Your real estate agent or lawyer may add a few steps here or there. Through it all, keep in mind that while there are common milestones in most home sales, there’s no such thing as a “routine” real estate transaction. Each one usually has a few twists or turns – some little and some not so little. The basic steps are designed to protect buyer and seller from surprises that end up sending the deal badly off the rails.

You also need to take responsibility for keeping the process running smoothly. Even though you’re paying fees to an attorney and a mortgage broker – and the agent is getting a fee from the seller – these folks are working on multiple transactions and things sometime slip through the cracks. As you proceed, ask how long each step should take. You (usually) don’t need to badger these players to keep things moving. But if you haven’t heard back at various stages along your timeline, call and find out how things are going. (more…)

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Chimney Rock Park owner Dr. Lucius Morse says his family’s decision to sell the 996-acre park to the state of North Carolina for $24 million is about posterity. Morse recalled attending one of the park’s Easter sunrise services where a minister said: “The Morses don’t own the park, God does. They are just stewards of the land.” “And of course I assured him we felt the same way,” said Morse, whose family has owned the mountain landmark, a land of imposing rock cliffs and cascading waterfalls, for more than a century.

Residents of Hickory Nut Gorge in Rutherford, Henderson and other counties have spent months writing letters to newspapers and state leaders calling for the state to buy the park. That came after the family in July hired Sotheby’s International Real Estate to market the land for $55 million, believed the highest asking price for a piece of land in state history. The state will buy the land with $15 million the General Assembly appropriated last year plus grants from the state’s Park and Recreation, Natural Heritage and Clean Water Management trust funds. A private donor contributed $2.35 million for the purchase. Although officially anonymous, most of that money came through the Conservation Trust for North Carolina from the Stanback family of Salisbury, a state official said. Fred and Alice Stanback were among dozens of residents who attended Monday’s ceremony. (more…)

search for : Chimney Rock Park, Sotheby’s International Real Estate, Conservation Trust for North Carolina

A big part of every real estate transaction involves taxes: You pay transfer taxes when you buy, property taxes when you own and more transfer taxes when you sell. There are also taxes on income earned from investment real estate and even capital gains taxes, though infrequently for the sale of residential property.

The good news is that while real estate is taxed, there are also big real estate write offs — mortgage interest is usually deductible, property taxes are deducible, depreciation is deductible for investors, when property have been owned for at least a year long-term and lower capital gains rates apply and if you you’ve sold a property that you used for two of the past five years you may be able to deduct up to $500,000 in profits if married and up to $250,000 if single. (more…)

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I am a single female and have owned my home for 10 years. I have a very low interest rate. For the past 10 years, I have not claimed my mortgage interest as a deduction. I have never met the threshold of the standard deduction. I recently heard that I should be able to claim my mortgage interest, regardless of whether the standard deduction is more beneficial. Also, this past year I’ve had new windows and siding put on my house. I’ve seen articles that I might be able to get a small credit for the improvements. Is this true?

If your mortgage interest combined with other itemized deductions — certain medical expenses in excess of 7.5 percent of your adjusted gross income, state income taxes withheld and paid, real estate tax, personal property tax and charitable contributions, for example — exceed the standard deduction, it will be beneficial to itemize your deductions. Note that the standard deduction has increased every year, so a review of the potential itemized deductions from the prior three years could result in the ability to itemize those deductions and claim them on an amended return. It just depends on the actual amounts for each year. (more…)

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State wildlife officials are proposing a swift, silent and close-range weapon for towns and urban centers besieged by marauding deer: a special hunting season for archers inside city limits. The draft regulation by the N.C. Wildlife Commission sets up a local option for town and city governments to hold a five-week season open only to bow hunters shortly after the Jan. 1 end of the regular hunting season. The commission holding nine public hearings around the state on this and other proposed changes to hunting and fishing regulations.

Although hateful to many city dwellers and suburbanites, hunting is the best way to keep deer from outstripping their food supply - and help keep Bambi from chewing the shrubbery or ending up as a hood ornament, state wildlife biologists say. Tim Ward, a keen and strictly legal bow hunter who already stalks deer in a suburban landscape, might be the perfect candidate for the proposed program. Ward, a senior at North Carolina State University who studies fisheries and wildlife sciences, hunts two small tracts near Garner that haven’t been swallowed by development - one inside the Beltline, one just outside. Perched in a tree stand next to a hiking trail and within sight of houses, Ward arrowed his first buck this fall - one with an eight-point rack of antlers. His hunting buddy killed two trophy-sized bucks on the same two-and-a-half-acre homestead outside the city limits of both Raleigh and Garner. One behemoth weighed more than 200 pounds. “I’ve never seen deer this size in my life,” said Ward, 22, noting the mountain deer near his hometown of Robbinsville are scarce and small. (more…)

search for : N.C. Wildlife Commission, North Carolina State University, deer

“Let every house be placed … in the middle of its plat,” said one of America’s best-known city planners, “so there may be ground on each side for gardens or orchards or fields, that it may be a green country town, which will never be burnt and always wholesome.”It’s a tribute to the framer of this dictum that modern city planners still fervently adhere to it. The trouble is, it was made by William Penn, the founder of Pennsylvania, around the time he laid out Philadelphia in 1682. A lot has changed since then, but you wouldn’t know it by looking at our planning codes.

Essentially, setbacks are reserved areas on each edge of your property — like margins on a page — that you’re not allowed to build upon. The idea is to help ensure William Penn’s ideal of houses spaced well apart, with usable land on all sides. Given the long historic trend toward higher land prices, smaller lots and bulkier houses, however, many suburban setback requirements no longer make sense. Today’s typical 5-foot side-yard setbacks, for example, serve mainly to mandate sunless, useless slivers of land between houses. Yet rather than doing away with these vestigial separations altogether, moribund planning codes stubbornly cling to them, stymieing the growth of more intelligent arrangements. (more…)

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It’s that time of year again, when thousands of builders, architects and remodelers converge at the annual International Builders Show to eye new products for the home. This year, the event will take place in Orlando, Fla., from Feb. 7 to 10. While most of the items the 1,900 vendors will display are pretty prosaic, ranging from new kinds of adhesives to roofing materials, a few stand out for their innovative form or function — particularly those designed for places where homeowners tend to spend the most money: the kitchen and the bath. Here’s a preview of five head-turners that will make their debut next week:

These days, many wall ovens are installed over a sink or range. To make loading them easier, Gaggenau is debuting the BL 253 Lift Oven. Push a button, and the floor of the unit lowers to countertop level so you can place the biscuits or brownies directly on the glass-ceramic base; push it again and up it goes. The company says that the load and lift mechanism cuts down on spills and won’t affect baking times. The glass base isn’t removable for soaking or scrubbing, but the oven does have a self-cleaning feature. At $3,300, the product is about three times the price of a regular unit and will hit stores in July. (more…)

search for : architects, remodelers, homeowner

Real-estate agent Nancy Raddohl has seen the ugly side of home improvements done wrong. Worse still for home sellers hoping to impress Raddohl’s buyers, her customers have witnessed the alleged improvements, too. “A buyer’s first impression is ‘I don’t want to go any further’ into the house. They won’t get beyond the front entrance,” she said. And her candor is a zinger through the heart of Wilkes County NC homeowners who may think their handiwork is up to professional snuff. Quality upgrades can add value to a home, but shoppers are easily turned off by badly executed projects. The listed price can drop accordingly.

Of course, this deflates do-it-yourselfers who puff their chests in pride at a job well done. So what if drywall seams show or spacing between bathroom tiles is a little off? To buyers, however, any glitch is a big deal. Even little errors may cause buyers to turn tail to the next property. Their perception is the seller’s reality: If one thing is wrong, are other problems far behind? Homeowner mistakes can be pounced on by real estate agents and contractors. Raddohl won’t hesitate to make poor work a negotiation point to shave thousands off the listed price. Using the example of an amateurish countertop, she said she would advise buyers to press the issue. Remodeling contractors are equally keen to benefit from improvements gone bad. If a bathroom project goes down the drain, a contractor knowing the homeowner is over a barrel for needed repairs may be less inclined to negotiate and can charge top dollar. (more…)

search for : home improvements, Wilkes County NC homeowners, Remodeling contractors