The804.com–Richmond VA Real Estate Blog

Washington Post (Robert Bruss)

• My daughter and her family bought a 1970s ranch-style house after the professional inspector she hired gave it and the finished basement a clean bill of health. The seller signed a “no water problems” statement in the closing papers. Within days, her sister noticed her fingers could go through the drywall in the cellar. The new bathroom shower was not connected to the septic system, and flooded the floor. Fixing that mold and water problems will cost $12,000. The lawyer who handled the closing settlement won’t help. What recourse does she have against the seller and inspector?
• I am a retired real estate lawyer. I am puzzled about why you often recommend a quitclaim deed to resolve real estate problems. Where I live we use warranty deeds.
• I am a landlord and wonder how much liability insurance I should carry. If someone gets hurt at one of my rentals, can I be sued if negligence isn’t involved? Should I be incorporated to protect my personal assets in the event of a lawsuit? 
• My wife and I are divorcing, and she has moved out. I want to keep the house and buy out her interest. To do this, I need more cash than I have available. We have a 13-year-old, 7.75 percent interest-rate first mortgage and have never refinanced. Should I refinance or get a home equity loan?
• My husband and I got a laugh from your column a few weeks ago. You said smart home buyers ask why the seller is selling. Do you think they will really tell the truth? When we recently moved, we tried asking that question. The sellers all replied “someone in the family is ill and we are moving to take care of them.” Do you think they would really tell us there were three barking dogs next door or, “This section of town has the highest crime rate in the area?”
• We have been inundated with noise from a poorly constructed and badly operated dog kennel next to our house. Being in our yard is no longer pleasant. How can we determine the diminished value of our property? We built our home in 1993 and the dog kennel was established in 2004. What should we do? 
• My mother, 71, owns her home in Florida. With rising insurance costs and property taxes, she is having a tough time financially. I am not able to help her because I have to support my son and myself on a schoolteacher’s salary. She read your article about senior citizen reverse-mortgage monthly income. But when she went to her bank branch to get a reverse mortgage, they acted as if she was crazy. Are reverse mortgages available in Florida?
• I bought my home 13 years ago. Ten years ago I was married, but I never added my husband’s name to the title. He died recently. I was told I have one year from his date of death to sell my house and get the $500,000 principal-residence-sale tax exemption. I will file a joint tax return for 2006 as we did every year since 1997. Can I claim the $500,000 exemption?
•  In a recent article, you said that that to qualify for an Internal Revenue Code 1031 both the property relinquished and the property acquired must be rental properties. But what about vacant land held for investment? Doesn’t that also qualify?
• A widowed friend owned and lived in her home more than five years until October 2005, when she suffered a severe stroke. She has been living in a nursing home since then. It is unlikely she will return to her home in the future. We understand Internal Revenue Code 121 allows a $250,000 capital gain exemption when a principal residence is sold if it was owned and occupied at least 24 of the last 60 months before its sale. Is there an exception for an owner who is disabled such as my friend? Or must her home be sold by October 2008 to take advantage of this tax exemption?
•  Is it possible to add someone to the title to a property but not to the mortgage loan obligation? If so, after that buyer dies, does the surviving owner get to buy out the deceased’s share of the property?
• We have been buying our home on a land contract sale for about four years. Somehow, our seller got a $50,000 home equity loan on the house and now owes more than was his original mortgage balance. What can we do about this? 
• I enjoyed your recent article about how senior citizen reverse mortgages work. But I have two questions: (1) how are the monthly payments to the homeowner calculated by the reverse-mortgage company, and (2) what happens when the homeowner outlives the market value of his house? If that happens, does he continue to live in the house and receive monthly payments although the result will be a loss to the lender?
• In a recent article, a reader asked you what can be done when a home seller had to sell after less than 24 months’ occupancy during the last 60 months. You said if you lived in the house 18 months, for example, instead of the required 24 months, you could take 75 percent of the exemption. No real estate agent I know is aware of this. Neither could I find any tax preparer who knew about this exception. And I cannot find this information in any IRS publication. Where I can find a legal, authoritative writing that will agree with your opinion.
• I am a 80. In 1991, my husband and I put our Massachusetts home into a life estate for our only son. We were what is known as the “remaindermen.” At the time, it seemed like a good thing to do. Now I want to sell that house. My son is willing to sign a quitclaim deed, but a lawyer and tax preparer recommend keeping the property for Medicare reasons. Can my son sign a quitclaim deed to me so the property can be sold?

Miami Herald (Richard White)

• The president of our homeowners association is getting ready to name a special committee to deal with issues affecting a shopping center being built near our community. She has proposed a committee of two, naming herself as chairperson. She has asked the board for carte blanche in dealing with the issue and the support of the manager. She says she has the authority to name all special committees and appoint the chair. The board tabled the matter for further discussion at the next workshop meeting. How can we as residents stop her?
• We live in a condominium association with a five-member board of directors. Quite frequently, you speak about officers, directors, board meetings and member meetings. Could you explain the difference?
• I perform the maintenance for a condominium. We have a new board. We hada management company for many years. It was found that funds are very low and we do not have enough resources to pay bills. They do not even have funds to pay my salary. The problem seems to be compounded because some owners have not paid their maintenance fees. What is the responsibility of the former managers? Should they be held accountable? Will it be convenient to let all owners know by openly publishing the names of those who are delinquent?

Seattle Times (Elizabeth Rhodes)

• I rent in Seattle. My one-year lease expired March 1. On March 15, I received my new lease, which included a rent increase, with instructions to sign immediately. It said if I didn’t the lease will become month-to-month with a $100 month-to-month fee beginning April 1. I think I should have received a 30-day advance notice of the rent increase. What should I do?
• One member of our condo’s board of directors is several months behind in paying her dues. I think this person should be removed from the board, and a lien placed on her unit to protect the association’s interests in the event she enters bankruptcy. Since our board is unlikely to do this to one of its own members, can you please tell me which law-enforcement agency has jurisdiction over condo associations and their boards of directors?
• We sold our home last month and have now discovered the escrow company paid off our line of credit and second mortgage, but not our first mortgage — so we still owe it! The escrow company says it’s our fault because we didn’t give it the loan number. Now it wants to charge us to pay off the first mortgage, which we’ve agreed to. However, on further thought, my understanding is that we already paid the escrow company to clear the title, which would have any and all associated loan numbers attached to it. Do we have any recourse?

MarketWatch (Lew Sichelman)

• I’ve recently completed a disturbing loan and I was wondering if you could be so kind as to answer a question I have. I refinanced a condo which was purchased for income property and used excess cash from a new home-equity line of credit (also done with the same lender a few months earlier) on my home to eliminate a second mortgage on the condo and get the mortgage at an 80% loan-to-value ratio for the lowest interest rate. I was shocked when the lender’s handpicked appraiser valued the property at $468,000, which was less than what I purchased the condo for and, as I later found out, was far less than identical units had sold for in the very recent past. I brought this to the lender’s attention. I demanded another appraisal with an appraiser of my choosing. And as I suspected, the valuation came back at an appraised value of $625,000. Instead of using the $625,000, the lender’s underwriter used the median of the two appraisals for the refinance, knowing full well the funds to make it an 80% LTV loan value were coming out of a line of credit advanced by the same lender. Not knowing how underwriting works and pressured by a closing date which was only a day or two away, I foolishly signed the closing docs. I later discovered that the lender’s original appraiser did not even do comps from any of the other units in the complex which had sold in the $625,000 range. So I complained about the whole process and the lender’s representative told me it was too late to do anything about it because the loan had already been completed. What can I do about this? Are there any agencies or watchdogs I can bring a complaint like this to? Something smells fishy here. 
• Considering that many unconscionable lenders have placed unsophisticated and trusting folks into crummy and risky loans — often at higher rates than necessary — and most likely put themselves in fat city in the process, I was wondering if you have heard of any banks or financial institutions that are in the process of creating new mortgage products that will “rescue” any of these borrowers? I am a California Realtor who has been licensed since 1994 and even I am in a crunch with an option ARM loan I took out in 2004. I consider myself well educated, but I am looking at a reduced income stream this year as the market softens, and at the same time I am suffering the payment-rate creep due to the adjustable interest-rate feature in my loan. I have a relatively high credit score and do not consider myself subprime material, but realize that due to the current tightening credit and rising rates, I may not be able to get out of this loan to something more comfortable as switching to a fixed rate loan will raise my payment beyond what I can afford.  Watching the news lately I began to think that if I am in this quandary, even with good credit, then I imagine there are many others like me out there too. Without the Fed lowering rates, the only other solution to my pain (and others as well) that I can foresee is if a new mortgage product is created — perhaps something like a “pick-your-payment loan” with a fixed rate and an adjustable term. I at least consider myself fortunate to have more than 50% equity in my home. But since values seem to falling, I don’t know how long that will last if I continue to defer the interest and some of the principle when some months I must elect to only make the minimum payment? 

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel (Thomas Musil)

• I have a friend with a TV and appliance business that is failing. He is in his 70s and is in bad health. He owns the building his business operates from and in addition the store on the first floor, it has a nice rental apartment on the second floor. He has received an offer on the building, which faces the main street in a borough. However, his home is on the same lot, facing the next street over. The backyard of the house runs to the back of the store building and one of borough officials told him he could not separate the property so that he could sell the building and keep his home. He is confused and does not know where to turn. I can’t imagine such a restriction when you can buy half of a duplex or a condo apartment. Can you give us any guidance? 
• My question is how to deal with real estate agents who are not doing the right thing regarding the following situation: Both the selling and listing agent knew from the previous owner that there was missing hardwood flooring under carpeting in a property I purchased, yet they continued to advertise to the general public that there was hardwood flooring. The agents admitted that they knew there was missing hardwood, yet didn’t want to disclose that fact.
  How can they do this and not do the right thing? How can I force the agents and seller to pay for the damages?

NY Times (Jay Romano)

• A recent letter from our managing agent about our co-op’s insurance coverage suggested that residents’ homeowners’ policies include a loss-assessment rider to “cover certain types of losses incurred by the corporation, which would then be assessed on all shareholders in the form a loss assessment.” Is the suggested rider necessary, or is it simply a matter of cost shifting by the co-op?
• When my mother died, I became the tenant of record in her rent-controlled apartment. If I marry, would my wife be able to succeed me upon my death? What about a “significant other” who has lived with me for more than a year? I have heard that the city’s rent-control law states that an apartment can pass to the next generation only once.

San Francisco Chronicle (Robert Griswold)

• Is there some standard form of legal document that can be signed between prospective roommates that would be a binding lease just like the contract that is signed between the tenants and landlord? 
• My husband and I rent a two-bedroom apartment that is probably $300 less than the market rate. Soon after moving in, it became very clear why you get what you pay for. We have to deal with the manager’s four cats that relieve themselves under our windows and outside our front door. In addition, the grounds are unkempt, the trees are overgrown, and the apartment manager’s apartment is running over with trash. Also, some tenants are suspected of drug dealing. The police have been called and one arrest was already made. The manager threatens to evict these people, but as soon as they wave a little cash under his nose, he lets them stay until they fall behind again. What are our rights as responsible tenants, who are good, clean people with children? We are afraid of the manager, so if we file complaints with the authorities, we are worried that we can we be evicted in retaliation?

Washington Post (Maryann Haggerty)

Washington Post (Robert Bruss)

• You often mention that a married couple filing a joint income tax return can claim up to $500,000 in tax-free profit from the sale of their principal residence, thanks to Internal Revenue Code 121. But what about two unmarried owners of a home who each meet the 24-out-of-the-last-60-months ownership and occupancy tests? Both are on the title. Can each claim a $250,000 exemption, or do they have to split the exemption?
• I am a prison inmate who will be released next month. My father died in March 2004, but his estate was only recently probated. I received $93,000 for my share from the sale of his house, but I was told I will have to pay capital gains tax on $107,000. My brother bought the house from me and my two sisters. How much capital gains tax will I have to pay? Are there any loopholes?
• We had a bad experience with our owner’s title insurance policy. Several months after we bought our house we found that we did not have clear title. The title company admitted they made a mistake and offered to pay a percentage of the insurance claim through arbitration. The arbitrator ruled we suffered no loss because the property went up in market value after our purchase. We were ordered to pay the title insurance company more than $8,000. It seems the arbitrator was clearly on the title insurer’s side. Do we have any recourse? 
• I recently moved into a condominium where the homeowner association rules prohibit residents from air drying their laundry outside their units. Not only is air drying a great electricity savings, but we live in a patio home where few people see our clothes drying. Do we have any protection under energy conservation laws? 
• My wife and I own two rental properties acquired in an Internal Revenue Code 1031 tax-deferred exchange. One is a rental home, and the other is a two-family rental duplex. We have owned each about seven years. We would like to transfer these properties to our children. If we do that, will we have to pay tax now or when they sell the properties? 
• You often suggest that properties be held in a revocable living trust to avoid probate. We are an unmarried couple in our late 60s and own two properties together as joint tenants with right of survivorship. In our situation, should we set up a revocable living trust? 
• My wife died in 2006. We lived together in our house for 31 years. Although title was in my name alone, do I get a new stepped-up basis to market value? 
• My wife and I took out a reverse mortgage about four years ago. It provides us with extra monthly income so we can live comfortably. Before that, we often could barely pay expenses without dipping into our meager savings. Recently, our reverse-mortgage company asked if we would like to refinance our reverse mortgage because our home has gone up in market value by about $125,000. However, we would have to pay the up-front fees again. Is this a good idea? We are 83 and 77.
• A year ago, my husband died at age 55. He did not have a will or any life insurance. We lived in our home more than 25 years and have a large amount of equity in it. I am thinking of relocating to a lower-cost area. The title to our home is in both names as joint tenants with right of survivorship. Should I hire a lawyer to transfer the title to my name alone, and will I have to go through probate court? 
• I own a commercial property that is leased to a used-car dealer. He is chronically late paying the monthly rent, and he ignores the 10 percent late fee. A friend told me that if I take my tenant to court, the judge probably won’t evict him. I have an offer from a reliable car-dealer tenant who wants to lease the lot. What should I do? 
• My wife and I are in our mid-70s. We have investigated a reverse mortgage, which would provide lifetime income. Also, in case of an emergency, we can obtain a lump sum, such as to replace the roof, although it would reduce our monthly income. My wife and I come from long-lived families. Her parents died in their 90s, and mine lasted almost as long. What happens if we live into our 90s? Will our reverse-mortgage money eventually run out? 
• I am a mortgage broker, and one of my borrowers owns two properties. The first one is his primary residence, and the other is a rental house. He intends to refinance and take the maximum amount of cash out from the investment property. Because he can’t afford to make mortgage payments on both properties, he plans to default on the rental house by foreclosure. Is this a good or bad idea? What happens to the cash he gets from the refinance? 
• Twenty-one years ago, I was willed a “life estate” in a two-family house where I live in one unit. I am responsible for payment of the property taxes, repairs and insurance. I am 79, on a limited income, but in good health. There are some costly repairs to be made to the building. Can I borrow $25,000 secured by the property, which is worth about $400,000? The property taxes are so high now I had to cancel the property insurance. The lawyer-executor for the estate died four years ago. The two people who will inherit the house when I die live out of state and are in poor health. What can I do? 
• I own 14 acres with two houses on the property. One is my principal residence, and the other is a rental house. I have owned the property about 40 years and have lived in my residence for 12 years. An accountant told me the land and both houses qualify for the $250,000 principal-residence-sale tax exemption. The IRS says my profit on the sale of the rental house will be taxable. Who is right? 
• I own land bought in 1943 for $50,000 that is now worth about $600,000. How can I sell it and keep federal and state taxes to a minimum? I have three adult children and two grandchildren.
• If a homeowner dies before the mortgage is paid off and if there is no insurance money to pay off the mortgage, does the house go to the mortgage company? What happens to the equity? 
• I am confused about our original owner’s title insurance policy. We paid off our home mortgage in full after owning the house for about 18 years. Do we need to have a new updated title insurance policy issued to us to be sure there are no title clouds after we bought the property? What if the original title insurance company is no longer in business?

MarketWatch (Lew Sichelman)
Emotional Reactions to Sichelman’s recent rant on No Cost Mortgages.

• Though you answered the question very well, there is truly a case where the borrower could benefit from a no-closing-cost loan. As you stated, the broker could be making up the cost on the YSP. And he also could be getting additional funds from a correspondent lender volume incentive. In other words, the broker may have a warehouse or direct pipeline that allows him to receive larger rebates on loans as his volume increases, thereby making it very lucrative for him to bring in more no-cost loans. 
• Thus, the borrower would get a good deal and the broker would get a higher percentage YSP from his funding source — enough to cover the borrower’s closing costs and make the broker some money to boot. Typically, the broker could be getting a 1%-2% rebate, which would be more then adequate on the average loan size to pay closing cost and make some profit. Just wanted to give you another source of industry info. Greg Rhea, vice president-mortgage broker investor relations.
• Great. Now the consumer watch-dogs are gonna know about volume incentives. This will give them something else to gripe about. Couldn’t you have kept this one quiet? 
• I am a professional loan officer with a New Jersey-based mortgage bank. This is our 18th year in business. During that time, there has been only one complaint filed against us and that was dismissed since the borrower’s issue was with the loan servicer, not us.  That said, your responses was quite accurate, by and large. However, I feel that I must take exception to two items.  First, yield spread premiums are not a fee for bringing in loans at a rate above the current market; they are paid for bringing in a loan at a rate that is above the wholesale rate of the loan. This is known as “par pricing.” 
  Mortgage brokers and bankers are retail providers of mortgage money that comes from wholesale lenders who actually provide the money. If any mortgage banker/broker did a loan at par pricing, the only way to cover their costs and get paid for their services would be to charge the borrower “points.” (A point is 1% of the loan amount).  The normal pricing structure on most loans with regard to YSPs is such that if a mortgage banker/broker originated the loan at the “par” price it, would take two to five years for the borrower to recoup the points he would be charged. I offer all my clients this option on every loan scenario. In my four years in the business, only two borrowers elected to pay us the points over paying a higher interest rate on the loan.  Second, your comment “some call it a kickback” is, I feel, a cowardly cheap shot at mortgage bankers and brokers. It is somewhat akin to my stating that “writers for MarketWatch — some call them yellow journalists” — which, given your remarks, is far more justified than your unfair characterization of YSP as a “kickback.” 
• Your advice in regards to the no-cost refinances is not very smart. Actually, all factors taken into consideration, it is very bad advice. I do not have the time nor inclination to explain to you all the reasons why, and I wouldn’t think I’d have to. 
• Your response seemed to indicate these types of loans are always somehow shady or bad deals for the borrower. While I don’t doubt they are often marketed inappropriately, I think you should have pointed out that structuring a loan this way might be a reasonable alternative for the borrower, depending on their objectives. Agreeing to a higher rate in exchange for a credit to offset closing costs allows the borrower to avoid “investing” in a mortgage. That’s useful when they don’t anticipate being in the mortgage for a long term.  I would certainly agree that the originator should disclose the costs being absorbed and the amount of credit being generated. That’s never been an issue with my mortgage broker but he may be exceptional. But such options do have value and allow a borrower to compare his rate to conventionally priced mortgages to decide which is the best deal. 
• It’s true that you can get a loan for a lower rate while paying costs than you can at no cost. But to represent that a no-cost loan is something not to be trusted is not accurate, and you did you readers a huge disservice in suggesting so. 
  Depending on the amount of time one plans to stay in the home, the amount of cost savings per month and the tax savings allowable on the interest paid, it could be a great move for a person to take a no-cost loan. It’s even more important in this time of rate uncertainty, when rates are as likely to go down in the next two years as up. If you pay costs, you are in less of a position to take advantage of a downturn in rates. There is a time and situation for virtually every loan product out there. It is important to have trust in your mortgage broker, but not at the expense of the information you need to make a good decision. 
• Did you know that a loan with $5,000 in closing costs rolled into a loan at 6.5% for 30 years costs a consumer over $12,000 over the life of the loan? Did you also know that the average time a homeowner keeps a mortgage loan has dropped from over seven years to under four in the last five years? 
  You really did your readers a great disservice with your “off the cuff” answer to such an important question. No-cost mortgage loans not only save the client the initial pain of seeing their hard earned equity get wasted on a bunch of fees, but a no-cost loan also gives the client the ability to take advantage of any and all future rate decreases without ever worrying about going backwards on his mortgage balance. When you don’t get ripped off for thousands on closing costs, there is no barrier to refinancing. Paying closing costs on A+ credit refinances is just stupid. If you want to add value to your readers lives, I advise you to look more deeply into this and reevaluate your opinion. 
• It’s seems you have an opinion on a topic that you may have not tried. The no-closing cost option has saved consumers millions of dollars. Your flaw is in the fact that if you pay for no loan charges at whatever the market rate is, you can refinance again as the market improves at a lower rate. Why pay for a rate with closing costs?  If you have a good no-cost broker who watches the market for you, then what is the barrier to refinancing for any reason, especially when the bond market improves? Our average caller has been in his mortgage less than five years. If he paid closing costs on his previous loan, he never reached the break-even point on that loan. We always offer a no-cost rate and a par rate. The break-even is actually nine years on the average. 
  Would you spend $3,000 to save $30 a month? You might want to try a no-cost loan before you send out your opinion that some may deem as gospel. 
• I am a mortgage broker with a national firm offering “no cost” mortgages, and I have to tell you that you have given extremely poor advice. An interest rate on any particular loan is reflective of the market conditions at a point in time and the risk factors on the loan. I’m sure you will agree that interest rates are driven by prevalent market conditions at the time of the loan. If you look a graph of interest rates over the continuum, you will see a line that moves like a roller coaster as rates move up and down over time. If you look at par rates on a 30-year fixed rate loan just since last summer, you will see a swing from probably 6.75% down to around 5.75% currently. My point is this: People who paid points/origination fees/closing costs on a refinance or purchase last summer would’ve gotten a rate of 6.75%. Today, they could get the exact same loan at 5.75% but they’d have to pay all those fees again. However, my clients who did a free — and I do, in fact, mean free because I pay all costs (appraisal, title, lenders fee, credit, underwriting, etc.) — refinance with me last summer and have now done another free refinance with me at a much lower rate. What about the people who paid thousands in closing costs last summer? What’s their incentive to take advantage of the current lower rates when they just blew thousands on a loan that is awful compared to the par rate today? 
  As for my rates, you are correct that usually (but not always) my rate is .125% to .375% higher than par. But I always give my clients the option of paying their own costs like a “traditional” loan at the par rate, which you advised the reader to take. When we run the “break-even analysis” on how long it will take to “earn” back the closing costs at so-much a month with a lower payment, 99.9% of my clients choose to pay the higher rate, keep their cash, and let me manage their mortgage for them. This is a strategy that I’ve done for hundreds of my clients. It’s just a better mousetrap, and I don’t understand why people are skeptical when the whole model makes so much sense. I know, because I once “gave away” more than $ 8,000 in closing costs before I became a client of this company. Now I work here, and I have helped hundreds of people over the last four years save thousands of dollars in closing costs.

Miami Herald (Richard White)

• I thought that I recalled reading in one of the statutes when adirector can abstain from voting on motions at a board meeting. Can a director of a homeowners association abstain from voting on motions?
• I saw your column regarding the topic of sewer and water pipe maintenance and replacement to be funded by the reserves. If we do not have this as a line item in our reserve budget, what is the process to create this and begin funding?
• Our condominium president insists on approving minutes of past meetings at the next meeting, regardless of whether it is a board meeting or an annual membership meeting. Our membership meeting was held last month and he plans to approve the membership minutes at our next board meeting. Some of us feel this is wrong, that like minutes should cover the appropriate meetings.

NY Times (Jay Romano)

• My neighbor’s apartment was under rent control until he was evicted last month. Is the apartment now deregulated, and can the rent legally go to any price? I am interested because my own apartment is rent-controlled, and I’m worried that the landlord will do everything in his power to evict me.
• I own a co-op in New York, and I want to sublet my apartment. I understand that the board has the right to approve the sublet, to limit the number of people in the unit to two and to ask for or forgo a sublet fee. In agreeing to approve the sublet, my board wants to limit the rent I collect to the amount of my monthly maintenance. I need to make $250 a month more than that, and I’m wondering why the board would not allow me to collect the additional money.
• If the renewal rent on a rent-stabilized apartment goes from below $2,000 to above $2,000, my income for the last two years was over $175,000 each year and my landlord takes all of the appropriate steps to destabilize the apartment, will I be allowed to live out the term of my new lease?

Seattle Times (Elizabeth Rhodes)

• Local real-estate experts keep saying Seattle’s housing market will stay strong because the local economy is strong. But I think all the subprime loans going bad will mean a lot more houses on the market and prices here will sink. Why don’t you report that?
• Several young adults have moved into a rental house across the street. One plays his car stereo very loud when he’s coming and going late at night. He’s also had verbal fights with his friends on the front lawn, and there’s a lot of swearing. This is disturbing our peaceful neighborhood. What can I do?
• Months after I signed paperwork to buy a condo conversion, the developer doing the work informed me that my unit is 16 percent smaller than originally advertised. Since he won’t adjust the price, I now figure I’m paying $28,000 too much. Other buyers got similar news. The developer says I must sign an addendum accepting this change. He says if I don’t, he can keep my deposit. I don’t know what to do.

San Francisco Chronicle (Robert Griswold)

• I have seven months on my lease, but the distance to and from my new job is killing me. Is there a way to terminate the lease due to the fact I work almost an hour away from home? I think the IRS has some regulations about distance to a new job and moving. I would let them keep the security deposit if I could move out and not owe the remaining balance. 
• I rent an apartment on a month-to-month tenancy. I never received a copy of my rental agreement. My landlord has just given me a 30-day notice. I am OK with that and I have found a new place, which is available next week. However, I have paid rent through the end of the month. Can I go ahead and move without any notice? Would I be entitled to my full deposit? 

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel (Thomas Musil)

• I was under the impression that an IRA cannot incur any debt. Under this assumption, real estate owned by the IRA would have to be paid for in cash and could not have a mortgage. Is this right? I also assume that it would have to be investment property and could not be used by the IRA owner for personal use, like a second home. 

Wall Street Journal (June Fletcher) 

• Is now a good time to buy a home, or should I wait for prices to fall further?

Washington Post (Benny L. Kass)

• My great-grandmother died in 1935 and left her heirs a plot of land with a house. Since then, family members who needed a place to live have been allowed to stay in the house, on the condition that they paid the real estate taxes and made whatever repairs were needed.  My father was the last to live in the house. He died several years ago, and I have been paying the real estate taxes ever since. There are about 50 heirs, and all but one has asked me to sell the property. What should I do?