Recent content by irvinetalker

This pretty much sums it up--if you're not really using this as a second home, it's not likely to fly under the radar given how close it is to your home and your tax returns. That said, if you intend only to have incidental seasonal rentals--say 90 days out of the year--and you intend to occupy...

I've seen really high rates of mask compliance based on many trips to The Home Depot (both Irvine & Tustin), Costco (The District and Tustin Bryan Ave), and a few smaller retail locations. Like other posters I've seen many people wearing masks even when outside and more than 6 feet away. I've...

Yeah, a year and you should be good unless you had some nonstandard terms in your deal. Read the deed of trust (or mortgage if you're not in a deed of trust state). Standard terms from the uniform instrument (Form 3005 Deed of Trust for those of us in California) are occupancy within 60 days...

I expect UltraFICO will be more of an alternative to doing nontraditional credit for thin file clients. If someone doesn't have tradelines but they do have a history of ACH payments to utilities, etc., those payments could be used to establish some level of willingness to repay as a proxy for...

Yeah, SF is getting worse and worse. There was even a medical convention that pulled out recently (a board member was assaulted at Moscone Center last year).http://fortune.com/2018/07/02/san-francisco-streets-streets-medical-convention/

That about sums it up. I expect we'll have years of lead time: it has to pass the courts, the local laws have to be updated...plenty of time for condo conversions and for developers to cancel or alter plans for more multifamily housing.

I get it that as rates rise you could be looking at downward price pressure, but there's no way to know when and if that effect kicks in, and there's no way to know where rates will be, so I wouldn't pay it too much mind when deciding whether to rent or buy. That's not to say that rates are not...

You would think so, but as far as anyone knows there was no documentation on the fair market value of the house at the time of the 1999 grant deed.

That's exactly what ended up happening. My mom looked up some old listings from 1999 to estimate a price-per-square-foot, found a new accountant, and long story short found that her capital gain was not enough to have to pay any taxes. I think they ended up putting the 1999 basis at 50 or...

She has not resided in the house since the 1970s; her youngest child was living there recently if that counts for anything. She and her husband are both retired; their income is strictly Social Security. You think with the lower income levels that the basis is going to be moot? Or perhaps...

It was $64,000 in 2017. This is in a small Central Valley community where homes are often under $100K. Her mom and dad purchased the house for $8,500 in 1959 under a grant deed to husband & wife as joint tenants. Her dad passed away in 1972, and from then to 1999 it was her mom's house. So maybe...

My mom received a house from her mom in 1999; there was a grant deed with her mom reserving a life estate in the property, which if I recall was just a couple of weeks. For the next several years the house was at different times vacant or occupied by one of my mom's children. My mom never...

I like Spencer Reitz at Reitz & Co. near the airport. He knows the the ins and outs for physician tax topics. Nicole Queeney at Orange Tax & Bookkeeping is good, too. She knows tax topics concerning rental properties really well.

The way it's written now in the House bill, if the borrowers entered into a "written binding contract" of a purchase before 11/2, and still closed before 4/1/2018, then it is grandfathered in. A refi can be grandfathered in only when the new principal balance of the refi does not exceed the...

Looks like there's an error. The recorded sales price was 876,560 per the county tax collector site.