Columns

With 2013 here, you may be considering purchasing your first home or investing in a second property. The biggest challenge you may face is coming up with the down payment. There are a variety of loan programs with different down payment levels. The most common are FHA loans, which offers options as low as 3.5 percent, and conventional program, which often require 20 percent down. Making more money is easier said than done for many, but truth be told, you already may have your down payment hidden in other resources you never even thought of. Many times, eliminating a bad …

I have told you in several recent columns about the amazing data available for free at familysearch.org. Now I have more information about ways to share the family tree you already have. You need to have an account at familysearch.org in order to use the new features. All you need is to enter your name, and create a user name and password. There are a few more questions, but “credit card number” is NOT among them. Whew! The new feature is quite thorough and could be extremely helpful. It allows you to upload your family tree to the web site, …

Back before the financial crisis of 2008, banks and brokers were able to use whichever appraisers they wanted. They decided which ones to use, and the compensation for those services was decided between the two parties. It wasn’t until late 2008 that then New York Attorney General and now Governor Andrew Cuomo pressed Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to buy only mortgages that had originated from a third-party AMC, or appraisal management company. They called this change HVCC, or the Home Valuation Code of Conduct. Why was this put in place? Well, Cuomo’s office found out that Washington Mutual, which …

Quite often a good friend or member of your family will have a will or trust drawn up and ask you to act as the executor or trustee. You may feel honored and compelled to accept this office. This article is intended to provided a very basic overview of the estate administration process: gathering of estate data; payment of debts, expenses and taxes; and the distribution of the estate in accordance with the provisions left behind by the deceased. This article is not intended to provide legal advice. As the personal representative, you are primarily responsible for settling the affairs …

One of the biggest fears of home buyers is the unpredictability in home-related costs, whether it’s a necessary large repair or a bunch of smaller unexpected costs. Property tax increases can be one of the largest unexpected costs. Imagine this, you qualify for a 30-year-fixed mortgage, and along with that you set up an escrow account with the lender so you will not have to worry about the tax bill when it’s due to the county twice a year. One day you receive a letter from your bank informing you the mortgage payment will be going up due to an …

Happy 2013! I hope your holidays were filled with laughter, joy, cool presents, warm memories and a few genealogical discoveries! Did you make your New Year’s resolutions yet? I resolved to lose 40 pounds, and even though I lost it, I ended up finding it again! Please keep your genealogical resolutions separate from your regular goals for the new year. For one thing, you want to actually try to accomplish the genealogical ones! I don’t want you all to give up too easily. So what should be your goal this year? That is a complicated question. I have written a …

The “no doc” or no-income-documentation loan was a type of mortgage that required little or no income verification. This loan was put together on behalf of self-employed or commission workers who tend to write off expenses or who use different taxes breaks to lower their income to pay less in income taxes. The way the loan worked, you would state what your income was but it was not verified. So if you said that you made $10,000 gross per month, that is the amount that was used to see if you could be approved for the mortgage. Typically, you would …

It never fails. Prospective clients come into the office who are very old or very ill, proclaiming that they have powers of attorney. We take one look at the documents and realize that they are outdated and nearly worthless. Why? Because their powers of attorney are just “plain-vanilla.” There are no specific authorizations inserted for * public benefits planning, Medicaid, Medicare, etc. * Social Security elections * retirement planning elections * gifting for Medicaid benefits planning or tax planning * account changes * options for housing changes * tax planning authority Be careful though, some of these powers can create …

Whether your purchasing a home or living in it, it’s crucial that you check it for radon levels, and take appropriate actions if there are problems. A radioactive gas, radon is the second leading cause of lung cancer in the United States, according to the Surgeon General. Colorless and odorless, radon can only be detected using the proper equipment. Radon can enter your home through many different avenues. Since the air pressure in your home is typically lower than the pressure underneath the foundation, your home acts like a vacuum drawing the gas inside. The most common way is through …

In a number of columns, I have mentioned the massive project by the Mormons (Latter Day Saints or LDS) to take the 2.5 million microfilms they have created over the decades, and to digitize and index them. Digitizing is just the process of converting a film image to a digital image for the internet. They have to do that project on their own because the film is in their possession. Indexing the records is another matter. Each microfilm has about 1500-2000 images. Each image may have 1 record or many. For example, a register is a list of 50 names …