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A seller approaches you seeking a quick sale on a vacant lot. That seller communicates and interacts with you strictly via email and/or text message and uses words indicating urgency. The seller requests a list price that is less than market value. These are all potential red flags for seller impersonation fraud.
Pulitzer Prize winning writer and poet Alice Walker wrote, “In nature, nothing is perfect and everything is perfect. Trees can be contorted, bent in weird ways, and they’re still beautiful.” Well, that may be true unless said tree has been “Lollipopped.” As the old adage goes, “beauty is in the eye of the beholder,” and reasonable minds can certainly differ on the beauty and aesthetics of trees in a residential environment. And furthermore, how does one even begin to assign a value to something as subjective as the aesthetic value of a tree?
Imagine buying your dream home, moving in, and then being contacted by an attorney representing the seller’s creditors. The attorney informs you that there was a pre-existing lien on the home in the form of an unpaid tax bill or a mortgage, that was incorrectly recorded in the county land records. This lien was not discovered until after closing, but as the new homeowner, the lien may now be your responsibility.
The benefits of a solar system are numerous – they can result in lowered energy bills; protect owners from energy rate hikes; extend the life of a roof by shielding the roof from rain, snow, and debris; and most relevant for the real estate industry, solar systems can help a home sell more quickly, and for more money. In fact, according to a 2021 study by Zillow, 67% of potential Buyers ranked energy efficiency as a “very to extremely important” feature for a home, and a study by the US Department of Energy found that Buyers were willing to pay $15,000 or more for solar-powered homes.
On January 17, 2023, the Loudoun County Board of Supervisors (“BOS”) approved changes to Loudoun County’s Airport Impact Overlay District (“AIOD”). The AIOD is a zoning designation for properties susceptible to airport noise at or above specified levels. Properties located within the AIOD are subject to land use regulations intended to mitigate the impacts on homebuyers in the affected areas and to prevent residential development in areas where the highest noise impact is expected to occur.
The July 2023 updates to the National Association of Realtors’ (“NVAR”) standard contract forms are out and will be effective July 1, 2023 – they resulted in 4 new forms and modifications to 21 existing documents. It sounds intimidating, but a majority of the changes can be attributed to just a handful of major modifications and ensuring uniformity among the contract documents with respect to these changes. Those changes are as follows:
In March of this year, the Virginia Legislature approved a new bill which would require written consent from a represented seller’s counsel before a settlement agent or its subsidiaries, affiliates, or subcontractors [“Settlement Agent”] can collect any fees payable to the Settlement Agent from the seller. Effective July 1, 2023, the law regarding choice of Settlement Agents in Virginia will read as follows:
An earnest money deposit (EMD) is the money that a Buyer puts down to demonstrate their “good faith” or seriousness about buying a particular home. If the Buyer defaults on or cancels the contract, this EMD serves as liquidated damages, in part to compensate the Seller for the time, expense, and effort expended on that transaction and/or required to secure new buyers. Shortly after the contract to buy/sell a particular property is entered into, the EMD is paid to a third party (“Escrow Agent”), typically the title company handling the closing.
