Residential Real Estate Transactions

Before you purchase a home, you want to ensure it meets all the necessary criteria. You can do some of this in the search and viewing stage. For example, if you need a place with three bedrooms, you filter out those with only two. Yet not all criteria are so easily...

A short sale in real estate means that a homeowner wants to sell a home for less than they owe on the current mortgage so they can avoid foreclosure. Mortgage companies may lose out on money if this occurs, so they must approve any short sale that occurs.  Because the...

People often talk about looking for the right things in a new home. If you're interested in the residential real estate market, you likely have a list of things that simply have to be in the house for you to even consider it. This is a good place to start, but you...

In the United States, governments have the authority to take private land if it's being used for public use. This doesn’t mean that the property owner just has to accept what’s going on. They’re entitled to be fairly compensated for the property, and this sometimes...

Buying a house is a huge step in your life, and you don’t want to make any mistakes. The home buying process itself can be very confusing. It seems to have its own rules and language, and that can leave you on unfamiliar ground. One of the first things you need to...

You made an offer on a property, and the seller accepted. At first, you may have felt excited because the home met all of your personal criteria or was in the right school district. However, as you have gotten closer to closing, your situation has changed. Maybe your...

There are quite a few secondary expenses you have to cover when you buy a house. You have to pay for inspection and possibly an appraisal. You have to pay for the real estate professionals that oversee the transaction and the title services at closing. You will also...

If you're having a boundary dispute with your neighbor, it may begin when you notice that they're using your land as if they own it. Maybe they're putting up a fence and you can see that it goes onto your property, or maybe they added on to their house and now it’s...

You find a property that you like, but there’s a catch: It has an easement. In order to access their own property, someone who owns an adjacent lot has an easement to use the driveway. This saved them a lot of money because they didn’t have to create their own. ...

You like the idea of living in a planned community, but you’ve never dealt with a homeowners association (HOA) before. You’ve heard a few horror stories, so you have no idea what to expect. Should you be worried? The HOA’s covenants, conditions and restrictions...