<p>"Those credit card rates don’t increase over time?</p>
<p>Maybe, at some point you can turn your heloc into a regular mortgage with lower rates on your residence?</p>
<p>Or do you already have a low interest rate first mortgage on your residence and it would cost too much to refinance?"</p>
<p>The credit cards stay low for 15 months, after which, we will pay them off when the interest rate increases. It’s just temporary shuffling. We have a 2.875% mortgage on our primary property, and I think we’ve milked every cheap cent we can out of that house. I doubt rates will go down lower, but I guess you never know.</p>
<p>Busdriver11… Ethically…there are multiple issues here.</p>
<p>The non recourse loans are standard business practices in many areas. There is nothing unethical about giving properties back to lenders. That is how the contracts are written.</p>
<p>Owners living rent free…that is up to the laws and the creditors…</p>
<p>Not paying HOA fees…I think HOA fees should be paid…But I can see owners not wanting to pay HOA fees because they are goong to lose their properties. I think they should be paid though. I don’t know HOA law.</p>
<p>Florida passed a law a year or two ago that requires the ultimate seller to satisfy all past HOA fees, but not late payment/other penalties. Buyer beware. It’s a good law for everyone. </p>
<p>Other good FL real estate laws/practices are; No lawyers required. Closing companies do a very good job at a small fraction of the price. And, (in my county anyway), Title Insurance costs are paid by the seller, as it logically should be.</p>
<p>My current full time job is to evict owners in foreclosed properties, so I learned a lot.</p>
<ol>
<li>Before foreclosure, the creditors can do nothing about eviction. I have seen ppl stay in the house for up to 5 years without fully paid the mortgage.</li>
<li>After foreclosure, it may take the creditors up to one year before the previous owners can be evicted.</li>
<li>During this time frame, the occupants may not pay any thing in terms of mortgage.</li>
<li>Not paying HOA could subject to legal actions, but it would be difficult for hoa to evict the occupants.</li>
</ol>
<p>For that reason, I do not buy occupied foreclosed properties that require HOA payments.</p>
<p>I am hearing that the east bay is heating up… Homes priced between 60,000 to 200,000… Many of these homes are dumps…are getting mutiple bids…some as much as 50,000 over asking…and the bids are all cash. Lots of Asians are bidding. Many are buying and renting out to section 8 renters.</p>
<p>Not sure about that, where are you talking about? I would never rent a house to an section 8, you are looking for trouble. Those tenants do trash houses and the repair bill is not worth the rent.</p>
<p>In the state of Washington, the HOA can put a lien on the property, and it can turn into a super priority lien. After a certain timeframe, if the HOA fees aren’t paid for the past 6 months, they can foreclose on the house and put it up for sale, with the bank losing their investment. So it is important for the bank to keep the HOA fees somewhat up to date, or they could lose their position. I wouldn’t want to buy a house from a HOA, this sounds like a lawsuit waiting to happen.</p>
<p>HOA fees on a condo pay for garbage, water and sewer, lawn care, upkeep and maintenance of the common areas and exterior of the condo unit. Doesn’t matter if you’re losing your property or not, you’re still utilizing those services. And some people even rent out their properties while they are awaiting foreclosure, making a profit while paying nothing towards their loan. Just because it’s legal and the banks are overwhelmed with too many properties to deal with, doesn’t make it ethical. There are plenty of shady things one can get away with that are legal, but it doesn’t make it right. Our society depends upon most people taking the ethical route, most of the time.</p>
<p>Really, really s… areas…as I understand. I didn’t ask if the places were condos.</p>
<p>One of the buyers was pretty wealthy and works in the stock market. He was asked why are you buying in these places when you work in the stock market and he said you can’t get these returns in stocks.</p>
<p>A friend of mine, who gets excited about every investment idea…told me he has no interest.</p>
<p>Figures, mathmom, that it would jump as soon as we sold, but it’s all good. We settled the estate the other day. So just have to deal with the final moving of some funds. Closure is good.</p>
<p>Painting is done. Carpet goes in on the 11th. Lighting, gfi, and other code-required stuff last week and this week.</p>
<p>Unexpected plus: the painter’s crew bought a lot of the furniture we didn’t want and had planned to simply donate. I kept getting emails from the boss – “One of the guys is offering $20 for the small table. Another is offering $25 for the leather chair.” And so on. Nice, because these guys know how to move furniture without dinging their freshly painted walls. </p>
<p>Only one big goof so far – we had a miscommunication on the front door with respect to the new handleset, which have smaller plates than the old one. They’re going to have to sand them and repaint the outside. Oh well. One goof isn’t too bad in the scheme of things.</p>
<p>On the pricing front: I’m hoping that as these newer sales close that the appraisers are seeing the upward trend in pricing. I keep seeing reports that in the San Fernando Valley prices are rising but the appraisals are coming in too low. Seems like a chicken and egg problem.</p>
<p>Our home, which we sold in 1 day, fell out of escrow 1 week before it was supposed to close. The story we got from our realtor (representing both us and the buyer) was they couldn’t obtain the loan that the lender said they could obtain in the pre-approval letter 3 weeks ago.</p>
<p>For us, the market has gotten much slower than it was just 3 weeks ago. For example, 3 weeks ago we had 3 showings within an hour after it hit MLS at 5 PM on a Sunday night. After going from pending to active at 9:30 AM Saturday morning until today (Sunday night at 6 PM), we got a total of 3 showings all weekend long. So far no offers have come in. This “4th of July weekend” is probably not a good time since many people are out of town.</p>
<p>I think we’re going to rent it for a year or so…</p>