 people looking for every job that was available. Last August, the Treasury Department announced that unemployed homeowners could get a 3-month forbearance on their mortgage payments while they looked for a job. Unfortunately, the program, called the Home Affordable Unemployment [...]
Q: I had a partnership with another guy for 30 years with a buy and sell agreement and with a right of first refusal. We owned a building with several stores. His wife received the rents and paid the bills. I had the security money and did the books. At one point in time he [...]
When the housing bubble burst in 2008, cities like Miami, Las Vegas, Phoenix and Detroit gained immediate notoriety for the huge downturn their real estate markets experienced. During the boom these markets experienced huge growth and skyrocketing home prices, and when those prices fell, they came down hard. The Great Recession is by no means [...]
