Sullivan County NY blog Archives

Hacked

wordpress-blogs-hacked My email was hacked last week. I woke up on Thursday morning, and while taking my first sip of coffee, I went to check my email on my phone. However instead I received an error message saying that my password was not valid, and it could not connect to the server–or some such. I went to the desktop and AOL told me that my account was locked because of “suspicious activity.”

Yes I still use my AOL account–I have had it for around fifteen years. I signed up for that account with a 14.4K modem that would tie up the phone line, and would charge you by the minute after your allotted time expired. I have EVERY contact in that account, from my inception as a real estate agent.

So you can imagine my consternation.

I am notoriously unorganized. And it makes my line of work much harder when you are as unorganized as me (I?). Precious minutes are wasted daily as I search for an email or phone number. Luckily in this day and age, everything is saved, so ultimately I find what I am searching for. It just takes a bit of creativity. Those email addresses in my AOL account are VERY important to my livelihood.

Luckily the hacker did not delete anything. But what he (or she) did was send out a fairly genuine looking email saying this:

” Hello, I have just been informed by our bank that payment that was sent to your bank by our customer has been returned because it could not be credited to your account. Attached via below is the document from our bank stating the reasons.” And there was a link to something that would unleash a virus onto the computer of whoever opened it.

There was no trace of who they sent it to, but judging from the reaction, I believe it was to the first 500 or so contacts. I spent the better part of an hour getting my email back up and running. I have the text to your phone back-up option, so that wasn’t too difficult, but AOL makes you jump through some hoops to get oneself declared not a spammer. Which is good (and totally understandable.) But that is when the calls and emails starting rolling in.

For the rest of the day, one after another people were calling or writing. They ranged from very sympathetic, (which were most) to pretty annoyed,(which were only two.) Most knew it was spam, and just wanted to let me know what was going on. A few were confused, and a very few (most of whom I am currently in deals with), did click on the link thinking it was legit. I feel bad for those people, but from what I have heard, they all managed to nip the virus in the bud with no permanent damage. However this whole mess was a major headache, and took the entire day to remedy.

But a funny thing happened once I got over my own initial shock and frustration. I sort of started to enjoy myself. People were calling me who I hadn’t heard from in a long time. Most of them remembered me, and quite a few were past clients. Once I explained the reason for the strange email, I would have a five or so minute “catch up” conversation. I heard about how the kids were, or how their summer was. I heard about remodels and upgrades. There were a few “remember whens” as past clients rehashed the highlights (or lowlights) of past deals, and how we hurtled some roadblocks.

It made me realize how bad I am at keeping these relationships going. Brian Buffini’s entire theology is exactly that. He preaches how important it is to keep these past contacts and clients in your loop or sphere of influence. Many other coaches and business gurus say the same thing. I do Christmas cards and try to send an email or two throughout the year, but life always seems to get in the way, and time marches on.

But in some weird way the hackers did me a favor, and got me back in touch with some people who I really enjoyed working and spending that window of time with.

Dowsing

Last week I had a third encounter with a dowsing “practitioner” in my seven year real estate career. This time, however I made the mistake of being skeptical of a piece of wood determining a leech field location, and was met with a pretty strong reaction by the “expert.” Apparently snake oil salesmen can be a bit sensitive.

I know. Calling him a snake oil salesman is a bit much. I have no problem with dowsing and its proponents. I do have a bit of an issue though when someone is convinced of a leech field being too close to a well simply because a coat hanger or a cherry branch told them so. I mean really? And after doing a bit of research on dowsing I am satisfied my reaction was justified. Dowsing has an interesting and rich history. It just isn’t very effective in finding underground water.

For those of you who aren’t familiar with dowsing, it is a practice or “divination” where a person attempts to locate underground substances using copper or wire rods, or a Y shaped stick. Advocates claim you can discover anything from water to valuable metals to human remains with nothing more than these items. How does it work? Well that is where things get a little hazy.

There have been a lot of theories over the years as to why it works. Some believe that whatever you are attempting to find gives off some sort of corpuscle that rises from the unearthed object and enters the dowsing rod, causing it to turn or twist in the hand. Others believe it is paranormal. That something is controlling the rods, or the holder’s hand and causes it to move directly over the item that is being searched for. In the sixteenth century when everything seemed to be blamed on Satan, dowsing was considered evil, and those practicing it were determined to be witches. Even today, fundamentalist Christians call it “water witching” and say it is full blooded demonic . And that it is one of Satan’s “practical devices” used to lure people into his kingdom. I am not sure how a kid using a cherry branch to look for buried treasure will end up in an eternity of fire and brimstone, but that is an answer I probably will never be able to get.

Throughout the 19th century, dowsing made its return and by the 20th century it was a fairly popular practice in locating underground water. Entrepreneurs–who realized the overhead was small–hung a shingle and proclaimed themselves dowsing experts. Dowsing societies sprung up. However no-one could explain how or why it worked.

During the fifties and sixties several independent studies were done and all determined the same thing. Dowsing is as effective as flipping a coin. There is just no merit in the practice whatsoever. Richard Dawkins did a documentary on dowsing with a properly controlled double blind study a few years back. Again with results that dowsing simply does not work.

It is funny how heated people get on this subject however. Locally here in Sullivan County, there are some staunch advocates, and any attempt at a conversation based on science is meet with withering disapproval and the immediate label of an unbeliever.

Listen. I am all about unexplained phenomena. I would love for Roswell, and Area 51 and crop circles and dowsing to be explained by some mysterious otherworld source. The problem I have is when someone pronounces it as fact, and begins to insist that a leech field needs to be moved because a coat hanger told them so. It is on the same line of credibility as someone in a Spiderman costume exclaiming his spidey sense has told him where the septic is. We need a bit more evidence before any sort of concession is going to be made by the sellers.

The Bank is not your Friend

So my real estate dealings led me to have two almost identical conversations with two distressed property homeowners this week, and made me realize how little some homeowners know about the foreclosure/short sale/deed in lieu of process here in New York State, and in Sullivan County in particular. So I am going to explain the process, and the different options one has to relieve themselves of a distressed property.

It had appeared to me that the second home/weekend market here in Sullivan County had largely escaped the foreclosure glut that swept through the country. My thinking was that if one is well enough off to have a second home, then chances are they will be able to keep paying a (probably) smaller upstate mortgage as well as their primary one–or the rent on their city apartment. And that was the reason for the lack of traditional second home foreclosure inventory hitting our market. And for the most part I still think that is true. However as the years have gone by, and those that bought at the height are now facing the specter of untold more years before they are above water, seller fatigue of a different nature is setting in.

People’s situations change, and they need to sell. But many have unsellable homes. The number to break even with the bank just doesn’t make sense. It is like an albatross that holds people from moving forward with their lives and forces them to make tough decisions.

Many of these people (like the two I spoke with) are good conscience-driven hard working people. Paying your debts is something that has been instilled in them from youth. So for some, the decision is agonizing. What direction to take? Well, they call their banks and explain the situation–again an action that has been inoculated from an early age. Do what is right by the person you owe.

Well this is where I give my distressed property owners a firm talking too. The bank is not your friend. In fact that guilt and pain you feel at not meeting your obligations is a bit less your fault and a bit more the banks fault then you think. These are the same banks that eagerly doled out sub-prime mortgages in the first place, effectively flooding the market and adding buyers which had no business being there, which in turn drove the prices up. Add that to the banks evil step sister, the securities trader, and suddenly when you plunked down your hard earned money for that dream house, you were being swindled–cheated. You were charged thirty or forty percent more for a product then what it was worth. It really is that black and white.

And banks have not changed. Your apologetic hat-in-hand call may seem like it is met with some sympathy and some alternatives to foreclosure, however let’s make one thing clear. The bank is out for the bank. You are a number–a loan number on an e-file somewhere. Your credit, livelihood and well-being are not a major concern for them.

They offer you a deed in lieu of foreclosure. It sounds like the perfect plan. You hand the deed over to the bank, and walk away scot free. However the exact opposite is true. A deed in lieu of is almost just as bad as a regular foreclosure, with none of the advantages. A deed in lieu contract will be written by the bank and will most certainly favor them. The stipulations will be that you must complete the deed transfer within 90 days and leave the premises. The hit to your credit will be slightly less than a foreclosure, but only slightly–around 200 points. And Fannie (and most other lenders) will not lend to you for at least four years.

But a deed in lieu can be even nastier than that. New York is a one action state, meaning a bank can either come after you for the debt owed, or foreclose. They are not allowed to do both. However if you voluntarily give the deed over, they are allowed to come after you for the difference. Now if they plan to do that, they must disclose it, but often it is buried in legal mumbo jumbo in the contract, and if you don’t hire an attorney, you can get hit with a big surprise. Most big banks do not do this, however it is something to be vigilant of if you are planning a deed in lieu of.

The other nasty surprise is the tax repercussions. The government sees the debt forgiveness balance as income. Therefore you will be taxed on this as income. The Debt Relief Act was extended at the 11th hour through 2013, which allows up to one million dollars (two million if married) of debt forgiveness not to be taxable. However this is only on a home that was your primary home. Any rental/ vacation/ second home property is not covered by this act. Even if you were to move out and rent a house, and then do a deed in lieu, you could get hit with a big tax bill. Again this is something that the bank will not tell you.

And finally the last major reason why I would not recommend a deed in lieu of is that you have no control over what the bank does with the property once you hand the deed over. They will hire a management company that will come in and winterize the house and turn off all the power, and then it will sit, while the clogs of big bank business churn, and perhaps six months later it will pop up on the market. By then the mice have set up shop and the moisture and the cold and all the bad things that happen to an empty house will have crept in. Now the offers are thirty or forty percent what you paid for it.

Short sales on the other hand–done correctly–keep you the seller in control from start to finish. Getting a good broker who knows his or her way around the short sale process is crucial, but with the right people in place, A short sale is leaps and bounds above a deed in lieu of foreclosure.

Like I said you are in control, you pick your agent, you pick your attorney, and they do all the work for you–and the bank pays them! The bank never owns the property, so you are never beholden to them. You sell the property, and all the bank does is agree to forgive the balance. Now there are some hoops, but again your agent and attorney will do most of the jumping for you. The hit to your credit is roughly half that of a deed in lieu of foreclosure.

The tax stuff is the same, however it is likely that you will get a higher price for your home than you would with a deed in lieu of, so that would save you money if you weren’t covered by the Debt Relief Act.

So I believe after this long winded post, I can sum up it up this way. Do not be the bank’s friend. They don’t want to be your friend.

Echoes

I skipped a blog post last week—unfortunately. I have been very busy, and I just couldn’t seem to find the time. I doubt there was anyone out there waiting with baited breath, but if so I apologize. The sold info below will include both weeks.

I have been running all over Sullivan County, showing homes. It seems there is a late summer rush. People want to be in something by the holidays. Most of what I have been showing is older, turn of the century homes; with a few dating all the way back to civil war era. I love these kind of homes, they all have character, history, and I what I call “echoes.”

A customer of mine coined that phrase a few years ago when were out looking at older farmhouses, and I have stolen it, because I think it describes that feeling or “vibe” you get from these type of older homes. It is that indescribable feeling when you walk through the front door, and get a sense of all that has transpired in that space over many decades. For me it is not necessarily a hair-on-the-back-of-your-neck feeling, (although I have had a few of those) it is more of a wistful nostalgia. An empty dusty dining room evokes images of happy holiday gatherings around a carved turkey, or the faded wallpaper in a child’s bedroom the only clue to who may have grown up there. A pile of discarded books or newspapers makes you wonder who had leafed through them. Echoes from the past—it is a strange, cool feeling and only certain houses have it.

I think bigger, formerly busier spots give me this feeling more than others. The boarding house over the wooden bridge in North Branch had major echoes. (I have blogged about that house before, and it remains one of my favorites) More recently it happened with the former Griffin House in Jeffersonville—127 Maple Ave. This house was built in 1895, and was owned by the same family for 105 years. It was then a bed and breakfast for twenty years, before apparently through a series of misfortunes it was foreclosed on. Link to Griffin House site. It now sits vacant, a grand building waiting for the next chapter of its history. This really is a special property. The wood work is something I have never seen before, and the grounds could be beautiful once again. But more importantly, every room has echoes, and standing in the empty foyer by the fireplace, I don’t think it has ever been stronger. There is a lot of history in that old building, lots of memories–the narrative of a family unknown to me.

They may be able to get the wide plank floors or the field stone foundation exterior done right, but echoes are something a “new old house” will never be able to duplicate.

About Us