Your Thoughts on the Economy?

Most people purchase homes without a lawyer, where I live, and most of the time the lawyer can't make significant changes to a contract without risking the buyer's ability to purchase it.

 

This is also the same case on my country. My sister bought her home without a lawyer but she is not having any trouble. I guess that it has something to do with luck.

 

I'm not suggesting that a lawyer is involved in negotiations, other than advising against a bad deal.

I suppose you could buy property here in Canada without a lawyer too, but the first concern I'd have would be to do a title search to see if there were any liens on the property.

And I'd also expect a lawyer to point out if the mortgage payments were designed to double in a few years, as that seemed to happen to the lady in the TV news article I saw. I'm sure that was stated in the agreement, but probably not clearly so a layman like myself would necessarily catch it.

I'm not sure if that was a result of coincidence in the market or if her payments would have doubled anyway.

 

Isn't that part of the fees that you'll be paying to the real estate agent? As for the payments doubling, that's probably why fixed rate is desirable. The lady in that news story must have had an adjustable rate (ARM) and I'll bet someone told her at the time that the payments could fluctuate wildly.

 

I don’t think that the real estate agent has power over that. All he wants is to get your money. He would talk to anyone who is selling there house and then refer them to you.

This is the reason that it would be safer if you would just get a house from a real estate company. You won’t be having any trouble like this one.

 

In Canada at least, I'm sure it's not. You hire a lawyer to go to the appropriate office where the land titles are kept and he/she sees if a previous owner borrowed money using the land as collateral and if that loan is still outstanding.

 

That's very interesting... I suspect it's not the same here because we never hired a lawyer and all that stuff was taken care of by the realty company. Not sure if they're all like that or not... maybe we were just lucky.

 

Here, any liens have to be disclosed and taken care of before the sale can go through. I am not sure how it is other places because each state has different laws.

 

Yes, that's how it was here. It wasn't a choice whether to have it researched or not... it was just part of the process. It's nice that way.

 

Ypu have to wonder why some areas require one have a lawyer to understand what's going on, and to research liens.

Since all of the records are public, anyone should be able to pick through the information on their own, if need be.

 

Did "Flipping" Play a Role?

I think the Flipping craze did a lot to ruin the housing market by artificially inflating real estate prices.

Do you think so as well?

 

That's a very good observation, SageMother! I hadn't really thought about it, but considering it now, and going by timing of the craze alone, it sure does seem as if it could be a contributing factor!