Monthly Archives: May 2017

Married couple + mother to buy property.

Hello and thanks ahead of time for your attention and help.

  • Our Intention is for my wife and I to put our funds together with my elderly mom and after she passes away the property to go to us with as little tax penalties as possible.

  • From reading around it seems we should buy the house with Joint Tenancy with Right of Survivorship.

  • Is this the best way to avoid tax penalties when later selling the property after she "leaves us"?

  • If my wife and I put in $250K and my mom puts in $250K… when we get Right of Survivorship can we claim the $250K she put in as part of the $250/500K realestate tax exclusion?

  • State: California.

We will talk to an attorney and accountant before committing but wanted to research as much as possible before hand.

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[New Jersey] Hello Reddit, we’re buying our first home in the US and we had a few questions.

Well, we've picked out our home, it's a lovely house that's going for about a million. We didn't plan on buying one this year, but we discovered the magical world of home loans and down payments so we were excited to get one. We expected something around a 20% down payment and at most 4% interest. But apparently, since we're internationals, we don't have an existing credit score. So we've been recently quoted a 50% down payment at 5% interest and that would be quiet problematic. Is there something we can do to get a more manageable down payment and interest amount?

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California – Buyer failed to perform – what next?

5/2/17 – property listed for sale

Purchase agreement prepared 5/3/17, we received and signed it on 5/7/17.

5/10/17 – Escrow opened.

5/23/17 – Notice to perform sent.

5/27/17 – Second notice to perform sent.

5/30/17 – Cancellation of contract/escrow and release of deposit sent.

My agent after speaking to their broker says that escrow cant just be cancelled if the buyers dont sign it. The buyers agent has basically gone ghost and not returned any calls/texts/emails/faxes and when they do, they returned stuff missing signatures/initials.

I want to just be done with these buyers, we're in escrow on our new house and its potentially holding everything up. What recourse do I have?

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I’m Self-Employed. How do banks calculate my income and DTI ratio?

What do underwriters consider income, if you're self-employed? I was hoping it would be adjusted gross income on my tax returns.

A lender recently told me that because I'm self-employed, underwriters only look at distribution income on my K1's when calculating my income. I reinvest my money pretty heavily into my business and don't take very much in distributions.

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Closing costs

I just got my loan estimate today, and the closing costs were much higher than I anticipated. Here is the breakdown:

Cannot Shop For: – appraisal fee 525 – appraisal field review 150 – credit report 100 – flood cert 10 – tax service fee 83

Services You Can Shop For: – TITLE- endorsements reconceyance fee $180 – TITLE – municples $520 – TITLE – pick up and delivery $250 – Title – Attorney Fees $925 – Title- Lenders Title Insurance $481 – TITLE – Owners Insurance $1,955 (optional)

Underwriting Fee – $995 Transfer Taxes – $4,680 Recording Fees & Other Taxes – 650

The sale price of the house is $450K and we are putting down 20% on a conventional loan, in NY, not in the city. Are these figures high or were my expectations unrealistic?

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purchasing with an my elderly mom

Hi, my elderly mom and I would like to purchase a property together joining our funds in the hopes to leave the property later to me. Is there a way to do this without incurring heavy taxes at the end? Does the 250K tax exemption help me in this sutuation. Say for example if I put 250K and she put 250K for a total of 500K? When she "leaves us" and we sell the property can her share be considered part of the 250K tax exemption for the property? Or is there a better method to join our funds and not get burnt by taxes later? Thank you all kindly.

edit: Excuse the typo in the title.

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First time house hacking, tenant issues. Need advice.

Hi all, I'll try to keep this short and sweet. (Skip to TL;DR for summary and questions for advice)

I bought my second home last year (first turned into a rental property), and brought in a roommate to help offset the mortgage. This was exactly one year ago.

From day 1, there were some major issues. I work from home, so made it clear that during the daytime hours, the home is basically my office, and I need quiet. The day this roommate moved in (who's about 12 years older than myself), his girlfriend (who wasn't discussed as moving in also), basically moved in with him, and after a month of her driving me crazy (bothering me while I was working, having really loud sex either 2 am or 6 am every day), I asked him to move her back to her house, and only be over on the weekends. Things were fine for a while, till she would show up Friday night and stay till Monday morning, still driving me crazy. They'd even get in drunken fights occasionally, with violent threatening of each other.

They eventually broke up 6 months later, that issue disappeared. But he has a cat that has constantly urinated on my stuff, destroyed my couch, expensive shoes, computer equipment, pees on my clothing, and poops in the corners of the house. His dog is lovely, but eats my plants in my garden (expected, dogs do that), so I put fencing around everything, and asked him to keep the dog out of the back porch patio when I had plants on the ground. Twice he locked her in the room and she destroyed my garden starters.

This guy then brought over a girlfriend and they had really loud sex while I was on a conference call for work. Completely unacceptable because it sounds like I'm watching porn or something in the background, and I pride myself in professionalism.

I talked to him today and gave him 30 days notice, he's mad, and argued that he's done nothing wrong, but ultimately said he'd find a place as soon as possible. We'll probably have a month of him being passive aggressive towards me and my girlfriend.

TL;DR Long story short, for a year this roommate has been an issue, causing minor property damage, loss of sleep, interfering with my work, stressful environment, and walking on egg shells. Talking would make things better for a few weeks, but then they'd get worse again. I got sick of it, so today asked him to leave in 30 days. He is mad, but agreed.

I've been nothing but angry about the issues we've had, but also now feel bad for kicking him out (he's getting a steal living here).

My questions:

  • How can I have a better experience in the future? Is there a good way to screen for potential roommates? Should I have a clear rental agreement going over crazy little things like "no guests over during working hours", etc? I've had tons of roommates in the past, but was always an 'equal' signee on the apartment leases, so being the landlord myself is new to me.

  • I have property managers for my rental property (and future ones, trying to buy a second one here soon), so I don't have to deal with the human aspect. This is business, and I'm trying to make money, but when I have to deal with people, like in this case of renting out one of my rooms, I have a hard time putting business and numbers over my desire for less confrontation (personal issues I am working on). Any advice / resources on interacting with people in a room renting situation as it relates to business?

  • Any personal experiences and thoughts are greatly appreciated.

Thanks all.

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