Articles Posted in Real Estate

Times are tough for Florida homeowners. But renting out your home and living elsewhere might make it even tougher. This is because you might be abandoning your homestead protections when you do this. Florida law grants Florida homeowners several protections with regard to their homesteads. First is the homestead exemption on the annual real estate…

So, how do you take your name off the deed? How do you take anyone’s name off the deed? It depends on where the real estate is located. In Florida, and in most states, you cannot literally take a name off the deed. Here’s the reason. Many people think houses are like cars. Cars have…

When a client tells me “I signed a standard contract”, a red flag pops up in my brain telling me this is client code for “I didn’t read the contract before I signed it.” There are many reasons people don’t read contracts before signing them. Often it’s because someone told them it’s a standard contract…

An article in the Tampa Bay Times points out a potential problem when buying a condominium in Florida. The headline says it all: “Condo owners must cover fees for deadbeats.” The gist of the article is that when a Florida condo owner stops paying the mortgage, the condo association fees usually go unpaid, too. That…

[Note: This blog was written in 2009 at the beginning of the mortgage foreclosure crisis and Great Recession. Some aspects of the mortgage foreclosure process have changed since then.] This blog entry summarizes the process for mortgage foreclosures in Florida. It does not give tips or tricks for plaintiffs or defendants. I represent both lenders…

The New Yorker’s “Ponzi State” article quotes a sour Times Doug Bennett reporter as saying, “This is the epicenter of everything that’s bad in America.” Whoa there, Doug. Speak for yourself, please. I can think of a lot of bad places to be nominated as epicenters in America, and Florida would not even make the…