Fort Lauderdale Real Estate | Buying a house or a condo in Fort Lauderdale | Selling your house or condo in Fort Lauderdale FL
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Direct: (954) 529-5505
Office: (954) 396-5900
RE/MAX Preferred
2810 E Oakland Park Blvd Ste 200
Fort Lauderdale, FL
(954) 396-5900
Cash-tra-tion (n.): The act of buying a house, which renders the subject financially impotent for an indefinite period of time.
http://www.cnbc.com/id/39909157/
Click on the above link for an article appearing today in MSNBC describing the horror story now going on between foreclosing Lenders and the Title Insurance Industry.
Earlier this month, I took up this problem with a major title insurer in our Fort Lauderdale market….who wishes all their cases were Bank of America, since that Lender gave Fidelity Title Insurance Company, his parent company, a blanket warranty of title for all properties they foreclose! He did not yet have an answer on what his company would do if the property was not foreclosed by Bank of America.
This could make all unsold REO’s non-saleable, except a sale to a less than knowledgeable Buyer that is willing to accept the risk of an invalid title, if that appears as an exception on Schedule B to Title Policies because
foreclosing Lenders deeding the property would not guarantee the insuring Title Insurance Company against this risk.
This MERS caused mess continues to be a tremendous problem; Lenders that developed and funded this MERS system, are apparently now having 2nd thoughts about its legality, because even they appear to be reluctant to
guarantee subsequent Title Insurers, and therefore REO Buyers, of good title.
In my view, the Title Insurers and the American Land Title Insurance Association, are correct in their believe there is a legal risk that the REO lender may not have acquired good title by foreclosure. The Uniform Land
Transactions laws, in my view, have been quite clear on this for centuries: Mortgages, and any subsequent Assignments thereof, must be recorded in the County’s land records, and notes setting forth the requirements for repaying that mortgage, must be endorsed to the mortgage assignee.
While this plays out, what will Lenders do with their foreclosures and their subsequent REOs? Are we, Tax Payers, to pick up that tab to bail out the banks for their deliberate screw-up?
I am not sure who is worse anymore: The Mafia’s bullyish scare tactics or the Lenders devious administrative practices?
All this could have been avoided if Lenders would have followed the laws of mortgage records and foreclosure procedures.
The internet is litterally oversaturated with thousands of sites offering the same thing but the first one who comes up with a new idea or product seems to imprint their brand which will forever remain the most popular on people’s minds much stronger than any others who copy original ideas.
And that applies to Realtor.com. In 1995, the National Association of Realtors® cornered the idea of gathering every single listing from every single local Realtor® association across the nation in a real estate site named Realtor.com (1) which also allows the general public to searxch listings. Naturally, soon, everyone copied Realtor.com but even to this date, people search properties on Realtor.com before they visit any other real estate sites because Realtor.com is the most accurate and reliable real estate web presence in the United States and, perhaps, world wide.
(1) ©1995-2010 NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF REALTORS® and Move, Inc. All rights reserved. Equal Housing Opportunity REALTOR.com® is the official site of the National Association of REALTORS® and is operated by Move, Inc.
REALTOR® — A Registered collective membership mark that identifies a real estate professional who is a member of the National Association of REALTORS® and subscribes to its strict Code of Ethics. Inquiries regarding the Code of Ethics should be directed to the board in which a REALTOR® holds membership.
The National Association of Realtors® (NAR) reported Monday that the July 2010 home sales (that includes houses, condos and townhouses) fell to 27.2 %. The media loves drama. Most reputalbe media had a field day with that NAR report by glooming their report with “This is the worse home sales decline in 15 years…. and probably caused by the termination of the stimulus package tax credit for first-time buyers at the end of April 2010″ making it sound like this is the end of the housing world.
OK. That’s reality. Get over it! This is not real estate doomsday. Here in Fort Lauderdale, Southeast Florida, yes the amount of property sales have slowed down some but there have been many, many sales in June and July. In fact, this month I am very busy working with buyers who are either making a local lateral move to larger homes or condos and snowbirds now preparing to buy something ready for the winter season.
Life may not be the best these days but life is gooood, nonetheless!
The late John Denver described it best in his song “Back Home Again”.
“It’s the sweetest things I know of, just spending time with you. It’s the little tings that make a house a home like a fire softly burning, supper on the stove and it’s the light in your eyes that keeps me warm.”
Listen to the entire song: 
In Fort Lauderdale, we have houses that give you that same longing “home” feelings.
John Bourassa, Realtor® with RE/MAX Partners serviceing Fort Lauderdale Beach. Call my “Sell” phone (954) 529-5505
The United States House of Representatives has just passed HR 5623, the Homebuyer Assistance and Improvement Act of 2010, by a vote of 409-5. This bill extends the deadline for closing tax credit eligible transactions from June 30 to September, 30, 2010. The bill moves to the Senate where the outcome is much less certain. The REALTOR(R) Association of Greater Fort Lauderdale will continue to update you as the events move forward.
Often times home buyers are excited about purchasing a house, yet, they are also insecure. When they like an area, they explore to study that neighborhood hopefully to see someone out in the front lawn or walking and ask those persons questions.
Ironically, the neighbors you know also know you and when those neighbors are probed by strangers, somehow, neighbors are compelled to tell everything they know about their neighbors.
Two weeks ago, I worked with a middle-aged couple down from Atlanta for a few days scouting to buy a house in Fort Lauderdale. After two days exploring different locales, one house finally flirted with their eyes. Instantly I could see that my buyers felt so happy in that house. I thought for sure we were going right back to my office to write an offer but, instead, the couple said “We’ll think on it overnight”.
As it turned out, the couple went back on their own to invstigate the neighborhood where that beautiful house stood. Three houses down across from the house they saw a younger man washing his car in his driveway with his two pre-teen children playfully helping him. The young man seemed trusting. My buyers stopped, rolled down their car window and began asking questions about the neighborhood but leading toward specific questions on the house they liked.
The young man answered the questions as if he were testifying before a grand jury. That young father apparently was not happy with the neighborhood plus he gave a low-down report on a couple of annoying neighbors. Finally, he disclosed a shcoking truth about the house my buyers were inquiring about – the house has a severe leaking roof problem.
Later that evening, my buyers called me, saddened. They decided against not only buying that house but also not to buy in that neighborhood.
They drove back to Atlanta the next day with a promise they will get back with me soon…
John Bourassa, Realtor® with RE/MAX Partners servicing Fort Lauderdale Beach, Coral Ridge, The Landings, Harbour Beach, The Seven Isles, Victoria Park, Poinsettia Heights, Downtown Fort Lauderdale and Las Olas area, Wilton Manors and vicinity. Call my “Sell” phone (954) 529-5505.
The cellular phone was once an imaginative, surrreal, device fit for fiction novel. Now, it is a taken-for-granted way of life and there is a big war perpetually going on among device manufacturers and service providers because they all out-do each other every month, so it seems.
As a successful Realtor® servicing Fort Lauderdale Beach, FL, a “smart phone” is a smart and indispensable mobile device to behold. It is litterally a small computer that has everything you need to be on the go, out in the filed.
Friday, I just replaced my 18 months old Smasung Instinct Smart Phone with the new and smarter HTC Evo 4G ”smart phone” (the 4 is for the new 4G streaming speed boosting the bandwith capability to download speeds averaging from 3 billion to 6 billion bits per second (Mbps), compared with 3G downloads that typically go no faster than 1.4 Mbps [quoted by Rob Pegorano in today's Washington Post] to but is only available in a very few areas of the country for now). It is supposed to be better than the current crazed Apple’s I-Phone but I can’t say because I have never owned and operated the I-Phone to compare the differences. I chose Sprint’s service over At & T, who is still the exclusive service provider for the I-Phone, because, considering Apples for non-Apples, Sprint offers an equivalent quality service at a less expensive monthly plan.
I am still not familiar with all those wonderous gadgets my new Evo has but the overall use is quite awesome. It is litterally my whole office in the palm of my hand. This apparatus is the third and latest installment of Google’s Android operating system which some say is now surpassing the I-phone technology. Plus, Realtors®, it has a built-in 8 mega-pixel camera with a flash that take gorgeous and precised quality photos, on the fly, and you can sync that puppy with your office computer with a simple USB conncetion or just forward them to anywhere you want. Another nifty and most convenient feature is the included Adobe Acrobat Reader to let you open and read PDF files.
Smart phones are teh thing now but I am sure that in a couple of months my new Evo will be obsolete…
In Florida, property taxes are levied by each county and their calculation formulas vary from one county to another. But, what that really boils down to is no matter what formula each county uses, the end result is everybody pays about the same for an equal valued property: in one county a homeowner pays one dollar bill, in another county a property owner pays four quarters, the next county a proprietor pays ten dimes, and so forth (I am not going to explain exactly how the Broward County property taxes are levied today – That’s for another blog, soon).
However, in Broward County and in Fort Lauderdale, property values have dropped considerably in the past four years and along with it a downward correction of our property taxes. Homeowners who bought at the height of the real estate market were paying property taxes through thet noze back in 2006-2007 but have been enjoying a decrese each year since 2006, as I have.
How long will property taxes continue to decrease? I don’t know but it seems that we have reached a real estate price stabilization which equally stabilizes property taxes until something drastic happens to real estate either way. However, that is not to say that Florida Counties who are running into deficits will not impose tax increases by simply augmenting the milleaqge rate (milleage rate is an adjustable factor or index used to calculate property taxes).
For more information concerning Broward County Property Taxes, visit the Broward County Property Appraiser’s website www.bcpa.net or call me on my “Sell” phone (954) 529-5505.
I could never understand why attorneys “practice” law. I always thought that singers, entertainers, ball players, etc. practice to perfect their skills before a performance. Do attorneys practice law so they will eventually get it right when in court?
However, performing real estate duties are becoming more and more law oriented – less selling and more worrying about keeping up with a plethora of new laws and regulations - maybe, soon, Realtors® will probably have to become para-legals first or maybe have a full law degree before they can sell or “practice real estate” (P/S: that is not true for now and, to my knowledge, it is not in legislation for study but I only guess that it would not surprise me if that were to happen in a near future).
The laws affecting real estate are constantly changing or morphing to more complicate and intricate stuctures. Almost every day something new is happening in real estate that somehow screws the public. Then, lawsuits fly all over the places and, before we know it, another paragraph is added to local or state real estate contracts.
I talk with my dad, who is 82, about two to three times a week about everything or nothing. My dad often reminds me when he and mom bought their first house back in 1947; a Sale and Purchase Contract was only 1.5 pages with no earnest money down, a man’s word, only one signature and a handshake. Also back then, when buying a car, the dealer would let people take a car home for the weekend and settle on the paperwork the next week. Or many local grocery and hardware stores operated on I.O.U. “Those days are long gone” dad sadly muttered. Now-a-day, contracts consist on an average of 25 pages or more with addendum, disclosures, release of harm, and etc. and each page must either be initialed, or signed, or witnessed or all of the above. And if any of the parties involved in a transaction makes a verbal promise to so something and don’t perform on his/her words, “who cares?” because it wasn’t in writing, signed, sealed and witnessed…
Since those days of honor, have people in our society evloved to become so untrustworthy, or have attorneys become smarter, or both?
Unfortunately, problemation is more often a deliberate endeavor created by only a small percentage of people who, by their deceitful agenda, make it bad and difficult for the majority of the good and honest consumers [who are the victims] when engaging not only in real estate but in all industries.
On the other hand, I am highly grateful that there are government agencies, associations and organizations (local, State and Federal) who protect consumers by imposing regulations, laws and continuous education for all persons who represent every industry servicing our Nation and other world countries. [Pertaining to real estate, it is regulated and overseen by state agencies like the Florida Real Estate Commission (FREC), the Department of Business and Professional Regulations (DBPR), and by each state Association of Realtors® under the umbrella of the National Associationof Realtors® (NAR) all of whom uphold mandatory continuous education with "core law" and "ethics", all for the benifit of protecting the public.]
My name is John Bourassa and I am proud to be a Realtor®. I don’t have one of those cliché goodie-two-shoes mission statements but for all my clients, I give them a just, dedicated and honest representation. Call my “Sell” phone (954) 529-5505
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