How to sell your home fast

Whether you’re facing a job transfer, impending foreclosure, or an escalating adjustable rate mortgage, there are many reasons you may need to sell your home quick. Unfortunately, selling a home can be a discouraging process, although taking the right steps can speed the process along. Even in a slow housing market, you can sell your home faster with a few basic strategies.

Take quality photos

A vast percentage of modern-day home searches start on the Internet, so high-quality photos are essential. Rent a wide angle photo lens to make rooms appear larger. Open curtains on a sunny day to let in plenty of natural light and show off your home’s best features. You may even recruit a professional photographer to capture your home’s best side.

Market your home

Marketing is critical. The personal connections and resources of realtors can help, but homeowners can even market and sell their own home with the help of web sites like FSBO.com or ByOwner.com. Yard signage and a listing on the multiple listing service is available through such sites. Other avenues include social media like Twitter, Facebook, and You Tube videos.

Price it correctly

Look at comparables, get an inspection, and consult an appraiser and realtor before setting the price on your home. However, when the housing market is in a slump, you are much less likely to get full value for your home, so get ready to compromise. If your home stalls on the market, act fast and slash the price by 10 percent. Incremental decreases are not drastic enough to catch attention. Lower the price and sell it faster.

Remove all clutter and personal effects

Family photos, kids’ artwork, knick-knacks, pet bowls, general clutter, and anything else that speaks about your personal life should be removed. Enable visitors to envision your home as their own. Consider hiring a professional home stager for an objective eye to help make your home more appealing.

Buyer Incentives

Offer to pay closing costs, or one year’s worth of property taxes or homeowner’s association fees. More creatively, you could spring for a maid or landscaping service. Incentives can increase the number of looks you’ll get, thus increasing the odds of getting an offer and selling your home fast.

Tax benefits for first-time home buyers

If you have been waiting for the right time to buy your first home, 2009 is your year. There have always been many tax benefits to home ownership, but recently passed legislation makes the deal even sweeter for first-time home buyers. In response to the housing market decline, the federal government is offering first-time purchasers a tax credit of up to $8,000 that does not have to be repaid if the home is owned for at least three years.

The tax credit is equivalent to 10 percent of the home’s purchase price, capped at $8,000. Eligible taxpayers must purchase their first home before December 1, 2009 and their adjusted gross income must not exceed $75,000 per person, or $150,000 per married couple.

In addition to the new tax credit, first-time home buyers may be quite surprised at how many other tax benefits await. The interest on a first-home or second-home mortgage is fully deductible up to $1 million. The interest on up to $100,000 of home equity debt is also tax-deductible, regardless of what the loan is used for. This is a tremendous benefit because interest payments consume the vast majority of payments over the first several years.

Loan discount points and origination fees, commonly grouped into closing costs, are tax-deductible for home buyers – even if the seller pays closing costs. In terms of loan origination fees, for example, this typically means you could deduct 1% or more of the home’s purchase price.

Best of all, profit of up to $250,000 per individual ($500,000 per married couple) off the sale of a home is non-taxable income. Any profit beyond that is subject to capital gains tax. The caveat is the taxpayer must have lived in the home at least 24 months out of the previous five years, but the 24 months do not need to be consecutive. Add to this the fact that homeownership-related tax deductions often allow taxpayers to reach a point where they can itemize other smaller deductions like charitable giving, and homeownership begins to look quite profitable. When handled correctly and within your financial means, buying a home can truly be a winning deal.

OAITA and ELTA file lawsuit against ODI

TO: Press, TV and Radio stations in Cleveland, Columbus, Cincinnati, Dayton, Akron, and Toledo.


Contact person: Robert B. Holman, Esq.
OAITA (440) 232-9911

SUBJECT: INDEPENDENT TITLE AGENTS FILE NEW LAWSUIT AGAINST OHIO DEPARTMENT OF INSURANCE.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

The Ohio Association of Independent Title Agents (OAITA) (http://www.oaita.org/) and Eagle Land Title Agency, Inc. have filed a new lawsuit in the Franklin County Court of Common Pleas against Mary Jo Hudson, Director of the Ohio Department of Insurance. OAITA, an association of independent title insurance agents in Ohio, and Eagle Land Title Agency, Inc., an independent title insurance agency licensed by the Ohio Department of Insurance seek to prevent the spread of kickbacks and referral schemes in the real estate industry by asking the Franklin County Court of Common Pleas to declare that the Director of the Ohio Department of Insurance must enforce currently existing rules prohibiting banks, real estate companies and mortgage brokers and their subsidiaries from engaging in the business of title insurance pursuant to Ohio law.

OAITA and Eagle are represented in the newly-filed lawsuit by E. Bruce Hadden, Gregory W. Happ and Robert B. Holman. The lawsuit alleges that Director Hudson failed to enforce current administrative rules based on long-standing Ohio statutes that prohibit banks, real estate companies or mortgage brokers, or any of their subsidiaries, from unlawfully steering Ohio homeowners and their real estate transactions to title insurance agencies owned all or in part by those same banks, real estate companies or mortgage brokers. The suit alleges that ownership of title insurance agencies by banks, real estate companies or mortgage brokers, known as controlled business arrangements, creates dangerous conflicts of interest by allowing those banks, real estate companies and mortgage brokers to obtain kickbacks and referral fees for steering Ohio homeowners to their own controlled title agencies. The lawsuit alleges that such conflicts of interest violate Ohio statutes and that Director Hudson has failed to construe newly enacted rules in accordance with the long-standing law.

The suit is an important step towards reducing the overreaching power and influence a bank, real estate company and mortgage broker have over a homeowner’s real estate transaction and, in particular, a homeowner’s statutorily protected choice of title insurance provider. The lawsuit is important since many homeowners do not even realize such a choice exists. By permitting banks, mortgage brokers and real estate companies to move into the title insurance business, the lawsuit alleges that the ODI’s inaction has helped to feed the pervasive greed that has overwhelmed the real estate industry in recent years. Considering the well-known impacts of the mortgage industry meltdown and the rise in foreclosures across the country, homeowners across Ohio are well-served by the filed action.

Independent title insurance agents serve as important checks and balances on the power of banks, real estate companies and mortgage brokers to unlawfully steer homeowners’ real estate transactions to controlled entities. Members of OAITA and Eagle Land Title Agency, Inc. are independent title insurance agents and independent real estate settlement service providers who refuse to give kickbacks or referral fees to banks, real estate companies and mortgage brokers for the real estate transactions they close. Instead, independent title agents: (1) help to reduce the cost of title insurance by not engaging in elaborate schemes to reward referral parties at the homeowners’ expense; (2) help to lessen the likelihood of real estate related litigation involving homeowners by not allowing referral party pressure to dictate closing requirements; and, (3) help restore trust and integrity in the fiduciary relationship that exists between homeowners and their settlement providers by insuring that only disinterested title agents provide title insurance services, not their referral parties.


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OAITA Complaint - Declaratory Judgment