Thinking of Selling Your Home? You May Need a Point of Sale Inspection

Maybe a new job or a need for a bigger (or smaller) home has you thinking about putting your home up for sale. For some of our communities, a Point of Sale inspection is required. This means, before the Title to your home can transfer to that new buyer, you will need a city inspector to okay the sale and sign off that no repairs are needed. Shaker Heights, Cleveland Heights and Euclid are all areas requiring a Point of Sale. (The Cleveland Heights link is for their general contact numbers; they did not have 'point of sale' info' readily available on the web. But the Euclid and Shaker links take you to some detailed info about point of sales in those communities).

Lakewood has a point of sale inspection on non-owner occupied (rental) properties. One reason to do a point of sale inspection before you list your home? Buyers can feel as comfortable as you can that there won't be any surprises in store for them, or additional expenses, if they exist, will all be described in the inspection report. You can't avoid it so instead of possible unpleasant surprises, an inspection can give you, as a seller, peace of mind. Lakewood also has a fantastic First Time Home Buyer program but the City inspection will be detailed so again, why not get it done ahead of time so you won't have surprises at contract time.

With a lot of homes on the market you can give yourself a competitive advantage by having the inspections completed before the first potential buyer walks in your door. Most of our communities have wonderful old housing stock and these inspections are ways to keep each home in tip top shape, adding value to living in these communities (although there are those who disagree...there was a very thoughtful post by my friend, a Realtor ® in Minneapolis). Regardless of how you feel about them, they exist so we may as well be prepared. What's that phrase: forewarned is forearmed? Hmm, I hope that is correct lol.

The other thing an inspection can do is help you decide when to put your home up for sale. You might decide to get a few things repaired this year and then sell next year, as long as you have the luxury to do so. Peace Out - 3C

Foreclosures: More Info on Possible Targets by Predatory Lending

The month of February had some poignant moments for me as a Realtor®. Early that month I was called by an out of town lender who had a website; he was trying to get a local contact to help a Cleveland resident save their home with a short sale (sell a home in order to avoid foreclosure, but at less than market value).

Unfortunately, the market value of this person's home was much less than they paid for it. You guessed it: predatory lending. And some complicit appraiser who helped the predatory lender sign off on the mortgage process. Before I found out I could not help this person, he had a friend call me. Then another person called. Before I knew it, over eleven people had sought me out to help them. One or two may have been able to just make enough money through a sale so that they could avoid foreclosure. But most of the homes were way over market value and there was no way to sell it and recoup....even if they sold the home themselves. It was the saddest month I have had in my professional career so far.

Today, on the News Net Five website, there was a recap of a law school Fair Housing seminar held at CSU. They heard from Housing Advocates and government leaders. Their conclusion is that three mortgage companies targeted minorities and that these lenders may have contributed to as much as 35 percent of the 15,000 foreclosures in our area last year. It makes me angry. This is a link to local Fair Housing groups. If you think you need them, please call them.

Also, don't forget, no matter where you live in NE Ohio, if you think you are in danger of losing your house if you don't take action...take action! Bellaire Puritas Development Corporation has their staff and people from organizations who can help direct you, hopefully help you find the light at the end of the tunnel. Their Foreclosure Workshop is Thursday.

FREE ANSWERS AND ASSISTANCE
on Thursday, April 26th
From 5:30pm to 7:30pm
at 14703 Puritas Avenue(use side entrance behind US Bank)

Peace Out - 3C

Student Newspaper Article Sparks Free Speech Debate and Pending Teacher Suspension

I'll let you judge for yourself. You can read this article on The First Amendment Center's website. It seems a student wrote an editorial in her Indiana high school newspaper asking everyone to accept those 'who are different.'

The newspaper advisor/teacher is in danger of losing her job...and a hearing is scheduled on May 1st. The site is also a very good source of information on other First Amendment Rights issues, no matter which side of the fence your opinion falls. If you read it, oddly, Indiana has some other school/paper/free speech issues.

The First Amendment: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.— The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution

Of course this issue deals with students - most of whom are not yet 18 years of age. Somehow a student's editorial asking us to all be tolerant of each other's differences does not seem like something that needs to be censored.

Here is the CNN on line article about it. A deeper discussion from an Indiana reporter with the Decatur Democrat. The teacher is interviewed a bit in this article and she says she would make the same decision again. What do you think? Peace Out - 3C

Ohio SB 117 - Not really in our best interest

It's been a busy week and I am behind on this past week's news and events. First up was a fabulous 'Meet The Bloggers' round table discussion which brought together public officials, lawyers, citizens and bloggers to discuss Ohio's SB 117. It is well worth your time to listen to the podcast which you can find here. It will be on our next ballot for your vote.

A fellow Ohioan and blogger 'Maureen' said it right when she commented on my We Want Choice blog -- we've been had. When 'Earn and Learn' lobbied us to allow slots at racetracks, you could go to their website and see who the supporters were, and included were racetrack owners. Then we could all make informed decisions, based on the issues, regarding whether we wanted slots in Ohio. The We Want Choice website does not convey this information...doesn't tell us who is behind it. Turns out, AT&T and Verizon are behind it. Why not come out in the open guys?

Anyway, the issue regarding SB117 is that it would take away the cable franchising responsibilities from our individual communities and turn it over to the State of Ohio. How does giving up our ability as a community to negotiate who will be our cable providers give us more choice? It probably doesn't!

Matt Zone (Cleveland's Ward 17) is on the public utilities committee. He was at the round table discussion. He stated that Cleveland would wind up with one cable access channel instead of the seven we have now. There is a wealth of information on those access channels. Hmm. From seven to one....more choice or less? Councilman Zone also estimated a quarter of a million dollar loss in revenue each year from Cable revenues...and that was based solely on Time Warner as our city's cable provider.

Another worthy read was pointed out in my last blog on SB117 by George Nemeth of Brewed Fresh Daily. Bill Callahan wrote a good post discussing the issue and you can read that here.

Choice and competition is, I bet, what we all want from cable service. The City of Mentor just negotiated some competition. That was community, not State, controlled. You can hear about it on the podcast. Check it out. Peace Out - 3C

Rock Hall Has Money For Redesign But Not For Concerts?

Is Rock and Roll about music or buildings? I love the design of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, don't get me wrong. But it's Spring and they announced they don't have money to host the annual Festival this year. But they want to spend money to redesign the interior of the Museum? Crain's Cleveland's had this news story this morning. It's supposed to (the redesign) help improve traffic flow inside the building. I would imagine losing visitors by not hosting concerts could also help traffic flow.

I've been to exhibit opening nights when a few thousand people are there; I stopped by for a while during one of the free Staind concerts a few years back. Lot's of people, not feeling overwhelmingly crowded inside. What am I missing here? Sigh. Peace Out - 3C

We Want Choice Ohio Says: How About Some Healthy Competition for Cable Provider Service in Ohio??

Do you get as aggravated over not having a choice in cable companies as I do? At least with high speed cable I had a few choices. But cable TV? If it's Cleveland it's Adelphia er, now, Time Warner. Anyway, I hate the monopoly idea and did not know until a few minutes ago that there was a grassroots non-profit group working on this issue.

We Want Choice Ohio (WWCO). They make good points: competition can increase quality of workmanship, customer service (customer service was one of the main reasons I got rid of my cable TV service back in March). Prices could come down...apparently this has been true in areas where competition was allowed. Competition breeds creativity; creativity could be awesomely cool new features, and maybe - dare I say - less expensive ones.

What's up with Cleveland anyway? Just how long is their contract with Adelphia/Time Warner? Competition was just arriving in Lakewood when I moved back to Cleveland from Lakewood in 2005.

WWCO makes the point that since 1995 cable rates have increased 90 % Nationally and that here in Ohio rates have far outstripped the rates of inflation.

CNET.com did an article this month on a study done by the Univ. of California at Berkeley. They were estimating the kinds of savings that could occur in California alone, once telephone companies were allowed more inroads into the cable provider business. They were estimating a total of 690 million to 1 billion dollars a month for California consumers. Yes, per month! That got me looking at other articles on the competition issue and that led me to WWCO.

We Want Choice has a cool website. They have a 'take action' section. You can contact your elected officials. That's a great choice but the one I like is writing letters to local newspapers. They even have suggestions for things to mention in a letter if you need help.

One of the mantras here on this blog is jobs jobs and more jobs...can we have them please. Well, competition among cable companies would bring jobs for the laying of the cable as well as customer service, etc. Many good points on this website, check it out and see if there isn't a 'take action' item you might want to put into practice. The squeaky wheel, especially if we made it a lot of squeaks and not just a few, could get some results! Peace Out - 3C

April 18th update: A shout out to George Nemeth for pointing me to the fact that WWCO may be a non profit financed by AT&T and others with a vested interest. While I think they have the right to lobby us, I would prefer they do it openly and not disguised as a grassroots consumer group. Now for sure the phone company will not be my 'other option of choice' (not that they were anyway). Go to George's comment below to read more.

April is Cuyahoga County Sponsored Toxic Waste Month

Ok, yesterday it was Spring cleaning in Cleveland; now it's County wide. Do you have old cell phones you want to dispose of? Old hard drives? Computers? I have an iMAC I need to get rid of and local schools have refused it.

Cell phones, computers, hard drives etc., all have toxic materials in them like lead for example. So this month Cuyahoga County will take your cells and pagers and hard drives .

For the rest of this month you can contact the RET3 Job Corp office on East 40th Street in Cleveland. They are the drop off point for these items.

They will erase your hard drives for you (at least that is what they say lol).

Call 216-361-9991 for details. Peace Out - 3C