legal information on going through probate without money That was a search hit I got. The problem with this question is that you can’t go through probate without money. The deceased’s creditors want cash. The probate court wants cash. Attorneys and anybody else your executor has to hire want cash. Federal Estate tax may be …
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Mortgage Closing Costs: What is Real and What is Junk?
The easy, general rule is that legitimate expenses all have easily understood explanations in plain English, they are all for specific services, and if they are performed by third parties, there are associated invoices or receipts that you can see. Let’s haul out the Mortgage Loan Disclosure Statement (California) or Good Faith Estimate (elsewhere), and …
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Looking Beyond The Bubble: What’s Next For Highly Appreciated Markets
(This was originally published in March 2006) Doing my workout this morning I asked myself what’s next for the real estate market. The state of the market here locally is that prices are and have been in decline. There is no longer any mystery about whether they will decline, only how much and for how …
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What is Real Estate Worth?
One of the most common questions in real estate is “What is this property really worth?” The easy answer is the same as the deepest, most profound one I can come up with, “Whatever you can get someone to pay for it.” It’s the answers in between that you’ve got to watch out for. The …
The State of Our Educational System
US News has an interesting editorial by Mortimer Zuckerman in their latest issue, having to do with the departure of Lawrence Summers and the downside for Harvard’s students. It seems that Summer’s celebrated episode of Hoof in Mouth Disease was only a public reason for the faculty turning on them. It seems he wanted the …
The Perceived Will to Fight
Power = capabilities X interest X will If any of the elements on the right are zero, power is zero, no matter how strong the other elements. If interest and capabilities to defeat an enemy are great, but will appears weak, then so is power. He also deals with the differences between actual will and …
Leverage – Making a Decent Investment Spectacular
One of the concepts I keep seeing without a decent treatment is the concept of leveraging an investment. Real Estate has this like no other investment. You go talk to a bank about leveraging eighty to ninety or even one hundred percent of your investment in the stock market, or the same percentage of a …
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Investing in Second Trust Deeds
From an email:I’ve been enjoying your blog posts on mortgages. I’ve learned more from you about what to expect than I have from any other source, and I’ve gotten 10 mortgages in my life. I was reading Larry William’s website this week, and on there I saw one of his newsletters from last summer:http://www.ireallytrade.com/http://www.ireallytrade.com/freestuff.htmthe May …
Helping Yourself Qualify for a Home Loan
There are a fair number of specific helpful suggestions to make in helping you purchase a home. All of them revolve around the loan. Let’s face it, the loan is far and away the most hypothetical and uncertain part about most real estate transactions. If there is a non-loan related problem, chances are that you …
Did That Slap On The Back Leave a Knife?
One of the things the place I work does to attract clients is advertise foreclosure lists to our clients. Several times a week, people call and ask for the lists, and we say, “Great! Just come on down, fill out a loan package and an agency agreement, and we’ll get them to you fresh every …