This form MUST be filed by December 31, 2008.

Applications received after that date will not be processed.

Proposition 8 allows a temporary reduction in assessed value when property suffers a “decline-in-value.” A decline-in-value occurs when the market value of your property is less than the assessed value as of January 1, 2008. The best information you can provide that supports your opinion of the market value of your property is sales of comparable properties. You should try to find two comparable sales that sold as close to January 1, 2008 as possible, but no later than March 31, 2008. While the submission of sales is helpful in determining the market value of your property, applications submitted without comparable sales will be accepted and…

Historic MLS Settlement May 28, 2008

Many of you probably heard that the Department of Justice and National Association of Realtors. have just settled their long standing dispute regarding the competitiveness of Multiple Listing Service practices.

So, what have we gained after two years of government investigation and two and a half years of litigation? DOJ says that NAR will now "repeal its anticompetitive policies," and will promise not to be anticompetitive in the future. That's it, no more anti-competitiveness? I just don't see how this legal exercise will have much of an impact on our industry.

The government is not requiring the payment of any fines, nor the admission of any wrong-doing. The NAR IDX policy remains unchanged, their revised…

Real Estate Short Sales

Time Frame and Approval Questions

I get phone calls almost daily from agents in my market asking how long the short sale lender will take to respond, if they have approved the price, and how "far along" in the process the short sale is. Here are the answers:

1. How long will the lender take? Use a 90 day closing in your contract- for starters. Depending on the lender backlog, your closing may take as long as four months, if approved. The last closing I had with EMC, for example, was submitted as a complete package on December 7, 2007. It got approval on March 27, 2008. That is almost four months. Currently, most lenders are taking 30 (if you are lucky) to 75 days to order an appraisal on the property.

2. Has the lender…