Answers - Real Estate

Here is the question…
“Before closing on property I was selling for $519,000, the buyer requested that I increase the purchase price to $600,000 & give $36,000 in seller concessions because they were having some cash flow issues. Subsequently, they got a mortgage for $592,000 & had . Since the increased purchase price was less than [...]

Here’s the whole question…
“My husband and I obtained a loan for a new house in December of last year. We recently were notified of an escrow shortage of close to 2300. If we don’t pay this our mortgage is due to increase more than 400.00 per mo.
After some digging we discovered that the reason for [...]

I’ll reprint the entire question:
“I am the seller and will be paying closing costs for the buyer. On our contract with our agent she showed up to $17,000 in closing costs. We have learned that closing costs are now less that that amount. My question is – does the buyer get to keep the money [...]

I didn’t have room for the full question…so I’ll reprint it here:
“Our realtor had us, has sellers sign a ’side agreement’, in which we were to give the buyers $2,000 cash at closing for repairs to be done after the closing on the property? This side agreement stated it was not part of the contract [...]

Yes…is the short answer.
Real estate values ran up at such a fast pace from 2003-2005 due to the Fed lowering of mortgage rates and over-zealous home speculation.
Home values have corrected about 10% since then, but many believe another 20% correction gets us back to “normal”.
Of course, you’ll never hear that “doom and gloom” [...]