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While you may receive solicitations from attorneys and lawyers to assist you in a loan modification, you don't need to hire one to apply. The Obama Making Home Affordable Plan that includes the Home Affordable Modification does not have any requirement for you to hire anybody to help you out in obtaining a loan modification. An attorney can help explain information to you and make sure that have completed the proper forms, but most banks will tell you if you have failed to deliver the forms. There are many community organizations that are assisting homeowners in their loan modifications free of charge.

What do you need to do when your agent switches real estate companies? Can you cancel the listing agreement? What if you have just signed the listing agreement and the real estate agent or broker you are working with jumps ship? What should you know before you sign a listing agreement?

Beware the dangers of co-signing a loan for your boyfriend, significant other, or friend. Once you co-sign a loan for someone, you are tied to them and the loan for the lifetime of the loan. If he fails to make payments on the mortgage, your credit will be hurt. If you and he break up, you won’t be able to get your name off the mortgage unless he refinances the home. Make sure you understand the dangers of co-signing a loan for your boyfriend before you sign the paperwork.

After a divorce, many couples that split need to refinance their mortgages to remove one of them from the burdens of the loan. Even if a divorce agreement or divorce decree make one of the spouses responsible for a mortgage, the original lender may hold both of the spouses, and their credit histories, responsible until the loan is paid off.

A land contract is known in some parts of the country as “purchases installment contracts for deed” or “contracts for deed.” Land contract tax consequences don't allow you to qualify for the first time home buyer tax credit. Even if you received title on your home this year, if you entered into the land contract years ago, the IRS views you as the owner since you entered into the land contract.

Dividing estate property after a loved one dies can cause many problems between family members. If the will was not kept up to date and family circumstances changed over the years, dividing estate property can become even more difficult. Extended and blended families can have claim to estate property> The divorce decree and the will can have information on how to divide estate property among siblings and blended families.

Capital gains tax on real estate doesn't apply to most home sales and purchases. An easy way to determine if you owe taxes on your real estate is to calculate the profit of your home sale. The profit of your home sale is calculated from the cost basis of your real estate. If you're buying and selling investment property, there are different rules for capital gains tax on real estate and you may need to use a 1031 exchange. Read below for more information on capital gains tax on real estate.

When a parent decides to pass down a property to his or her children. He or she should make sure that any joint ownership issues are taken care of in advance. There's nothing worse that passing down a home held by a family only to have the children squabble over how to keep the home and whether to sell it or not. The joint ownership of the home can cause sibling rivalry to become worse and cause further family trouble.

The new term in real estate is strategic default. A strategic default is when you decide to default on your mortgage rather than continue making payments. There are many reasons for a strategic default but some of them are the inability to pay, loss of a job, health issues, decline of income or that the home value has declined and the value of the mortgage loan far exceeds the value of the home. For some people defaulting on a contract is a moral question. While for other people, defaulting on a mortgage is solely a business decision that has nothing to do with moral issues.

Although the federal government will soon begin paying homeowners to complete a short sale, short sale payments are already available to first and second lenders. The problem for most homeowners today is that even if they want to sell their home in a short sale, and even if they've listed the home as a short sale in the local multiple listing service, there aren't enough short sale buyers. Will a short sale or a foreclosure happen faster? See our related short sale articles for more information.

If you buy a home, you should hire a professional home inspector help you to make sure there are no problems with the home. If you apply for a loan with a bank, the bank will send out a bank appraiser to appraise the home -- that is make sure that the home is standing and that the home has a high enough value to justify the loan. But if you apply for an FHA loan, the bank will send out a person to inspect the home for problems. If the home has problems, the lender may require those problems to be fixed prior to the bank giving you the FHA loan. But the FHA inspection should not and does not replace a good home inspector you hire to make sure the home is in the shape you believe it should be in.