Advice for home sellers - Pricing homes right in a housing slump

The Asbury Park Press carries an AP story of interest to home sellers.

“The good news for sellers: Your house will sell. The bad? Only if the price is just right.”

That translates into taking a hard look at your listing price if you are serious about selling.

“The recently expired tax credits for homebuyers gave sellers a boost. Home sales surged and values edged up. The worst appeared to be behind us. But since the deadline passed at the end of April, housing has faltered. Job insecurity, tight credit and consumer confidence are undermining a sustained recovery, despite the lowest mortgage rates in decades.”

“Here's the disconnect facing sellers: The vast majority of sellers believe their homes are worth more than what their real estate agent recommends, according to HomeGain.com. At the same time, most buyers think for-sale homes are overpriced.”

And it doesn’t look as thought things will change for a while. What do you think?  How does this affect you?

Read the full article.

If you have questions about what you see here, contact

Stephen M. Flatow

Stephen's Title Agency, LLC

StephensTitle@comcast.net

http://www.stephenstitle.com/

Federal flood insurance program runs in the red

How would you like to live in home that is prone to flooding? How would you like to have it be “flooded 34 times since 1978?” Well, there is such a home, and there are more like it.

“In Wilkinson County, Miss., a home has been flooded 34 times since 1978.

“Extraordinary as the damage may be, even more extraordinary is that an insurer has paid claims every time, required no flood proofing, never raised premiums after a claim and vowed to continue insuring the house. Forever.

“The home's value is $69,900. Yet the total insurance payments are nearly 10 times that: $663,000.

“It's no surprise that the insurer faces huge financial problems.

“The insurer? The federal government.”

Billions of dollars have been paid to the owners of similar homes across the country and there is no end in sight.

Other insurers for casualties and liability are certain that the premiums collected exceed the cost of claims. But not with the federal government in charge.

“Instead it's running deeply in the red. A major reason, a USA TODAY review finds, is that the program has paid people to rebuild over and over in the nation's worst flood zones while also discounting insurance rates by up to $1 billion a year for flood-prone properties.”

In New Jersey, claim histories are not so great either.

As reported in the Asbury Park Press,

“For every dollar the National Flood Insurance Program has doled out since 1978 to repair flooded homes and businesses in New Jersey, 68 cents has been spent to repair properties that have been flooded more than once. Nearly one in seven of those properties is in Monmouth or Ocean counties.”

So, what do you think should be done? It seems that it makes sense that homes that are repeatedly subjected to floods are built where they shouldn’t be. Rather than continuing to pay claims, maybe the homeowners should be bought-out.

What do you think?

Read the entire USA Today report here.

If you have questions about what you see here, contact

Stephen M. Flatow

Stephen's Title Agency, LLC

StephensTitle AT comcast.net

www.stephenstitle.com

Tax abatements abuse New Jersey property owners

Two columns in the Asbury Park Press this past week highlight the use of real estate tax abatements to attract development.  Both columns point out that ordinary tax payers take a beating when abatements are granted because school taxes are impacted when abatements are granted.

The first column is Sunday’s editorial.

"A report issued last week by the state Comptroller's Office spotlighted the practice of municipalities from Hoboken to Millville giving out tax breaks involving "hundreds of millions of dollars" on property worth billions of dollars statewide.”

 “It also recommended a number of steps the state should take to ensure the tax breaks are benefiting the average citizen, not developers and their political friends.”

School districts are hurt the most when abatements are given since the property being developed does not pay school taxes.  Thus, in the words of the editorial,

 “[W]hen a developer gets a huge tax break, it does not mean a municipality's tax demands are correspondingly reduced. Other property taxpayers make up the difference. That's not fair.”

Columnist Bob Ingle also goes after tax abatements.  Picking up the editorial’s theme, he writes,

“Abatements can make the situation worse for the already over-burdened property tax payers. Consider: A municipality gives an abatement to a widget factory which hires 30 people. The town arranges for payments in lieu of taxes. School districts receive no part of those payments, but the 30 workers bring an additional 90 kids to the school district, which has to expand at additional costs to the property tax payers and state aid from Trenton.”

How about this case?

“In South Jersey, Gloucester Township in a six-month period handed out three short-term abatements to Wawa stories expanding to Super Wawas. The three are within two to four miles of each other. Why should property tax payers have to underwrite the expansion of Wawa stores? The company is big and wealthy and probably would have expanded the stores anyway.”

Well, this does seem unfair.  What do you think?

If you have questions about what you see here, contact 

Stephen M. Flatow 

Stephen's Title Agency, LLC 

StephensTitle AT Comcast.net

What can be done to control Canada geese in New Jersey?

Anyone who has tried to enjoy one of NJ’s beautiful parks and lakes knows first hand how foul the resident fowl—Canadian geese—can make those parks and lakes.  So, what to do?  Just last month someone decided enough was enough and killed 18 geese in Mount Laurel, N.J.

As noted in the Asbury Park Press:

“The butchering of the geese at the shopping center was a shocking reaction, perhaps undertaken by an annoyed resident or business owner, to what has become a growing problem in all corners of the state.”

“Towns, golf courses, parks and businesses face the choice of getting rid of the geese or letting them stay and dealing with the bacteria-carrying feces they leave behind. The towns and institutions that opt to get rid of some or all of their geese then face another choice: How to do it? Many of the options are unpopular. So is doing nothing about the problem.”

Municipalities and businesses around New Jersey have undertaken different ways to control the geese.  They range from euthanization to hiring dogs to chase the geese.  But as noted by Andrew Spears, superintendent of recreation for Monmouth County parks,

"The geese were taking over public facilities, lake fronts, golf courses and playing fields.

“Spears said Geese Chasers helps control the resident bird population by disrupting nests and eventually moving them to less trafficked areas in the park system. But Spears realizes chasing the geese from one place to another is not a permanent solution.”

 Read the full story.

If you have questions about what you see here, 

contact Stephen M. Flatow 

Stephen's Title Agency, LLC 

www.stephenstitle.com

StephensTitle@comcast.net

A close-up and personal look at housing collapse

Hollis R. Towns, executive editor of the Asbury Park Press, writes about a second home he has in the Atlanta, Georgia area. He's trying to sell the home and things aren't going well.

"I've always understood Main Street's frustration with the Obama administration and the bailout of Wall Street. The fat cats were made whole and the little guys were left trying to hold on. But you never really understand an issue until you are affected by it."

Mr. Towns found a buyer for the house, the present tenants, but problems arose with the appraisal.

"It was for $90,000 — $44,000 less than the list price of $134,000 and $34,000 less than the payoff amount. This, for a 3,500-square-foot, six-bedroom Cape Cod with a finished, walk-out basement, screened porch and bonus room, all on nearly an acre of land in a drop-dead gorgeous, old neighborhood."

The culprit is the undeniable fact that the house was located in a neighborhood full of foreclosed homes. Prices on those homes are, by necessity, depressed. That, in turn, impacts the value of homes where the owners have made every payment on time.

The lender was of no help--suggesting a "short sale" that would impact the owner's credit report and possibly have terribly adverse income tax consequences.

Read Mr. Towns' column.

[Note, I wrote to Mr. Towns in order to get more facts surrounding his original acquisition of the property; was it as his home or an investment property, and why he didn't sell the house when he moved. As of July 1, I have not received a response.]

If you have questions about what you see here,
contact Stephen M. Flatow

StephensTitle AT comcast.net