DEAR BARRY: The buyer of our home wants to do his own inspection. Our concern is that he wants to get up on the roof. Our home is very high off the ground, and the roof pitch is steep. He also wants to climb into the attic. I'm concerned he may fall and hurt himself and/or damage something while in the attic. We don't want to offend the buyer, but we have a great concern. What do you advise? --Janette
DEAR JANETTE: Perhaps you could have the buyer sign a liability waiver stipulating that he will hold you blameless in the event that he is injured during his inspection and that he will pay for anything that is accidentally broken. To ensure that this would be binding, you should obtain a legal form from a lawyer.
Another option is offering to split the cost of a professional home inspection. When compared with the cost of an attorney, it might even be worth it to pay the entire inspection fee.
That aside: If your buyer believes that he is qualified to perform the same evaluation as a professional home inspector, he is very naive. It takes years of full-time inspection work to become truly qualified as a home inspector. If your buyer wants to experience undisclosed defects after the close of escrow, he should go ahead and do his own inspection.
DEAR BARRY: When we purchased our home, the termite inspector found plumbing leaks under the bathroom. But the home inspector did not inspect under the building because there was water on the ground, and he said this would be unsafe. He recommended ground drainage improvements to enable further inspection, but we went ahead without further inspection and bought the property. That turned out to be a mistake. Within days of moving in, we had a major sewage backup in the bathrooms. It turns out that we have rusted-out drainpipes and lots of roots in the main sewer line. We believe the sellers knew about these problems but said nothing. What should we do? --Nick
DEAR NICK: If the pest inspector found leaking under the building, he was not deterred by water on the ground. Perhaps the home inspector was too squeamish and should have done the same. Groundwater in a crawl space is an inconvenience for a home inspector, and no one except a small kid enjoys crawling in the mud. But it hardly qualifies as a significant safety hazard.
On the other hand, if the water on the ground was from leaking sewage, the inspector was wise to stay out, and the pest inspector probably should have done the same.
If the seller claims no knowledge of the problem, proving otherwise could be difficult, but it seems unlikely that the plumbing problems just occurred for the first time. Sometimes a neighbor has knowledge of past plumbing problems. This is something to investigate by asking around.
You need to obtain a repair bid from a licensed plumbing contractor. Hopefully, the costs will not be excessive. If repairs are expensive, you should get some legal advice regarding seller liability.
Tyler Encourages Responsible Water Use Tyler remains under voluntary water restrictions to help conserve supplies as another hot Texas summer closes in. The city has been on voluntary restrictions since late March, easing a December order that called for mandatory cutbacks. Tyler Public Works Director Greg Morgan said Tuesday the city is taking this proactive measure to voluntarily conserve water now for later. "The City of Tyler currently remains under step one water conservation measures," Morgan said. Plentiful spring rainfall helped refill East Texas lakes and recharge the soil -- two pluses going into the hot, dry months ahead -- but levels still are below normal. "The Lake Tyler/Lake Tyler East system still remains about 2.5 feet down from a full elevation of 375.5," Morgan said. "As such, it is incumbent upon the customers of Tyler Water Utilities to remain good stewards of our environment and to utilize this natural resource in a responsible manner." Tyler has a very stable, long-term water supply that is projected to last for decades, if people use it responsibly, officials said. Morgan said water production and lake levels are being evaluated on a daily basis, and staff is prepared to adjust conservation measures as needed to conserve.
National Weather Service officials said Tuesday the summer months should be somewhat hotter and drier than normal, but nothing close to the withering conditions of last summer. It is, after all, Texas. "To quote a cliche, on the fourth of July it's going to be hotter than a firecracker," Hydrologist C.S. Ross said this week. For fall, there are indications of a return to El Nino conditions, characterized by cooler, wet weather. In the interim, residents are asked to limit irrigation of landscaped areas to Sundays, Tuesdays and Thursdays if their street address ends in an even number (0,2,4,6,8); or Saturdays, Mondays and Wednesdays if their address ends with an odd number (1,3,5,7,9). Irrigation also should be done between the hours of 10 p.m. and 6 a.m., officials said. Tyler's pumping capacity is about 72 million gallons per day -- 8 million from deep water wells, 34 million from Lake Tyler and Lake Tyler East and 30 million from Lake Palestine. The city of Dallas also has rights to remove water from Lake Palestine but is not yet drawing from that source, officials said. Tyler first began calling for voluntary cutbacks last October. At that time, Lake Tyler was 6.9 feet below spillway levels and Lake Palestine was about 5.9 feet low, records show. Residents are asked to not waste water. Waste is considered the elective use of water, such as washing house windows, sidings, eaves and roof with a hose without the use of a bucket, officials said. Other types of water waste include washing driveways, streets, curbs, gutters and vehicles without a cut-off valve and bucket. External Relations Director Susan Guthrie said residents should check their sprinkler systems to ensure they are appropriately timed and positioned. "When you set your sprinkler systems, make sure they are not watering the streets and sidewalks," she said. Residents also are asked to check for leaking faucets and toilets to help conserve.
Shy Shinalt
Keller Williams Tyler
903.533.8114 www.shyshinalt.com
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Editorial note: This list is based on home value estimates, called Zestimates, from property search and valuation portal Zillow. The Zillow Home Value Index for a metro is the median Zestimate value in that area.
U.S. home values continued to rise this spring, according to an analysis by online real estate marketplace Zillow. As of May, national home values are up (0.5 percent) for the third month in a row, settling at $148,100.
Despite the spring season up-crawl – 0.5 percent in March, 0.8 percent in April – home values remain down (0.9 percent) on a yearly basis from last May when they stood at $149,445.
However, some hard-hit metros are seeing a sustained recovery in home values, including Phoenix and three Florida markets: Fort Myers (No. 2), Miami (No. 3) and Punta Gorda (No. 7). Fort Myers and Miami-Fort Lauderdale, Fla., saw 6.7 percent and 5.2 percent year-over-year home value increases, respectively, in May.
Familiar recovery front-runner Phoenix is living up to its name, topping the May list for its year-over-year home value increase of 9 percent to $133,400. High yearly increases in median list price as well as age and amount of inventory catapulted Arizona's capitol metro to the top of Realtor.com's Top Turnaround Town list in the first quarter of 2012. Surging Denver captured the No. 10 spot in May with a 2.6 percent year-over-year home value increase to $209,000, the second highest home value of any metro in the top 10.
Honolulu (No. 9) has the by-far highest valuation in the top 10 at $489,000.
Tulsa, Okla. (No.4), and Oklahoma City (No. 6) are in the top 10, too, representing the "Sooner" state yet again as a Zillow Home Value Index list-topper in 2012
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"How many lenders must I shop to be certain I receive a competitive price?"
If you have access to valid price quotes, three is usually enough. If you don't have access to valid price quotes, you won't get a competitive price no matter how many lenders you solicit.
Valid prices are prices that the lender would be willing to commit itself to at the time the price is quoted. Differences in valid prices posted by different lenders are small, which is why you don't have to shop many lenders. The reason is that 95 percent of all new mortgages today are either sold to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, or insured by FHA or VA, so that the federal government assumes virtually all of the risk.
The residual risk to the originating lenders, that they might be required to buy back loans or, at an extreme, lose their right to originate, is small and does not result in large price differences between them. Some lenders are more efficient than others, but price differences from this source are also Tyler Homes
The challenge faced by mortgage borrowers who want to shop is that most price quotes are not valid, and soliciting them is a waste of time. Invalid prices can be quoted to shoppers with impunity because shoppers can't say, "Yes, I'll take it," until the information upon which the price is based has been confirmed, by which time the market will have changed.
Valid mortgage price quotes meet all of the following conditions: They come from the internal pricing system of the lender, which I call their "posted prices," with no intermediation from loan officers. Loan officers are not bound to quote posted prices, and it is common for them to quote prices below the posted price, called "lowballing," in order to induce shopping borrowers to commit to them. They are fully adjusted for all loan features that affect the price, such as credit score, type of property, purpose of loan, down payment, etc. The list is a long one. If anything that affects the price is left out, the lender assumes whatever generates the lowest price, which may or may not hold up.
For example, many lenders price loans without asking whether the borrower wants to escrow taxes and insurance. If in fact the borrower does not want to escrow, the price will have to be raised. They include all price components. This means not only the interest rate and points but also other lender fees that are often left out of price quotes. They are current as of the time of the quote, not as of the day before. The borrower shopping several lenders must do so on the same day, and to be safe within the same hour of the day, since prices are sometimes adjusted during the day.
Valid price quotes are available on the Internet if you know where to look. Every mortgage lender has a website, but few provide valid prices on them. Most are designed to entice shoppers to identify themselves so that they can be contacted by a loan officer who will give them a sales pitch.
But some lenders provide valid prices on their sites while allowing shoppers to remain anonymous until such time as the shopper elects to contact the lender. These include the seven Upfront Mortgage Lenders that I identify on my website. Shopping them is doable, if a bit of a chore, because each site is programmed differently and the shopper must visit each on the same day to extract the desired price data.
Much the better way to shop is on a multilender website where the site maintains valid prices for multiple lenders, which it presents in one single format for easy comprehension and comparison. There are three of those: mortgagemarvel.com; zillow.com; and mtgprofessor.com, which is mine.
Don't confuse multilender sites with lead generation sites, such as lendingtree.com and lowermybills.com, which do business with hundreds of lenders. These sites do not collect price data from lenders. Rather, they collect financial information including Social Security numbers from shoppers, which they sell as leads to lender clients.
These lead generation sites first identify the lenders who have indicated an interest in the particulars of a lead, and they sell the lead to the three or four lenders who will pay the most for it. The shopper then gets sales pitches from three or four loan officers who are under strong pressure to lowball the price because that is often the way to win the deal.
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Fannie
Mae's new CEO will reportedly recuse himself from decisions involving
the mortgage giant's dispute with Bank of America over billions in loan
repurchase requests.
Timothy Mayopoulos will take over
as Fannie Mae CEO on June 18, three years after joining the company's
management team. Before joining Fannie Mae, Mayopoulos was executive
vice president and general counsel of Bank of America Corp.
According to its most recent quarterly report to investors,
Fannie Mae had $7 billion in outstanding repurchase requests with Bank
of America as of March 31, including more than $3 billion in requests
which were overdue by 120 days or more.
Bank of America was the
recipient of the lion's share of $12.1 billion in total Fannie Mae
repurchase requests, followed by JPMorgan Chase Bank ($1.2 billion),
CitiMortgage ($955 million), Wells Fargo Bank ($797 million) and
SunTrust Bank Inc. ($380 million).
Lenders must typically
repurchase loans on foreclosed properties, or reimburse Fannie Mae for
losses if it is determined that the mortgage loan did not meet
underwriting or eligibility requirements, if loan representations and
warranties were violated, or if mortgage insurers rescind coverage.
Bank
of America and Fannie Mae disagree on whether a multi-billion dollar
settlement in 2010 also applies to more recent repurchase claims,
HousingWire reports.
"Clearly one of the things that we at Fannie Mae need to do is work through our differences with BofA," Mayopoulos said in an interview with HousingWire.
Mayopoulos told HousingWire he will recuse himself "with respect to
matters that I had personal involvement in at Bank of America."
Freddie Mac's new CEO, former JPMorgan Chase & Co. executive Donald H. Layton, has made similar commitments with respect to his former employer.
Layton
receives deferred compensation from JPMorgan Chase, which services more
than 1 million mortgages for Freddie Mac and has underwritten billions
in company debt.
In order to avoid potential conflicts of
interest, Layton "has agreed to recuse himself in specified
circumstances from acting upon matters directly relating to JPMorgan
Chase that may be considered by Freddie Mac's board of directors or
presented to him in his capacity as Freddie Mac's chief executive
officer," Freddie Mac said in naming him to the post last month.
A
graduate of Cornell University and the New York University School of
Law, Mayopoulos has also held senior management roles at Deutsche Bank
AG, Credit Suisse First Boston, and Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette,
Inc.
Mayopoulos will take a pay cut, earning an annual salary of
$600,000 a year as CEO, although he will be allowed to receive the rest
of his $2.66 million compensation package for 2012, the Washington Post reported.
Fannie
Mae earned $2.7 billion in profits during the first quarter and said it
would not require funding for the Treasury for the first time since the
company was placed in conservatorship along with Freddie Mac in 2008.
Although
Fannie Mae has paid $22.6 billion to the Treasury through dividend
payments, the aggregate liquidation value on the senior preferred stock
held by the government remains at $117.1 billion.
At $11.7 billion
a year, dividend payments to the government "exceeds our reported
annual net income for every year since our inception," the company said.
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Q: After my lease was up, I asked to move to a different apartment in the building. Management charged me a $200 fee for repainting and new carpeting. But I didn't pay this fee when I initially moved in, and new tenants at this time don't pay it either. Is this legal? --Judith M.
A: Management has charged you a "move-in fee," which is a one-time fee that's intended to reimburse the landlord for costs associated with processing a new tenant. Typically, they include new keys, the value of management's time spent processing the lease and introducing the tenant to the property, and so on.
It's unusual to see such a fee include refurbishing costs, such as new paint and carpet. Normally, if a rental needs these due to abnormal use by the prior tenant, the landlord deducts the cost from the prior tenant's security deposit. If the paint and carpet need to be refreshed due to normal wear and tear, the landlord simply does the work -- this is known as upkeep, and while tenants indirectly pay it through their rent, they are not usually charged separately for normal upkeep.
Let's assume that new paint and carpet are needed only because the old has run its course -- normal wear and tear has resulted in the need to paint and recarpet. Your landlord is trying to avoid paying "the cost of doing business" by charging you separately for the expense. But this may not be legal, depending on the law of the state where you live.
California legislators, for example, got wise to this landlord ploy and amended the security deposit statute to require any upfront payments to be refundable, no matter what they were intended to cover (fees to run a credit check are exempted). The law specifically allows landlords and tenants to agree that the tenant will pay for alterations or improvements, but only if these are at the tenant's request, and only if these improvements are not for repairs or cleaning for which the landlord could have charged the previous tenant. (Calif. Civil Code Section 1950.5.)
You'll need to check your state's security deposit statute to see whether your legislators have taken similar steps. If nonrefundable fees are allowed in your state, you may be out of luck.
Q: Is there any downside to sending notices to my tenants via email, and not bothering with a hard copy sent through the mail? It would make life a lot easier. --Jeff B.
A: It's certainly tempting to do business with a keystroke. Under federal law, you'd be able to introduce the notice into court as evidence -- a court would not automatically deny it simply because it was sent electronically. But that's putting the cart before the horse -- you might need to be able to prove that your tenant received the notice, and that's something else entirely.
How do you counter the argument that the email "got sent to spam" or just never appeared? The only certain way to prove receipt is to use an expensive service, such as rpost.com, that allows you to send tamper-proof attachments and gives you reliable proof of receipt. This type of service won't be economically feasible for landlords who send only a few notices a month.
Relying on text messages is even riskier. Evidence of receipt isn't possible unless you undertake an exhaustive records search of the recipient's service provider, something that would never be reasonable in a typical landlord-tenant dispute concerning notice of, say, a raise in the rent.
It's far better to stick with a traditional mail delivery system. To be extra careful, mail your notice and do it "return receipt requested."
Tyler area home sales in May jumped 6.64 percent from the same time last year.
There were 289 units sold last month, compared to 271 in May 2011, according to figures released Tuesday from the Greater Tyler Association of Realtors. The latest home sales were also a 14.23 percent hike from April, when 253 houses were sold in the area.
Sales data trends are indicating a strengthening market, local Realtors believe.
Median home sale prices for May were $137,500, the same amount as they were last year, and a 6.59 percent increase from April.
Dr. Lawrence Yun, National Association of Realtors chief economist, said the housing recovery is under way.
“It is no longer just the investors who are taking advantage of high affordability conditions,” he said in a prepared statement. “A return of normal home buying for occupancy is helping home sales across all price points, and now the recovery appears to be extending to home prices.”
The number of days homes are staying on the market is decreasing, resulting in a tightening of inventory creating additional demand for the homes already on the market, Mary M. Smith, broker/associate at RE/MAX Tyler, said.
The Tyler area’s home inventory stood at 11.9 months in April, up from 11.6 months in March and 11.7 months in February, according to the latest figures from the Real Estate Center at Texas A&M University.
Home inventory is how long based on the past year’s sales rate it would take to clear out existing inventory, with no more homes introduced into the market.
Yun said the “general downtrend” in listed and shadow inventory has shifted from a buyers’ market to one that is more balanced. But, he said, in some areas it has become a seller’s market.
Ms. Smith said home buyers should start their buying process by considering their mortgage options.
“It is a good idea to consult with a Realtor about mortgages and program options before you find the house of your dreams,” she said. “With the tight lending environment, understanding your credit score and how it impacts your ability to purchase a home is a key factor in the buying process. If you start early with a lender, you will have all the information you need to succeed when you find the house you want to buy.”
Smith County saw 10 foreclosures in April, down from 21 in March and 24 in February, according to the latest figures available from RealtyTrac.
According to Freddie Mac, the national average commitment rate for a 30-year, conventional fixed-rate mortgage was 3.91 percent in April, down 3.95 percent from March and dipped to a record low of 3.79 percent in mid-May.
Tyler Homes
