Local Real Estate News

• Local attorney attends estate planning seminar - 07/02/2009
  Lawrence attorney Bob Ramsdell attended the “Estate Planning in Depth” seminar presented by the American Law Institute and the American Bar Association, June 14-19 at the University of Wisconsin Law School in Madison. The seminar featured a faculty of planners drawn nationwide and was designed to address advanced estate planning issues.
• Financial advice for real-life problems - 06/30/2009
  Over the years, I’ve found that people end up in financial trouble not just because they don’t have enough money. It’s because of poor decision-making.
• Bounced check no harm to credit - 06/26/2009
  Q: I am planning to refinance my mortgage. I am self-employed, and a $4,000 check that one of my clients wrote for some work I did was sent back to me because he didn’t have enough money in the bank to cover the $4,000.
• Homeowning not seen as wealth strategy - 06/26/2009
  Nearly half of American adults who participated in a recent survey said they no longer believe that homeownership is a realistic way to build wealth, the National Foundation for Credit Counseling reported this week.
• Midwest home sales post decline - 06/24/2009
  First-time homebuyers continued to help buoy sales of previously occupied homes in the Midwest last month but not enough to offset continued concern over the unstable economy, according to two reports released Tuesday.
• Tell insurer about remodeling to get full coverage - 06/19/2009
  We did a fairly small ($6,000) remodeling job on our house in 2007. Now we are planning a bigger job that will involve lots of construction, including the addition of two new bedrooms and bathrooms. Are we required to report this information to our insurance company?
• Co-owning can be dicey if 1 wants out - 06/12/2009
  My twin brother and I inherited our parents’ home after they died in the 1990s, and we have been renting it to tenants for the past several years. The mortgage was paid off in 2001. I would now like to sell the place and use my share of the proceeds to start a business, but my brother wants to hold on to it and keep renting it out. We hold title to the property as joint tenants, so I cannot simply sell my half-interest to someone else. What can I do?
• May real estate numbers looking up locally, but market still trending downward - 06/10/2009
  Douglas County’s May real estate numbers looked somewhat better than they did in April, but the market was still far from showing a positive trend, County Appraiser Marion Johnson said Wednesday.
• Unpaid property-tax bill could spur foreclosure - 06/05/2009
  Although our mortgage loan payments are up-to-date, we did not have the cash to pay the final installment on our property-tax bill due in April. Our lender has threatened to begin foreclosure proceedings if the tax bill is not paid immediately. Can the bank do this, even though our loan payments have been made on time?
• Home sale could help save credit rating - 05/29/2009
  Q: I lost my job last year and have been unable to find a new one, and I can no longer make my monthly mortgage payments.