Many Cook County homeowners received a long term occupant exemption application in the mail from the Cook County Assessor. If you have lived in your house for more than 10 years, and your income is under a certain level, the increase in the assessment level of your real estate taxes will be limited to either 7 % or 10% by signing the form.
The assessor has no mention of this on his site which is weird.
This is a strange “exemption” and I, for one, really don’t see the need or reason for it.
A client called to say he got a direct mail invite to a living trust dinner seminar.
At the seminar, act 2 would be some awesome chicken vesuvio. But, in act 1, the presenter promised to reveal several important provisions that should be in every trust, so the trust didn’t “fail.”
My client wanted to know if the trust I did for him a few weeks ago had “the 11esssential things” that the mailer said were needed in all living trusts. I reassured my client that it had these provisions. My client said he could go to a living trust dinner once every week, if he had the fortitude to suffer through the presentation.
The worst living trust seminars are put on by annuity sales guys. They will try to get you to invest every spare cent you have, including all IRA money, in annuities. You never meet with an attorney. These are called “trust mills” and you want to avoid them. Some trust mills get sued.
Attorneys put on living trust seminars too. Most seminars like to use the words “nursing home,” “medicaid” and “probate” a lot. Most attorney seminars are average at best. The seminar attorneys tend to charge quite a bit for their trusts. That’s because they have to factor the cost of feeding dinner to 40 people into it.
I really like handwritten yes/no type flowcharts.
This one shows how to pick a blog platform.
So you want to buy a foreclosed house? They are everywhere and everyone and their brother wants to buy one. But are you sure you can bear the pain of buying a foreclosed property?
While the purchase price will be low, buying a foreclosed property is not for the overly picky, the perfectionist or someone who thinks the “customer (i.e. Buyer) is always right.” There are several different categories of foreclosures like “short sales” and buying directly at the sheriff’s sale, but here we are talking about buying a foreclosed property from the lender that foreclosed the loan. These are called REO (Real Estate Owned) properties. I call them a big headache.
Get a good price.
Usually closes quickly.
No one living in the house to evict.
It will take 2-3 weeks to get the Seller to sign the contract.
Can’t schedule home inspection until the contract is signed.
Utilities are turned off when you go to do the inspection.
If property is well and septic, no test is furnished.
Many attorneys handling REO sales do not respond at all—to ANYTHING. Not to the attorney approval letter, the inspection requests or requests of any kind. Multiple calls and emails to get any response from them are the norm. (Codilis and Associates and Pierce and Associates, however, do a great job and respond quickly by email.)
Once you get the utilities turned on and do the inspection, most Sellers will not give you credit for repairs. (Some will give you credits, but only a small percentage.) Just recently, one drew a big X through the attorney approval and inspection letter I sent and faxed it back to me.
No survey will be furnished. You have to buy it.
Usually, the Seller buys title insurance for the buyer, but mot always, so be careful
If you are buying a recently foreclosed condo, under a relatively new Illinois law, you, Mr. Buyer, can get stuck with 6 months of the old foreclosed owner’s condo dues. Nice surprise.
One Chicago area attorney who handles REO closings does not attend closing and fed-x’s the deed to closing. Then he will not sign the closing statement until his client approves it. So you need at least two days to close. Forget it if you want to move in at closing!
If you close “late” you pay a penalty of $100/day or so. If you close more than a few days late you may lose all your earnest money.
Be patient. Don’t buy a foreclosure if it will drive you crazy.
Make the contract subject to attorney’s approval. Many do not have this provision.
Make the contract contingent on your professional home inspection (after the utilities are turned on). If the contract does not allow this, I would not buy the house. It’s that simple.
If the property is well and septic, conduct a well and septic test even if you have to pay for it and make the contract contingent on it passing.
If you are buying a foreclosed condo, ask in the 22.1 disclosure form if there are any back dues owed the association and ask under the attorney approval clause for the Seller to pay all condo dues to date of closing.
Good luck (you’ll need it).
6/4/08: The newest trend: Bank/Seller refuses to “de-winterize” (turn the gas, electric and water back on) making it impossible for the Buyer to do a proper home inspection. Or, worse yet, Bank/Seller forces the Buyer to de-winterize the property, at his or her expense, and makes the Buyer sign a rider taking responsibility if the Buyer wrecks anything in the de-winterizing process.
For the last year, any executor or trustee trying to sell real estate faced a big problem: There were no buyers.
Now, the real estate market has improved a little so there are some sale contracts finally.
A common question is “Do I (the executor or trustee) have to fill out the property disclosure?”
The answer is NO. An executor in a probate estate, or the trustee of a living trust, does not need to complete the real property disclosure. Here it is in writing if you don’t believe me:
(765 ILCS 77/15)
Sec. 15. The provisions of this Act do not apply to the following:
(1) Transfers pursuant to court order, including, but not limited to, transfers ordered by a probate court in administration of an estate
(3) Transfers by a fiduciary in the course of the administration of a decedent's estate, guardianship, conservatorship, or trust.
I get quite a few calls from people who suspect they were mentioned (or not) in a relative’s will, and to confirm their suspicion, they want a copy of the will.
In Cook County, the clerk of court’s website has a handy search tool that tells if a will was filed in a probate estate. Click here to search for a will.
This NY Times article says that it’s important to consolidate accounts. Ideally, you should have no more than 5 accounts. Too many clients bring in long lists of assets and many don’t know what assets they have (often include CDs in banks all the way from Chicago to Crystal Lake).
Consolidation of accounts into the following pattern is ideal: One IRA, One 401k, One non-IRA brokerage account and a checking account. This makes management of the accounts easier. With fewer accounts, titling all of the assets into a living trust is easy. And your successor trustee will thank you when he or she has to take over.
The Cook County Assessor just put on its website the forms needed to apply for the 2007 homeowner’s exemption, senior exemption and senior freeze (max. income $50,000.00).
The homeowner’s exemption form must be completed by anyone who purchased a house in 2007 or thereafter. Once you file the homeowner’s exemption form, you should not have to do it again. The senior exemption and senior freeze must be filed each year.
Click here to fill out the forms online.
Click here to download and print the forms as a pdf.
This explains the sub-prime mortgage mess beautifully… (Warning contains some "swears" as my kids would say)
A recent case in Illinois (Muir v. Mercano, No5-06-626,– NE2d—, 2008 WL 305569 (5th Dist. 2008), just decided on January 30, 2008, said that because a buyer in a real estate transaction was not furnished with a completed Real Estate Disclosure form prior to the execution of the contract, the buyer can cancel the contract at any time up to closing.