RESPA’s Prohibition Against Referral Fees, Kickbacks, Or Other Things Of Value For Referral Of Business
As Washington State’s residential real estate market heats up, an increasing number of settlement service providers are entering or re-entering the market to provide services to Washington’s consumers. New mortgage loan originators, escrow companies, mortgage brokers, and consumer loan companies should keep in mind the Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act’s (RESPA) prohibition against giving or […]
Environmentally friendly features may only generate modest gains when it is time to sell your home
Environmentally friendly features may only generate modest gains when it is time to sell your home When it comes to buying real estate, are people more interested in being “green” or in saving green? A recent study in the Appraisal Journal, a trade-association publication, suggests many house hunters could be more concerned with the latter. […]
Government Intervention To Prevent Speculative Bubbles Will Always Fail As They Fail To Account For Human Flawed Decision Making (Wall St Journal)
Memo to China: Your Market Moves Are Doomed to Fail JASON ZWEIG In your heart, you probably hope the Chinese government will succeed in its stunning interventions this past week to stay the panic on China’s stock exchanges. In your head, you should suspect it will fail. There’s something poignantly human about every attempt to […]
Landfills Don’t Always Trash Home Values
Whether garbage dumps and waste sites affect property prices depends on how close they are and how big A person might expect that a landfill would always negatively impact the value of neighboring properties. Not so, says Montana State University professor Richard Ready. While essentially all high-volume landfills drag down surrounding home prices, his research […]
Can A Washington State Landlord Keep A Security Deposit After A Residential Tenant Dies
Washington’s Landlord-Tenant law, Chapt. 59.18 RCW, which governs residential rentals, has no specific provision addressing the death of a tenant. So technically the estate’s executor (often a relative) must step in and resolve the situation in basically the same manner as would a tenant who had simply left before the residential lease expired. When the […]
Spokane-area job numbers are rebounding > Spokane Journal of Business
Spokane-area job numbers are rebounding with higher-wage industries leading trend in growth. The number of jobs in Spokane County likely will reach prerecession levels this summer, at least a year earlier than projected last year, says Doug Tweedy, Spokane-based regional labor economist with the Washington state Employment Security Department. The mix of jobs, though, is […]
Google Gives Gmail Users the Ability to ‘Undo Send’ – WSJ
Google is taking a popular “oops” feature out of its experimental “labs” and making it a permanent part of the Web version of Gmail. The “undo send” feature gives Gmail users anywhere from 10 to 30 precious seconds to claw back an email sent prematurely. Once you hit “send” on a Gmail—by accident or on […]
Cosigning Student Loans Can Be Risky – Total Return – WSJ
The trend of cosigning loans—in which parents or other adult borrowers sign onto the loan along with students to help them get approved or to get a lower interest rate—came under fire in a report released Thursday by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. One issue: Cosigners could find it harder to get access to other […]
The New Math of Student Loans – WSJ
Over the next few weeks, hundreds of thousands of students and their parents will apply for student loans for the coming academic year. Many students will sign up for federal loans, where they will find the best deals. But for a certain group of applicants—undergraduate students with creditworthy parents and graduate students with high credit […]
Home-Equity Lines of Credit See Jump in Delinquencies
Another post-financial crisis hangover looms for banks as principal comes due on lines of credit extended during the property boom. Delinquencies have risen as homeowners face sharply higher monthly payments. Source: Home-Equity Lines of Credit See Jump in Delinquencies