<p>Yeah…and we know how easy it is to evict a tenant. ;)</p>
<p>OK, I need some information and advice.</p>
<p>DH and I are interested in a particular property (the one with the tenant who won’t allow the house to be shown). It happens to be waterfront property and a significant portion of it is marshland – unbuildable. We’re OK with that, if the rest of the property is what it appears to be. </p>
<p>Even though we haven’t yet seen the inside of the house, DH and I dropped by City Hall today to find out about zoning restrictions, etc. The house is small and we would expand it, so we wanted to know what, if any, restrictions there may be. If there are lots of restrictions, we’d just as soon know it now, and walk away.</p>
<p>The nice man in the Zoning Department printed out the City’s official map of the property for us, and after I got home I spent a lot of time on the web site that shows this official map – and things don’t jibe.</p>
<p>The property actually consists of four separate adjacent “parcels.” On the official web site, a link from each parcel shows the acreage and some other details of that parcel. If the acreage is accurate, then the map is absolutely not drawn to scale. If the map is accurate, then the acreage is all *****ed up. Long story short, the listing alleges that the entire property is 2.8 acres, some of which is marshland. From my estimate, there’s no way – no way at all – that the total land is anywhere near 2.8 acres. It appears to be more like half an acre in total.</p>
<p>I do plan to return to City Hall on Tuesday morning and ask the nice man what their surveys show. But before we get too far down this path, who do I question about this – the listing broker?? Or do I keep it to myself for the time being and use it as a HUGE bargaining chip later, during negotiations? (Assuming we’re still interested.)</p>
<p>Boy – talk about caveat emptor.</p>
<p>you need to ask the owners to have a new survey done of the boundary lines on the property, in order to get the the bottom of this problem. Any contract drawn up should be contingent on proof that the property is actually 2.8 acres.</p>
<p>VH - Often the easiest way to learn where the legal boundaries are is to examine recent survey maps for the surrounding properties. The town Clerk (or in some cases, the Assessor) can point you to the appropriate maps. </p>
<p>(I say “legal boundaries” because in pre-Revolutionary areas like CT many “actual boundaries” have gotten, um, misplaced over the centuries.)</p>
<p>Did you take a look on Google maps? Google maps shows property lines for many if not most locations in the US that I have looked at.</p>
<p>You would get this information from the Title Company and if you want it before you make an
offer ask the listing agent. And yes, the owner should do a current survey - if you suggest it to the listing agent or your agent they should suggest to the owner to have that done for all buyers. They can be expensive for a larger property (where I am a property that size would cost over $1000 to survey), and sometimes the seller will try to get the buyer to pay for it.</p>
<p>Who pays for the survey and title insurance varies by historical state and region practice. As does the need for a lawyer to be even involved in a residential closing.</p>
<p>E.G., in northern NJ lawyers are typically used even in the cleanest closing, while in southern NJ, Title Companies routinely do the same job at a fraction of the cost.</p>
<p>Not sure if there was additional escrow fee and title insurance involved. But I paid about $900 lawyer fee for my Bergen County home closing. If that is above and beyond the escrow fee, that is expensive.</p>
<p>There may be an old survey. I sometimes find them at the building department and sometimes the owners have them with their mortgage papers because title companies usually want them. The legal description of the property should be around too, but they can be a bit hard to follow, especially if the property is not rectangular. I haven’t done enough work in CT to know what’s usual there though.</p>
<p>notrichenough, GoogleMaps doesn’t show anything. I’m going back to City Hall Tuesday AM to see what the most recent survey shows. If it’s still not clear, we’ll require a new survey.</p>
<p>Again, we haven’t even seen the inside of the house, so this is all just – fun, for now.</p>
<p>Does anybody have any tips about trying to find out about HOA covenants? We found a house that we thought was THE house last weekend, and I spent all week trying to track down a contact for the HOA because apparently none of them in this city have any kind of website. We’ve had this problem with a few other houses we were trying to check on before even going to see it-- since normally houses are selling as soon as they hit the market and there’s no time to spend a week trying to figure this out after the fact. IF I or my realtor can get in touch with the seller’s agent, they never have a clue about if there even is an HOA-- I even got “Oh… I don’t know… but if you find out can you call back and let me know???” I got an agent on the phone yesterday for a home that turned out to be bank owned and she said they got that information from the title company but it would take months… okay, the house will be gone by next week. For “THE” house I managed to get a contact for the HOA from the city clerk’s office and found out that their covenants won’t work for us, so the search continues. But I am thinking I can’t call the city clerk every week with six new subdivisions wanting to know if there’s an HOA and if they have a contact I can use. The houses will sell before she can get back to me anyway.</p>
<p>It’s getting so frustrating I am starting to not want to buy right now anymore. We won’t buy a property where fences are prohibited and it seems like it’s impossible to figure out whether or not there even IS an HOA, much less what their rules are. In most neighborhoods here there just aren’t fences whether they’re allowed or not, and when you see one you have no way of knowing if that fence was grandfathered out of a covenant or if it’s a sign they’re allowed. I googled twenty subdivisions yesterday and got NO hits-- which could mean HOA or no HOA but either way there’s no way to find out.</p>
<p>“^^^ Nothing in the East. Interesting.”</p>
<p>VH, I think it depends on where you are on the east coast. </p>
<p>“Within the five-county metropolitan area, sales were up 31 percent in Albany County while the median sale price climbed 3 percent to $195,000; sales jumped 43 percent in Rensselaer County while the median sale price climbed 8 percent to $186,300; sales were up 31 percent in Saratoga County while the median sale price was flat at $240,000; sales edged up 4 percent in Schenectady County while the median price rose 9 percent to $159,000; and the 18 sales in Schoharie County represented an 80 percent jump over the 10 sales last April, while the median price rose 4 percent to $83,000.”</p>
<p>Read more: [Local</a> home sales steaming past 2011’s pace - Times Union](<a href=“http://www.timesunion.com/business/article/Local-home-sales-steaming-past-2011-s-pace-3576791.php#ixzz1vz62pOuQ]Local”>http://www.timesunion.com/business/article/Local-home-sales-steaming-past-2011-s-pace-3576791.php#ixzz1vz62pOuQ)</p>
<p>Emaheevul07,</p>
<p>HOAs are usually made up of a professional management company and a group of residents who are volunteers on the board. You might ask some of the neighbors if they know who the company is or if they can put you in touch with one of its board members. </p>
<p>Another good source would be the realtor who specializes at selling homes in any particular neighborhood where an association exists. Many times this realtor is also a homeowner in that neighborhood and will have what you are looking for. This realtor should be more than willing to “go the extra mile” since you could be an important, potential, future client of theirs.</p>
<p>Edit: If it is a guard-gated community, go the gate and get the contact information of their employer.</p>
<p>
In MA, by law only lawyers can do the closing.</p>
<p>They typically charge around $500 for the closing, plus all the title work, plus they scrape 70% of the title insurance as a commission. </p>
<p>It’s a pretty good deal, for the lawyers.</p>
<p>I went to a party yesterday that I usually try to avoid. There was a realtor at the party that specializes in high priced homes. She told me that she has a client that is willing to put down 60 percent and borrow 40 percent for a home and her buyer is having a hard time getting a loan. The buyer is dealing with Wells Fargo. The bank has little if any risk in this deal.</p>
<p>The property is not going to drop 60 percent in price.</p>
<p>She said prices are going up for some places…but other places…no.</p>
<p>Also, one of the key factors is…luck. Some properties that should sell don’t…others…that probably shouldn’t sell…do.</p>
<p>dstark, I’m assuming the party was here in Calif. The 60/40 buyer should contact First Republic to see would be willing to lend to him. They are aggressively going after high end mortgages here.</p>
<p>Yes…ok…thanks…menloparkmom.</p>
<p>Ok…no action this weekend?</p>
<p>ema, they will send you a copy of the HOA covenants when it goes through title (I just got one, all 140 pages of it, sigh), after your offer is accepted. Before that, though, you should definitely talk to the neighbors about your concerns. Do they have fences? Even if you talk to the management or HOA themselves, they are always concerned about legal issues of talking about things…neighbors aren’t, and can give you some honest info. The management company should be able to give you info about fences, though.</p>
<p>I can always tell if there is a HOA by looking at the listing. Are you getting a detailed listing from your realtor? If there is a HOA, there are always fees. Try putting the specific address into Redfin.com, and they give you tons of info that your realtor might not.</p>
<p>I am getting listings, some list association fees and some don’t-- I don’t assume no fee listed means no association, the selling agents here seem like they are REALLY sloppy when it comes to these kinds of details, a lot of them will tell you they don’t know if there’s an HOA if you ask. There appears to be no way to tell for sure from the listings. I have checked realtor, trulia, zillow, etc in addition to what I am getting from the realtor and I don’t appear to be able to get any more information-- I don’t think redfin is in my area. And even if I can confirm there is an HOA, there appears to be no way to get a hold of them to find out about the covenants. I am stumped. I am trying to find out if there is a company that works with the HOAs like jshain mentioned but haven’t been able to find any info yet-- I have no idea where to look… are there any suggestions on getting to the bottom of that?</p>
<p>Is there a good way to approach neighbors to ask about these things without being intrusive or rude? I am not sure how to go about doing that but that sounds like it would be helpful. Some neighborhoods have a few fences here and there but most of the town doesn’t have them even though they are allowed in some subdivisions, they’re just not trendy here. And the neighborhoods that do have a couple, I have no way of knowing if they have an exception for an in ground pool (whichcase a fence is required by the city and trumps HOA, but we don’t want an in ground) or if they were grandfathered out of the covenant.</p>
<p>We have been so far away from making an offer still that I don’t actually know how all that works yet. It’s too late to find out about this once we’ve already put in an offer, right? I assumed so. </p>
<p>There was one new house put on the market in the last week in our search area. I didn’t like the neighborhood much, there’s a liquor store on the corner, so we didn’t bother to pursue it. I did talk to the agent to ask about fences, before I noticed the liquor store, and she not only didn’t know anything about it but suggested that I couldn’t afford the house anyway because it was definitely going to sell for above asking. We hadn’t discussed anything budgetary at all whatsoever, but asking happened to be 50k below budget for us and this wasn’t the prime section of town by a longshot. I don’t understand real estate at all, it’s like they don’t want some of these houses to sell.</p>