Long gone are the venerable days when you hired an attorney for $1,000 and he actually visited the courthouse to search title to the property you were buying. The closing industry has become so competitive that most settlement fees are 1/3rd to 1/2 what they were 50 years ago! Attorneys had a monopoly in Virginia…
I guess it only makes sense that if you are going to steal money from someone, you do it at a time when they have the most access to cash that most people will ever have: when they are spending their savings or the proceeds of a big mortgage loan to buy a home! Go…
IF YOU SEE SOMETHING, SAY SOMETHING!!! Your realtor is in a unique position to help identify problems that call for further investigation. Consider the surveyor to be like a good law enforcement officer. Even your closing attorney can’t help unless the realtor alerts him to issues that presented themselves at home inspection, walk-thru, or when…
While our beloved Commonwealth of Virginia prides itself on keeping up with the Joneses in all matters of E-Commerce, we have taken more of a “wait and see” attitude toward the most electronic of closing technologies. Naturally, big states with fewer Notary Publics per square mile would need to take the lead on electronic notarizations. …
Among the more common “creative financing” alternatives in Virginia are the “Contract for Deed”, or “Land Contract”, and the “Land Trust”. Creative financing often becomes necessary when you have a Seller very motivated to Sell, but who who has very little equity and does not want to do a Short Sale or rent the house…
Kudos to one of our legal network affiliates of Attorney Short Sale Negotiators who answered this question as succinctly and accurately as you could ever ask: Should real estate agents negotiate short sales? No. Absolutely not. It is replete with legal issues, risks, deficiency issues (amounting to tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars of…
