the wasserblawg

I am a real estate lawyer. I help buyers buy and sellers sell their homes, their condos, their apartment buildings. One at a time.  Each deal I work on is the most important contract in the local real estate market. To my clients and the parties on sitting accross the table they are. And because each individual transaction is to each individual client, that specific deal is also the most important case I am working on too.  But in a wholly other sense, each transaction is part of a larger real estate marketplace. Each transaction adds another data point that economists and sociologists can pick over and analyze. The collective information gleaned from all transactions informs us all about the larger trends and patterns in our communities. The collective body of information gathered in real estate conveyancing and from census data, all helps paint a very different picture. It is real estate pointillism. Think of Georges-Pierre  Serat or Chuck Close .   ...

Homeowners - think back a moment to your last re-finance or purchase transaction.... How did you chose your lender? According to a just released study by Lending Tree & Harris Interactive , chances are you probably signed on with the first lender you spoke with. True?  Lending Tree reports that roughly 40% of homeowners surveyed went with the first loan officer they spoke to. As restated in a Forbes article on the report, 2 out of 5  buyers take the very first home loan deal presented to them, regardless of whether a better one could be had. Curiously,  96% of the survey participants said they compared prices when shopping for anything else besides mortgages.  Heck, the average consumer compared at least three home computers before buying. And special question for all the Realtors: How many houses did that buyer look at before picking "the one" to make an offer on?  The end result? Only   28% surveyed felt confident that they got the best possible...

A brief experiment with Google AdWords produces at least most unintended (but pleasant) result:    http://www.youtube.com/adwords10?x=459beb1a5a3a4028a1d562c03c60cc34

Buyers and Sellers (and the knowledgeable lawyers, Realtors, and mortgage originators that represent them) should all brace themselves as title charges are going up again as of January 1st. When an amendment to the State's Title Insurance laws  kicks in. Buyers should expect to pay at least $25 more on each transaction. Sellers will be shelling out at least $50 more. Those are minimum fees folks. Be on the alert for title agents who may charge more. Make no mistake about it either, the new requirements for Closing Protection Letter s are important. We will address the specific reasons why in a future post, but on the bottom line, they afford some  parties to a closing a additional title insurance coverage against losses caused by errors or infidelity of closing agents in the handling of the transaction. Important? A sk anyone who lost money when a mortgage loan was never actually paid off from the proceeds of a sale or loan re-finance, or who's ...

Cook County Homeowners - be prepared to put some of that gift-giving money aside.... those property tax bills that were supposed  to be mailed out back on August 1st are heading towards your mailbox on Wednesday and   will be and payble by December 13th.  http://cookcountytreasurer.com/default.aspx

It has long been a standard operating practice in my office to make immediate inquiry with Sellers and in the public records to try to ascertain the status of a seller's mortgage liens at the outset of every Chicago area short sale transaction I work on.  Buyers certainly want to know information like this as they determine how much (or whether) to make an offer in a short sale situation. If the deal is unworkable, why bother putting up earnest money or wasting time, right?  Do listing agents have a duty to disclose this, even without a specific inquiry? According to one appellate court in California, the answer seems to be yes. RIS Media reported today on a California appellate court decision earlier  this week ( Holmes v. Summers )  to the effect that r eal estate practitioners (Realtors)  have the same responsibility as sellers to disclose information they have that affects the “value and desirability of the property.”  In that case,...

A cautionary tale for all my friends and colleagues who represent buyers in real estate transactions. I had the good fortune to help a long time client close on her purchase of a three flat last Friday. In a year that has been replete with difficult transactions, this one was pretty easy. An all cash purchase of a bank owned property. Clean title to boot. (What can possibly go wrong, right?) The deal came together pretty quickly. We closed in just three weeks. It is a lovely building  (purchased by a delightful client). The bank that was selling had foreclosed on a developer who (like many others) had apparently run out of money before he could complete a conversion from a rental to condominiums. Overall the place was in good shape. The first floor unit lacked finish plumbing, fixtures and  appliances on the first floor, but the second and third were pretty much rent-able and ready to go. The purchase price seems a bargain. My client is v...