Homeowners can claim a slew of write-offs to lower their tax bills. There are deductions for mortgage interest, mortgage points and real estate tax payments. And when you sell your home, most likely, you won’t have to pay taxes on the profit. If you bought a home last year, you might even get to write …
Category Archives: Legal
Churches Find End Is Nigh
Residential and commercial real-estate owners aren’t the only ones losing their properties to foreclosure. The past few years have seen a rapid acceleration in the number of churches losing their sanctuaries because they can’t pay the mortgage. Just as homeowners borrowed too much or built too big during boom times, many churches did the same …
New real-estate sales tax is on the way Realty Q&A
Question: I am one of those anal-retentive people who starts working on his tax returns before the tax year even comes to an end. But forget about 2010. I have heard that there is a new real-estate sales tax for 2011. What do you know about that? —K.J.S., Laurel, Md. Answer: Not a lot, if …
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Big foreclosures that few knew about
Take, for instance, last year’s second- biggest foreclosure. There were no headlines when General Electric Credit Corp. took title to Serenoa Golf Club over a $4.3 million debt. While other courses have had financial difficulties and some, like those at Forest Lakes, have been well publicized, Serenoa is the only golf course in Sarasota County …
Ferreting out mortgage fraud
Attorney General Pam Bondi wisely intends to continue the work started by her predecessor to investigate foreclosure malpractice in Florida. Banks, loan servicers and their law firms like to complain that the reason for all the faulty paperwork in foreclosure cases is due to the high volume of cases. In fact, corners often were purposely …
Condo owners facing another hurdle with new FHA rules
Selling a condominium in this troubled market hardly needed to get any more difficult. But that’s exactly what could happen to scores of Tampa Bay area condo owners looking to sell or refinance with Federal Housing Administration mortgages. The FHA — which insures mortgage loans, among other things — has new eligibility rules that condo …
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