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2011

Blog Posts in 2011

  • McMansion - I'm NOT Loving It.

    Excerpts from "The Death of the McMansion" by Witold Rybczynski of Slate.com The U.S. housing market is going through an adjustment of historic proportions. Before 2006, when the housing slump commenced, American home builders regularly built as many as 2 million new houses annually, rarely less than a million. This amount was needed to keep up with new household formation, immigration, homeowners ...
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  • Finter Decker PLLC Announcing the Formation and Approval of Finter Decker School of Real Estate

    Schern Richardson Finter Decker announces the formation and approval from the Arizona Department of Real Estate of the Finter Decker School of Real Estate. Stay tuned for announcements regarding upcoming schedules and courses.
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  • NAR Takes A Stand Against High Down Payment Requirements For Residential Purchasers

    High down payment requirements being proposed by federal regulatory agencies as part of the upcoming rulemaking under the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act will unnecessarily burden homebuyers and significantly impede the economic and housing recovery, according to the National Association of Realtors®. Six agencies, including the Department of Housing and Urban ...
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  • Is Your Bank Ignoring Your Short Sale Request? New Legislation May Force Banks To Agree To Short Sales.

    The LA Times reports that: [m]ajor banks may be forced to let severely delinquent homeowners sell their houses for less than the loan amounts owed as part of a broad settlement of federal and state investigations into botched foreclosure paperwork, according to government officials involved in the negotiations. The requirement to allow so-called short sales would be in addition to forcing mortgage ...
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  • Home Resales Fall 9.6% In February And Prices Are Near 9-year Low

    Sales of previously owned homes dropped 9.6% in February and prices fell to their lowest level since 2002, reflecting a continued slump in the U.S. real estate market. The National Assn. of Realtors on Monday said home resales dropped to an annual rate of 4.88 million from an upwardly revised 5.4 million in January. The data is seasonally adjusted. Economists surveyed by MarketWatch expected sales ...
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  • Federal tax relief for loan modifications, short sale, and foreclosures on primary residences is only good through 2012.

    While the long-term housing outlook is beginning to look up, 2011 is projected to be the peak year for foreclosures during this market cycle. Distressed homeowners who are on the brink of a short sale, loan modification or foreclosure should be aware that normally, any mortgage balance on a primary residence that is wiped out by one of these outcomes is taxed as what the IRS calls Cancellation of ...
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  • Phoenix Foreclosures Are Sticking Around

    The W.P. Carey School of Business at ASU recently reported that in January and February 2011, foreclosure sales in the Phoenix area shot up to 43% of all transactions that occurred in those months. That rise is up from 30% in the final months of 2010. Out of 8,500 single-family home resale transactions in February, more than 3,600 were foreclosures. The median price for a single-family home in ...
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  • Can Arizona's Anti-Deficiency Statutes Apply to a Home Quity Line of Credit (HELOC)?

    The goal in interpreting a statute is to find and give effect to the intent of the legislature. Mail Boxes, Etc., U.S.A. v. Indus. Comm'n, 181 Ariz. 119, 121, 888 P.2d 777, 779 (1995). In determining the legislative intent, the court must first look to the language of the statute. Canon Sch. Dist. No. 50 v. W.E.S. Constr. Co., 177 Ariz. 526, 529, 869 P.2d 500, 503 (1994). If the statutory language ...
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  • Adam Decker and Aaron Finter - Presenting Current Legal Trends at Great American Title Agency, Inc.

    Adam Decker and Aaron Finter will be presenting current legal trends in the real estate law at Great American Title Agency, Inc. on April 1, 2011, at 11:00am for a luncheon. Please coordinate with Schern Richardson Finter Decker, if you plan on attending. We would love to see you there. Email Adam at adam@finterdecker.com or Aaron at aaron@finterdecker.com if you plan on attending.
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  • MARS Rule - Does The New FTC Regulation Apply To You?

    The Federal Trade Commission recently imposed a new rule on those companies providing mortgage relief to homeowners through short sales, loan modifications, and other mortgage relief options. The FTC issued the Mortgage Assistance Relief Services (MARS), Rule 16 C.F.R. 322, to prevent consumer abuses by sham companies claiming that, for a fee, they will negotiate with the homeowners' lender to ...
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  • Welcome to our Phoenix real estate law blog!

    We are pleased to announce the launch of our new Phoenix real estate web site and law blog! We have an RSS feed available for you here.
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