80,000 Bees, $11,000 and a house in Ontario: it’s a reminder to get a home inspection

Stan DiFruscio of Ontario discovered his house was infested with 80,000 bees back in 2007. He spent $8000 to get rid of them. He had a bee keeper move the queen to a new hive. The rest of the bees were supposed to follow. The problem was moving the wax. The wax broke and crumbled as he moved it, and that left sticky honey behind. So the bees, drawn by the honey which was left behind, have returned to a harder to reach spot. The story doesn’t have an update, but leaves us with a $3000 cleanup as pending. None of these costs were covered by his homeowners insurance.

Read about it at Canadian news outlet Canoe.ca.

Would you want to own this house? Would you want to know about the past bee problem even if they are now gone?

Sellers in Maryland are legally obligated to disclose latent (hidden) defects. If a seller doesn’t disclose a past problem even if they believe it is now fixed, and the problem returns, the seller may be liable for future damages. Buyers want to know a houses history, and most will be accepting of past problems, if the problem was fixed, and they have the details.

I recommend that my buyers should get a home inspection on a house as part of their offer. They should also check with their insurance agent about past claims on a house, and what their own insurance policy will cover. If this sounds like good advice, contact me for suggestions of home inspectors and insurance agents.

Photo credit, Alan Taylor.

Verify the new FHA loan limits for the county you are home shopping in…

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 established the current FHA loan limits. FHA loans are the most popular financing choice right now. You can buy a house with only 3.5% of the purchase price as a down payment. The seller can help with other closing costs. But you have to keep the loan value below the limit set for each county. Maryland has pretty high limits, so first time home buyers should be fine. Still it is good to know what the limits are:

County	Single Family Loan Limit
ALLEGANY	$271050
ANNE ARUNDEL	$560000
BALTIMORE	$560000
BALTIMORE CITY	$560000
CALVERT	$729750
CAROLINE	$271050
CARROLL	$560000
CECIL	$420000
CHARLES	$729750
DORCHESTER	$271050
FREDERICK	$729750
GARRETT	$437500
HARFORD	$560000
HOWARD	$560000
KENT	$343750
MONTGOMERY	$729750
PRINCE GEORGE’S	$729750
QUEEN ANNE’S	$560000
SOMERSET	$328750
ST. MARY’S	$400000
TALBOT	$443750
WASHINGTON	$377500
WICOMICO	$328750
WORCESTER	$437500

Look up other states or multi-family home limits at the HUD FHA Mortage Limits page.

Photo credit, Rob Pongsajapan.

Immigrate to the United States by investing in real estate

Citizens of treaty nations with the United States may be able to get a visa and then Green Card for residency in the United States by investing in real estate. It is difficult to get permission to enter the US as an immigrant, but this looks like a strategy that people are using successfully. You would definitely want to get advice from an immigration lawyer before trying this. But here is the strategy as I understand it:

1. Buy at least $100,000 of investment real estate in the United States
2. Get an E-2 investor visa
3. Travel to the US to manage your real estate investment
4. You can continue to renew the E2 visa without limit.

But you cannot get a Green Card with an E-2 visa. There is more to the strategy, however, to solve that:

1. While in the US with the E2 visa, open a company abroad and become an executive of that company
2. Apply for a change of status to change your visa to an L-1 visa
3. Wait a year
4. Apply for an EB-1 Green Card as a manager of your company

There are technical requirements and restrictions that have to be met to make this work. Read more about this strategy at us-immigration-explained.com. If you want to hire an immigration attorney for advice, you can try immigration-investor-visa.com.

E-2 visa Treaty Country List

• Albania
• Argentina
• Armenia
• Australia
• Austria
• Azerbaijan
• Bahrain
• Bangladesh
• Belgium
• Bolivia
• Bosnia & Herzegovina
• Bulgaria
• Cameroon
• Canada
• Chile
• China (Taiwan)
• Colombia
• Congo (Brazzaville)
• Congo (Kinshasa)
• Costa Rica
• Croatia
• Czech Republic
• Ecuador
• Egypt
• Estonia
• Ethiopia
• Finland
• France
• Georgia
• Germany
• Grenada
• Honduras
• Iran
• Ireland
• Italy
• Jamaica
• Japan
• Jordan
• Kazakhstan
• Korea (South)
• Kyrgyzstan
• Latvia
• Liberia
• Lithuania
• Luxembourg
• Macedonia
• Mexico
• Moldova
• Mongolia
• Morocco
• Netherlands
• Norway
• Oman
• Pakistan
• Panama
• Paraguay
• Philippines
• Poland
• Romania
• Senegal
• Singapore
• Slovak Republic
• Slovenia
• Spain
• Sri Lanka
• Suriname
• Sweden
• Switzerland
• Thailand
• Togo
• Trinidad & Tobago
• Tunisia
• Turkey
• Ukraine
• United Kingdom
• Yugoslavia

“Temporarily Unavailable” is such a sad phrase

Update #2 4-17-09 12:38am: Everything should be working again. Thank you for your patience. There was a server crash. Now Amazon S3 is being used to host the listing photos.

One of my clients provided a good tip. Even though the photos were missing before, many listings have a virtual tour. The virtual tour photos were working all along. Also, even though some listings don’t have any photos provided by the listing agent, that house may have been listed before. Ask us to search prior listings for photos, and other descriptions. We will be happy to provide that for you.

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Update #1 4-16-09 2:52pm: RSS feeds now work. Photos will be working late tonight.

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The HelpShop website is being repaired. Currently anything to do with search is missing photographs. The new-listings and special-searches categories also do not have working images. The search RSS feeds are broken.

A real estate search website without images is a sad spectacle. I am a strong believer in the power of photographs to market a house. I am also a big proponent of empowering the home shopper to find their dream home with great tools. Well today I have failed you. At least it is only temporary. But for many real estate websites and many home listings, the crippled presentation and search is real. Those websites and listings don’t believe in the internet. They make searching hard, and too many listings have poor if any photographs.

If you like what I am trying to build here, you can encourage me. Help me spread the word of the HelpShop.com search engine. Tell your friends about it when they say they are thinking about buying a house. Save bookmarks to it on delicious.com and other bookmark sites. Blog about it. Twitter about it. But not today. It looks so sad today.

My internal tools have photos and strong searching ability. And they still work even now. You are always welcome to ask me for any listing to be emailed to you. That will include photos. You can request custom searches, and those results will be sent to you. I can even have those searches automatically continue to email you if something new comes up. Also, I can search in ways that unfortunately HelpShop.com cannot provide just yet, even when it works. I can search based on strange shaped regions. This way you can find only houses that are north of a diagonal road, or just inside the beltway for instance. I can search based on words in the description. This way you can find homes that promote their in-law suite for example. I can search on property status. With this I can show you sold and expired listings. We know how much the seller paid for his house. And we can find sellers that have a great house to sell that was priced too high, and nobody is looking at them anymore. They let their listing expire. You can make their only offer. So even once HelpShop is happy and working again, I can still provide custom searching for you. And of course when we run searches for you, we look them over too. We have a lot of experience finding great houses for our clients.

Real Estate Descriptions Decoder Ring

Reading property descriptions can be confusing even for Realtors. The space allotted for the description is shorter than what we might have to say to glowingly talk about the home. So we shorten words, and create acronyms. There is no standard; we are free to invent as we choose. And in doing so, we make it hard for our target market to understand what we are saying. Over time, some of these abbreviations have become common. Others are never to be seen again. Here is the beginning of a dictionary to define these terms. If you see any new nonsense words that should be added to the list, or you would like to know what something means, then please send it to me, and I will define it for you.

• EOG – End of Group. Usually a townhouse.
• w/ – With. Saves space in the writeup.
• LR – Living Room
• DR – Dining Room
• W/D – Washer and Dryer
• LG – Large
• SEP – Separate
• MOD – Modern
• APP – Appliances or Application
• Appl – Appliances
• INCL – Included
• FPL – Fire Place
• FP – Fire Place
• f/p – Fire Place
• CL – Closet
• HOA – Home Owners Association
• DBL – Double
• MBR – Master Bedroom
• MBA – Master Bedroom’s Bath
• MBD – Master Bedroom
• FMBA – Full Master Bedroom Bath
• ATT – Attached
• GAR – Garage
• Avail – Available
• FF – Fully Finished
• Kit – Kitchen
• Ex – Excluded
• Dist – Distance
• LL – Lower Level
• L/L – Lower Level
• w/o – Without
• BR – Bedroom
• SF – Single Family
• TH – Townhome, Townhouse
• EZ – Easy
• BA – Bath
• POSS – Possible
• FLR – Floor
• RM – Room
• FB – Full Bath
• HB – Half Bath
• sqft – Square Foot
• Sq. Ft. – Square Foot
• SF – Square foot
• Hdwd – Hardwood
• Cath – Cathedral
• FR – Family Room
• Fin – Finished
• K – Thousand Dollars
• P/ – Per
• Fin – Finished
• Bsmt – Basement
• CAC – Central Air Conditioning
• HWH – Hot Water Heater
• REO – Real Estate Owned which means Bank Owned
• A/C – Air Conditioning
• yrs – Years
• Fam – Family
• Opt. – Optional
• isl – Island
• bkfst – Breakfast
• TLC – Tender Loving Care
• Settle co. – Settlemant/Title Company
• Tot Fin SF – Total Finished Square Feet
• Lot AC/SF – Lot Acres and Square Feet
• HOA/C/C – Home Owners Association or Condo or Coop

Photo credit, Daniel Lobo (modified).

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