With 2012 nearly upon us, many of us will be spending this week reviewing the events of 2011 and setting resolutions, goals or visions for what we’d like to accomplish next year.

It will come as no surprise that the most common New Year’s resolutions fall into the categories of getting organized and getting fit — physically and financially.

Financial fitness includes getting your real estate business in order. But you can’t set up your real estate plans for the year in a vacuum. They must be done in context of what’s going on in the market. Here are four predictions about what that market context will look like in the coming year:

1. Even more foreclosures

While I’d like to claim crystal-ball credit for this one, it doesn’t take heightened powers of prediction to foresee an uptick in the rate of home repossessions in 2012. Last fall’s robo-signing debacle and the ongoing legal fallout from it created a massive backlog in the foreclosure pipeline, meaning that banks are taking many months, even years, to actually foreclose on mortgages in default.

Earlier this year, the New York Times reported that the additional hurdles New York state courts are requiring banks to leap in the wake of the robo-signing revelations, like additional settlement meetings with the homeowner to see if a modification can be brokered, have created a backlog of foreclosures that it would take 62 years to clear, at the current rate of foreclosure.

It’s pretty clear that in 2012 and beyond, the banks will work through those backlogs. The inevitable result will be an increase in foreclosures.

2. REOs and short sales will become the new normal

If you even know anyone who has house-hunted in the past couple of years, you’ve likely heard tales of the high-drama high jinks — super-long escrows, first-time buyers being bested by investors’ cash offers, banks resistant to negotiating for repairs — that take place in the course of a distressed property sale.

In the coming year, distressed home sales will continue to represent an increasing share of homes on the market. So, buyers will shift from considering whether to buy a short sale to understanding that they must be educated and prepared to do a deal with a seller, a bank (to buy an REO) or a hybrid of the two (to buy a short sale) to access the full selection of homes on the market.

This, in turn, will empower buyers to make smart decisions about what to offer and what to expect on any listing they like, as well as to set smart priorities and make realistic comparisons between listings based on their own personal priorities around timing, certainty and seller flexibility.

3.  So-called ‘smart cities‘ will do well 

This year, a number of housing markets saw double- or even triple-dips in home values. In others, pricing stayed relatively flat. However, in areas where technology powers the economy, home values prospered along with the industry. Silicon Valley real estate, for instance, saw fierce competition among buyers as the young employees of companies that went public like used their newly stocked bank accounts to buy their first homes.

I recently talked with Jed Kolko, chief economist for real estate search site Trulia, and his 2012 forecast was that so-called “smart cities” will continue to have hot real estate markets next year. But Kolko defined smart cities much more broadly than the California tech hubs. Other tech centers like Austin, Texas, and the Massachusetts suburbs of Cambridge, Newton and Framingham all made Kolko’s list, as did Rochester, N.Y. (a town known for its highly educated, highly skilled work force).

4. Consumers will get ‘hopeless’

I mean hopeless in the best of all possible ways. For years, buyers and sellers have been waiting for that singular event to occur that would cause a quick market recovery. But 2012 will mark the fifth or sixth year of the real estate recession, depending on who you talk to. I predict that those consumers who have not already done so will drop unrealistic hopes for a fast return to the heady real estate fortunes of the subprime era.  Instead, people will make their real estate plans based on:

• today’s low home prices, rather than the fantasy of what could happen if the market miraculously came back;
• assumptions of very low, or no, appreciation in home values for years to come; and
• very conservative estimates of their own finances and how they will grow.

As a result, buyers won’t break their necks to hurry and buy before prices uptick; rather, they’ll save and plan to buy when it makes the most sense for their finances. Homeowners will do the same; they will either refi, remodel and be content where they are for the long haul, or decide their homes no longer fit their lifestyles and their finances, divest of them and move on. But the good news is, people will make these decisions based on what is or is not sustainable for their lives and their finances, and not based on inflated hopes about what the market will or will not do.

By Tara-Nicholle Nelson, Tuesday, December 27, 2011.

Inman News®

Tara-Nicholle Nelson is author of “The Savvy Woman’s Homebuying Handbook” and “Trillion Dollar Women: Use Your Power to Make Buying and Remodeling Decisions.” Tara is also the Consumer Ambassador and Educator for real estate listings search site Trulia.com. Ask her a real estate question online or visit her website, www.rethinkrealestate.com.

While reading this article about the aggressive — and ostensibly legal — tax reduction strategies of Ronald S. Lauder (son of Estée), I was struck by this quote from University of Colorado law professor Victor Fleischer: “There’s real truth to the idea that the tax code for the 1 percent is different from the tax code for the 99 percent.”

The connotation? The super-rich have not only cash, but also elite access to loopholes and other advantages to which the 99 percent might aspire, but will never attain.

While the Occupy movement is on a mission to illuminate and shatter power imbalances between the 99 percent and the 1 percent, there’s another angle to take on the issue: Let’s call it the “If you can’t beat ‘em, learn from ‘em” school of thought.

Along those lines, here are four real estate lessons all of us can take from the 1 percent:

1. Take advantage of government programs/assistance. When the big banks — whose execs certainly belong to the 1 percent — began to experience the fallout of the subprime mortgage meltdown, they threw up their hands, pleaded their case, enrolled governmental advocates and got the bailouts we now know as the $700 billion Troubled Assets Relief Program, or TARP.

Yet many an individual American, whose personal finances have too much at stake to fail — at least as far as their household and local communities are concerned — struggle silently to make their monthly mortgage payment.

More than 20 million American households are upside down on their mortgages. The Obama administration‘s foreclosure avoidance program, Home Affordable Refinance Program (HARP), was designed to help 5 million homeowners refinance into lower interest rates and payments.

At last count, earlier this fall, HARP had actually helped only 62,500 seriously underwater homeowners, and fewer than 900,000 homeowners total — a number so low Congressional Republicans sought to wind the program down. The Obama administration revised the program in hopes of helping more homeowners. (In 2009, the administration projected 4 million HARP refinances by fall 2011.)

The Main Street bailout is here and, whether you think it’s sufficient or not, it seems indisputable that it is vastly underutilized.

In an effort to get more help to the homeowners who need it, the Obama administration loosened up qualifying criteria; the revised guidelines just kicked in on Dec. 1, 2011. The 1 percent looks to the government when they are down on their luck; so should you.

2. Take full advantage of the tax code. Many members of the 99 percent have decried the complexity of the tax code and its loopholes that favor the rich. Lauder’s son, for example, has reportedly deferred or avoided tens of millions in federal taxes by donating art to his own foundations, deducting of property taxes on an extensive real estate portfolio, making massive charitable donations, and derivative stock transfers — deductions accessible only to those rich enough to own such assets in the first place!

Besides the better-known federal mortgage interest and property tax write-offs, there are numerous, less well-known deductions of which “99 percent-ers” should take full advantage.

Some areas allow renters to take a property tax credit. Similarly, homeowners who switch to solar or installing a tankless water heater can get the federal government to help pay via tax credits, some of which expire soon, others of which will be longer lived. It won’t line your pocket with millions, but every little bit helps.

3. Pay for professional advice when it counts. You’d be amazed at the number of buyers, sellers and homeowners I’ve heard reference real estate advice they received from their parents, their mechanic and the other moms at day care — and that doesn’t even begin to count the folks who try to distill insights just from a headline in the national nightly news or from a story they overheard at the hairdresser about the amazing deal they were able to negotiate (and, by the by, everyone exaggerates at the hairdresser!).

I assure you, Mr. Lauder pays a virtual army of attorneys and accountants a pretty penny for his tax advice. And the rest of us should make the appropriate investment in obtaining experienced, local, professional advice when it comes to making potentially life-changing real estate, mortgage and tax decisions.

4. Don’t let emotion cloud your decisions. Members of the 99 percent often stay emotionally committed to a home or a list price despite the fact that it is absolutely a losing battle, the data completely contradicts our commitment, or that the living situation no longer works for the people who live in the household.

The 1 percent, on the other hand, will divest of a home or slash even millions of dollars off the list price of their home in a New York minute, if it makes business sense.

Obviously, it’s a bit easier to be detached from an asset when it’s not the only asset you have. As well, sometimes the 1 percent is a little too hasty to detach from all sorts of relationships that most of us in the 99 percent hold dear — from homeownership to marriage and beyond.

But we 99 percent-ers might do well to take a page from the 1 percent playbook when it comes to holding onto assets that have become toxic. Sometimes, it makes sense to short-sell the house, divest of it via a deed-in-lieu of foreclosure, or simply slash the list price, in the service of the household’s greater, long-term financial good.

By Tara-Nicholle Nelson, Tuesday, December 20, 2011.

Inman News®

Tara-Nicholle Nelson is author of “The Savvy Woman’s Homebuying Handbook” and “Trillion Dollar Women: Use Your Power to Make Buying and Remodeling Decisions.” Tara is also the Consumer Ambassador and Educator for real estate listings search site Trulia.com. Ask her a real estate question online or visit her website, www.rethinkrealestate.com.

Q: We just got multiple offers on my “vacation” house listed as a short sale. And so far, we have begged and borrowed to keep our mortgage current so our credit scores will be less bruised. But now that our house is in contract, do I continue to pay the mortgage? Our debt exceeds our income due to job and benefit loss.

Here’s my bigger concern: Since we are current, I don’t want the bank to reject the offers just because we have been current, although our financial papers will prove that our debt exceeds our income. –Cindy

A: There are a number of schools of thought and approaches to deciding whether to continue making your mortgage payments while you’re selling your home on a short sale, and your ultimate decision will require you to weigh a number of factors and see where your personal calculus of your own values and interests comes out:

Legal: Legally speaking, you have an obligation to pay your mortgage and property taxes as long as you own your home. While you might very well make the decision not to for a number of reasons (see below), it’s important to keep the legal contract you made to pay especially your mortgage in mind, as some lenders make efforts to reserve the right to come after you later for the deficiency (i.e., the difference between the sale price of your home and your mortgage balance). For this reason, it’s not a bad idea to have a local real estate attorney involved in your short-sale transaction, to help you negotiate a complete release of liability for the mortgage.

The moral/ethical perspective: Morally and ethically, some homeowners view themselves as having an obligation in line with their legal commitment to pay all these items. Others look at the various factors beyond their control that have forced them to short-sale their home, like the decline in property values and the weak employment market, and have made a decision that their personal moral imperative weighs in favor of protecting their family finances and children’s education funds. In that vein, some make the conscious decision to stop paying once they’re in a short-sale situation or on a clear path to foreclosure.

Financial/business: Once you know 100 percent that you’ll be divesting of your home in some way, shape or form, continued investments in the property can seem to easily fall into the “throwing good money after bad” bucket, looking at the situation from a strictly business and financial perspective. There is also a strong sentiment among many real estate professionals that if you keep your mortgage current, while applying for a short sale or loan modification of any sort, you decrease the chances that your lender will approve of the sale.

The theory goes that if you are current on your payments, you can’t possibly have the level of hardship you must claim (and the lender must believe you have) for them to agree to waive the deficiency amount and release you from the mortgage.

I’ve seen very mixed feelings on this in the real estate industry; on this point specifically, you should definitely talk with your listing agent and your local attorney, and take their advice into account — they might have worked with this bank in the past and be able to shed light on how staying current or falling behind may affect the success prospects of your short sale application.

Credit/ability to buy again: Right now, you are probably fixated on getting out from under this onerous debt, as virtually every homeowner in your situation is as a matter of course. But I’ve worked with a number of folks through this entire experience of going upside down, losing a home through a foreclosure or short sale and financial recovery, and I know that before too terribly long, you could very well be looking to buy a home again. Just be aware that most lenders will impose a two- to three-year waiting period after you have a short sale, if you were in default on your mortgage at the time the short sale closed (sometimes the waiting period is as long as seven years, depending on what type of loan you’re trying to use to buy your new home).

However, if you do not default on your loan and are able to get your lender to green-light your short sale, you can qualify for an FHA mortgage immediately. I don’t know your personal situation, and it’s been my experience that the majority of homeowners who have a financial hardship severe enough to even attempt a short sale need a couple of years to get back on their feet, but if you think you’ll want to buy another home anytime sooner than two years from now, you’ll need to stay current on this mortgage.

Just as there are many factors your bank will weigh in determining whether to allow your short sale to close, and on what terms, you have a lot of considerations to weigh in deciding whether to continue making your mortgage payments while you await their decision. I can’t urge you strongly enough to include your real estate agent and an attorney in your decision-making process.

By Tara-Nicholle Nelson, Monday, November 28, 2011.

Inman News™

Tara-Nicholle Nelson is author of “The Savvy Woman’s Homebuying Handbook” and “Trillion Dollar Women: Use Your Power to Make Buying and Remodeling Decisions.” Tara is also the Consumer Ambassador and Educator for real estate listings search site Trulia.com. Ask her a real estate question online or visit her website, www.rethinkrealestate.com

Homeowners facing foreclosure seem to be desperate to buy again.

Frequently, I receive letters from someone who hasn’t yet lost their home to foreclosure but anticipates they soon will, and wants to be able to get back into the market, quick-like.

Many claim their haste is because they don’t want to miss out on today’s bargain housing prices or interest rates. Yet neither seems poised to rise significantly any time soon.

In the same breath, many of these folks say they’re ready to pay top dollar for their next home, and pay an additional premium if they are forced to rely on lease-to-own, seller financing, or a hard-money mortgage.

Others claim they don’t want to miss out on the opportunity to build equity in a home instead of paying rent, or cite the tax advantages of homeownership as the piece they particularly want to retain.

My advice is almost always this: Slow down! Most legitimate loan programs now impose a three-year-plus waiting period after a borrower loses a home to foreclosure, even if they would otherwise qualify for a mortgage based on their credit score, income and assets.

Here are my four suggestions for how you can wisely use that waiting period to recover from a foreclosure — these steps also do double duty in terms of setting you up for success and sustainability the next time you buy a home.

1. Feel the pain.

Many folks who write to me are still in the early stages of grief at the loss of their home: anger and denial. They are angry at the bank, and in denial about the loss of their home and its advantages, from status to tax write-offs.

What I know is that getting through this grief is an essential first step to truly moving forward. Inherent in grief is an acknowledgement that something is dead and over. The acceptance of that finality is what allows you to move forward and learn the lessons that such experiences can teach.

As long as you’re stuck in the emotional protestations of how unfair it was that you lost your home, or spinning in a place of outrage about the Wall Street bailouts, you’re probably not making emotional progress to the point where you can begin to learn from your experience.

2. Metabolize the loss.

Henry Cloud, bestselling author of “Necessary Endings: The Employees, Businesses, and Relationships That All of Us Have to Give Up in Order to Move Forward” (Harper Business, 2011), recommends that we treat our painful past experiences as our bodies do food, metabolizing them by taking away the lessons we can distill from them that will fuel our future decisions, and leaving behind the pain and other toxic wastes from the experience.

Individuals and couples should take time out to acknowledge what has happened, and distill and discuss mistakes that were made and insights you’ve gained so that you can avoid repeating them in the future. It’s a meaningful method for progressing past grief and repositioning yourself to make smarter decisions about your money and your mortgage for the rest of your life.

3. Avoid rebound home purchases.

There’s a whole lot of what I call tuition — the price we pay to learn life lessons — involved in the loss a home to foreclosure. If rush in too quickly to the next home purchase, chances are good we’ll miss the lesson and get nothing for the tuition. This is evident in the gymnastics many foreclosed homeowners are considering going through in order to buy a home at all costs. These may mirror their willingness a few years ago to take on an unsustainable mortgage, which is what got some portion of them into foreclosure in the first place.

Trying to replace our losses on the rebound, be it after a breakup or after a foreclosure, is how people end up repeating their mistakes. Making new, unsustainable mortgage commitments and chronically overspending or over borrowing is no different from your friend who keeps repeating the same old dysfunctional relationship patterns, year after year.

4. Heal your finances.

My advice to foreclosed homeowners is to devote some real time to working on their finances, without worrying about buying another home. Get your debt paid down or off. Change your spending habits and your overall relationship with money. Get your taxes current and paid. Save some money. Create the habit of paying every bill on time every time. Eliminate unnecessary monthly expenses. Work the programs in “365 Days to Organized Finances or Financial Recovery,” or some similar book, or both. Focus for awhile on your career development.

By Tara-Nicholle Nelson, Tuesday, November 29, 2011.

Inman News™

Tara-Nicholle Nelson is author of “The Savvy Woman’s Homebuying Handbook” and “Trillion Dollar Women: Use Your Power to Make Buying and Remodeling Decisions.” Tara is also the Consumer Ambassador and Educator for real estate listings search site Trulia.com. Ask her a real estate question online or visit her website, www.rethinkrealestate.com

E-books, video books, blogs, Web videos and infographics now all contribute to the knowledge we need to help make smart decisions, especially in the realm of real estate and personal finances.

Because so much about our own personal real estate and mortgage decision-making is dependent on personal and local market data, like our income and home prices in our area, interactive maps and other highly visual, interactive online tools are particularly useful in surfacing insights that allow for a deep understanding of a real estate or financial issue, at a glance.

So, for a few weeks, we’re going to spend some time exploring not books, but interactive online infographics and tools, starting with the Annual State of Credit Map recently published by Experian. The credit bureau and financial data company ranked more than 100 metropolitan areas in all 50 states in the order of their average resident’s credit scores.

From a sweep of the eye over the top and bottom 10 cities, one pattern instantly emerges: Eight of the 10 American cities with the highest credit scores are in the Midwest (the outliers were San Francisco and Sioux Falls, S.D.). A parallel pattern emerges on the other end of the credit score rankings: Eight of the 10 cities with the lowest credit scores are located in the South (rounding out the list:  Bakersfield, Calif., and Las Vegas).

Experian points out on its graphic of the list that there seem to be strong correlations between a metro area’s average debt (that nine of the 10 cities on the high-credit-score list have unemployment scores below the national average. This makes sense, as it would seem difficult to pay your bills on time every month with no job and no income.

The report also found some regional patterns in debt levels consistent with the credit score rankings; six of the 10 American cities with the lowest levels of debt were in the Midwest, and eight of the 10 with the highest debt levels were in the South.

I was most intrigued, however, by the real estate and mortgage insights layered within the study. If you go to the interactive map, here, you’ll see that it allows you to mouse over individual metro areas and see a set of data points for each locale, including its average credit score, average number of open credit card accounts, average debt, population, unemployment rate, and the area’s foreclosure activity over a one-month time frame.

The conclusion is almost inescapable that cities like Bakersfield and Las Vegas, the two non-Southern cities on the lowest credit score list, made it onto the list as a result of the unfortunate one-two punch: sky-high unemployment and chart-topping foreclosure rates.

At the top of the credit score list, the reverse also seems to be true — Midwestern cities have been notoriously resistant to the real estate recession compared to the rest of the country, as have San Francisco and Sioux Falls, the only two non-Midwestern areas on the list. And this is backed up by the low foreclosure rates reflected in the data on the infographic for these areas.

I’ve long believed that negative home equity, unemployment and resulting foreclosure epidemics would take down credit scores far below what the credit bureaus even project, because my experience has been that the actual credit impact of a short sale or foreclosure event virtually never occurs in isolation.

Working and corresponding with thousands of homeowners in mortgage distress throughout the course of this four-plus-year real estate recession, I’ve seen a number of hidden credit harms of housing market distress:

• People who hope to keep their homes will generally max out their credit cards and fall behind on them before they begin missing mortgage payments (especially if they’re trying to get a new job after becoming unemployed), which impairs their credit scores;

• Homeowners who know they are going to lose their homes to foreclosure might miss the equivalent of two or more years of payments before the lender actually repossesses the home, damaging their credit scores every month before the final credit nail in the coffin; and

• Even those who seek to work things out with their mortgage lenders via loan modifications and short sales often are counseled to stop making payments to bolster their claims of financial hardship and boost the chances they’ll be granted the mortgage relief they need — again, dinging their credit scores every month until they either get a modification or finally lose the property.

There’s at least one other major hidden harm to credit scores that the housing market meltdown has had: People simply care less about their credit scores than they used to.

When you’re out of work and your credit is going to take hits no matter what you do, your home is a couple of hundred thousand dollars upside down or your mortgage payments double, you are forced to make your financial decisions based on considerations beyond credit score, like how you’ll feed your family and choosing between sending your kids to college and holding on to an upside-down home.

And all these factors, I suspect, might also be impacting credit scores in a way that even the most insightful infographic will never be able to surface.

By Tara-Nicholle Nelson,

Inman News™

Tara-Nicholle Nelson is author of “The Savvy Woman’s Homebuying Handbook” and “Trillion Dollar Women: Use Your Power to Make Buying and Remodeling Decisions.” Tara is also the Consumer Ambassador and Educator for real estate listings search site Trulia.com. Ask her a real estate question online or visit her website, www.rethinkrealestate.com.

Half of refinance applications are abandoned or rejected, as are 30 percent of purchase mortgage applications, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association. All told, the Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council (FFIEC) says that well over 2 million mortgage applications were rejected last year.

Want to avoid falling into that number? It’s tough — especially in light of the fact that mortgage lenders have become increasingly restrictive in terms of their lending guidelines since the housing market crash.

Here, as a cautionary tale and primer on what to expect, are the top six reasons mortgage lenders reject applications.

1. Income issues. Most failed applications falling into this category have income too low for the mortgage amount they are seeking; often, a spouse’s credit issues can create this problem, too, as the income the spouse plans to actually chip in toward the mortgage cannot be considered by a lender.

But increasingly, the recent vagaries of the job market are also causing this issue, as people who have changed their line of work or have changed from salaried employee to freelancer over the last couple of years can also have their home loan applications rejected based on income.

2. Muddled money matters. If the mortgage for which you’re applying plus your monthly payments on credit card, car and student loan debts will comprise more than 45 percent of your total income, you could have problems qualifying for a home loan. You might also run into problems if you rely too heavily on bonuses, overtime, cash wages or rental income — all of these can be difficult or impossible to get a mortgage bank to consider, and if they do, they might not take all of it into account.

3. Credit issues. Today, the mortgage-qualifying FICO score cutoff falls somewhere between 620 and 660, depending on which lender and which loan type you seek. More than one-third of Americans, by some numbers, have credit scores too low to qualify for a home loan. Even if your credit score is high enough to qualify, if you have any late mortgage payments, a short sale, a foreclosure or a bankruptcy in the last two years, loan qualifying could be difficult to impossible.

4. Property didn’t appraise. Since the whole industry had its hand (among other things) smacked for allowing home values to skyrocket in a very short time, appraisal guidelines have tightened up — some would say, even more than overall mortgage guidelines. So, it is increasingly common to have the property appraise for a price lower than the sale price negotiated between the buyer and seller.

This is especially common in the refinance realm, as well over a quarter of U.S. homes are now upside-down, meaning the mortgage balance owed is greater than the value of the home. (If you’re trying to refinance an upside-down mortgage, consider the FHA Short Refi program — contact your lender or get referrals to any mortgage broker who makes FHA details to apply.)

5. Condition problems. With all the distressed properties on the market, and with most nondistressed sellers barely breaking even, more home-sale transactions than ever are falling apart due to condition problems with the property. Many lenders will not extend financing on homes where the appraiser points out problems like cracked or broken windows, missing kitchen appliances, electrical problems, or wood rot.

And in the world of condos and other units that belong to a homeowners association, if more than 25 percent of units are rented (rather than owner-occupied) or more than 15 percent are delinquent on their HOA dues, new applications for refinance or purchase mortgages on units in the development are likely to be rejected.

6. Technical difficulties with application. The days when lenders just took your word for it are long, long gone. Applications with incomplete or unverifiable information are doomed.

If any of these mortgage loan application glitches arise in your homebuying or refinancing process, it’s critical that you connect with your mortgage professional, be it your banker or mortgage broker, to determine what course of action to take.

In some cases, it might be as simple as buying a stove you find at Craigslist and installing it before escrow closes; but with income issues your mortgage pro will need to help you determine whether it makes sense to pay some bills down, get a co-signer, or even wait six months so your income documentation will qualify.

By Tara-Nicholle Nelson, Monday, October 10, 2011.

Inman News™

Tara-Nicholle Nelson is author of “The Savvy Woman’s Homebuying Handbook” and “Trillion Dollar Women: Use Your Power to Make Buying and Remodeling Decisions.” Tara is also the Consumer Ambassador and Educator for real estate listings search site Trulia.com. Ask her a real estate question online or visit her website, www.rethinkrealestate.com.

A common question that we are asked when working with investors contemplating a 1031 tax deferred exchange is:  Can I refinance the property and pull out cash before or after I complete my exchange?  Unfortunately there is no clear cut answer to this question, but hopefully the information in this article will provide you with some clarity. 

 In order to completely defer all tax in a 1031 exchange, you need to acquire property equal to or greater in value than the property you have sold, and you need to reinvest all of the net cash you receive from the sale of the relinquished property.  Because of the rule which requires you to reinvest all of the equity, when you refinance right before or after a 1031 exchange, the IRS may question whether you refinanced to avoid complying with the 1031 rules or whether you did it for a legitimate business purpose. 

Under the step transaction doctrine, the IRS may argue that what you did in several steps (close your exchange as step one and refinance your property as step two) was really all a part of one transaction.  Under that theory, the IRS could take the position that you may be considered to have taken cash boot in your exchange.  If that happens, an exchange that you thought was completely tax-deferred would be at least partially taxable.  It is important to consult with your tax advisor when deciding whether and how to refinance properties that are involved in an exchange. 

Here are a few suggestions that you may want to consider:

• The loan should have a clear business purpose which should be well documented in your files.  For example, the maturity date of the loan may be approaching and you may want to set up a refinance prior to the exchange in case the exchange does not go through.  Other potential business purposes may be to get a lower interest rate or to buy property that is not a part of the exchange. 
• If you schedule your refinance and exchange so that there is as much time in between them as possible, it should make it less likely that you are audited concerning this issue.  It should also strengthen your argument that the refinance was not set up to avoid the 1031 exchange rules.  If you intend to refinance your relinquished property, you may want to refinance it before you list it for sale.  
• Some tax advisors believe that it is better to refinance the replacement property after an exchange rather than to refinance the relinquished property before an exchange.

In any event, it is important to consider the risks and discuss your plans with your tax advisor. 

from the First American Exchange Company October Newsletter “The Exchange Update”

Q: How far can you go back on a contract? Before the closing, the seller was supposed to fix certain outlets that the home inspector had marked. Well, call me an electrical idiot, but I eventually learned that the seller didn’t fix them per the contract. Dumb me for not getting the free second walk-through inspection. I usually learn things the hard way. This is one of them. Any input would be helpful. This was my first home purchase. –Morganne B.

A: More than one thing went wrong in your transaction, from my perspective. Obviously, the seller should have had the outlets repaired — it sounds like the outlets were possibly ungrounded or simply nonfunctioning. However, if that was in writing, you and your agent should have verified that the outlets had been repaired before you removed your inspection contingency — and certainly before you closed the transaction.

Here’s how you can think about — and rethink — these neglected repairs:

1. There’s a no-return policy on homes. OK, that’s not technically true — there is a legal claim called rescission, but courts are extremely hesitant to do that, because real estate transactions just aren’t that simple to undo.

Even if it’s a big fix that needs to be done, unless there was a massive case of fraud on the seller’s part about something that would have changed the normal buyer’s decision-making about the house, or a seller’s signature was forged or something on that order, the chances of “going back” on a contract, so to speak, are between slim and none.

In a court of law, in your case, things could go one of two ways depending, in part, on the laws of your state and the paperwork involved: A judge might order the seller to pay your damages (i.e., the costs of fixing the outlets) or not (you waived your contingencies and so might have taken on liability for the repairs, because you didn’t insist on them being completed while you had your chance).

2. Ask yourself: Are the dollars worth the drama? If you haven’t already had the outlets repaired, get ‘em fixed or, at the very least, get an estimate. [Note -- First things first: if you believed the outlets were in good repair when you closed escrow, you might be able to get your home warranty company to cover the repairs, and you should contact them and inquire about coverage before you do anything else.]

Depending on how many outlets we’re talking, chances are good you’re looking at a few hundred bucks, max. Clearly, a couple hundred dollars is not worth the missed work and drama of a legal proceeding.

If, for some reason, the cost of repairs turns out to run into the thousands, you may want to consider a small claims court case against the sellers, but know going in that even small claims court cases can take tens of hours and hundreds of dollars to file, serve and prepare — and that’s not to mention the missed work of sitting in court for the proceedings and the drama and antagonism that comes with any sort of litigation, no matter how small.

3. Try easy. On real estate condition issues that arise post-closing, I always tell buyers that there’s an easy way and a hard way to address the issue. And though our culture is very fond of telling people to try hard, I suggest trying easy first.

First off, call your real estate broker or agent and tell him what’s going on. Dozens of times, I have seen these issues get resolved with a couple of phone calls and a faxed estimate or repair receipt.

Your broker might turn out to be your advocate in this situation, especially as there’s an argument that he should have advised you against actually removing your inspection contingencies and/or closing the deal unless and until those outlets could be verified to have been repaired.

If that doesn’t work, you or your broker should write the seller a note, through her broker, attaching the contractual documents in which she agreed to complete the repairs, as well as the electrician’s receipt or estimate showing both (a) that the repairs were not done and (b) what the costs of repairs will be or were. Your note should then ask the seller to pay for these repairs.

The chances you’ll recoup your repair costs by trying easy are probably quite a bit better than you think.

If not, assuming those costs don’t quite rise to the level where legal action is cost-effective, you might want to chalk this up to tuition — the cost you pay to learn a life lesson — and be glad this lapse in attention to detail and double- and triple-checking didn’t cost you much, much more.

By Tara-Nicholle Nelson, Thursday, October 6, 2011.

Inman News™

Tara-Nicholle Nelson is author of “The Savvy Woman’s Homebuying Handbook” and “Trillion Dollar Women: Use Your Power to Make Buying and Remodeling Decisions.” Tara is also the Consumer Ambassador and Educator for real estate listings search site Trulia.com. Ask her a real estate question online or visit her website, www.rethinkrealestate.com.

Whether you’ve rented your whole life or own a portfolio of properties, you’ve undoubtedly heard the real estate saying, “Location, location, location,” which simply means that a home‘s value is highly dependent upon, well, its location!

The timeless truth of this saying is beyond dispute, even in tough times like these for the housing market. The recessionary fates and foreclosure rates of an individual housing market are highly dependent upon the economic and employment prospects of that market, and even the desirability of an individual neighborhood or lot.

However, there are some other age-old pieces of real estate wisdom that haven’t stood the test of time as well as the location adage. Here are three pieces of conventional real estate wisdom that are due for a refresh.

1. Paying off your mortgage is bad. At the top of the market, many an infomercial pusher espoused borrowing against your home to buy more homes, creating an empire. While that worked for some, for awhile, you can see how that turned out.

But even now, traditional and conservative financial advisers still say that paying off your mortgage is not the best use of cash, as your mortgage interest is tax deductible, and the better use of the funds is to invest them for growth.

For folks who can and are inclined to pay their homes off, though, this rule is off-target. Paying off your home is less about making the most assertive financial move possible, and more about creating security, fixing a low set of living expenses, and hedging against economic and job market uncertainty.

The best practice in today’s economy is to make money moves that create maximum sustainability and minimum stress; if that means paying your mortgage off, then do it.

2. Don’t upgrade your house beyond the level of neighboring homes. Real estate insiders have long observed that buyers are hesitant to pay a premium to buy the best house on an otherwise modest block. And I’ve seen this in full effect, especially when the so-called best house is a three-story castle that has been expanded all the way to the fences, complete with turrets, spotlights and cherub statuary, on a street of one-story ranchers.

Customizing a home with bizarre features, beyond all reason, does make it harder to sell later. But adding features and upgrades that make your life in your home mirror your dream life, or create the comfort and lifestyle your family craves? If you can afford it without draining your home of equity or going into consumer debt, go for it, especially if you plan to be in the property over the long term.

It’s your home, not just another financial asset, and one of the major advantages of ownership is your ability to create a comfortable, personalized habitat for your life.

Don’t necessarily expect to get back your investment in upgrades dollar for dollar, and do avoid making bizarre customizations (hot tub in the living room, anyone?) unless you’re OK with reversing them when you do list the place for sale, but don’t hold back on creating a custom home experience for your family and your lifestyle because you heard it’s a bad investment.

3. The bigger the agent’s car/diamond/hair, the more successful she must be. The real estate industry is a-changing. More than 90 percent of homebuyers start their house hunt on the Internet. And that makes it much harder to tell at a glance who has the stuff to be successful at the endeavor of helping you buy or sell a home.

An agent who drives a Toyota and lacks Kardashian-style bling might even be more likely to have the technology skills it takes to market and sell your home in the Web-centric home marketplace, and to communicate with you via email, text and Facebook message — pick your poison — than the flashiest agent in town. Also, the agents who can hang in there and persevere on tough or small deals on today’s market are often the ones who have manageable expenses of their own.

When picking an agent, disregard your agent’s car, shoes and accoutrements (except maybe their tech tools: laptops, tablets and phones are important tools for them to have and use, prolifically).

So what does matter? Her track record of helping buyers or sellers similarly situated to you (e.g., her list-to-sale-price ratio or history of success at getting bank approval on short sales, if you’re selling a home, or her ability to close deals on bank-owned properties, if you’re buying).

Check prospective agents out by getting referrals from people you know that rave about their agent, checking online real estate forums to see if the agent is participating in online conversations about homes in your area, and asking for references from recent clients who can vouch for the agent’s skills.

By Tara-Nicholle Nelson, Wednesday, October 5, 2011.

Inman News™

Tara-Nicholle Nelson is author of “The Savvy Woman’s Homebuying Handbook” and “Trillion Dollar Women: Use Your Power to Make Buying and Remodeling Decisions.” Tara is also the Consumer Ambassador and Educator for real estate listings search site Trulia.com. Ask her a real estate question online or visit her website, www.rethinkrealestate.com.