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I suspect those of you who are in the market for a mortgage are well aware of the new FHA mortgage insurance increase coming. It’s only a quarter of a percent increase. ONLY?
Effective April 1, 2013, people who haven’t already gotten their FHA case numbers assigned will be subject to the new bigger and better mortgage insurance premium. The increase will be between 10 and 15 basis points, depending on the loan. This is all intended to make the FHA bigger and better – more secure.
This is a Silent Tax.
On the average, mortgage folks are looking at an increase of $30 to $40 per month. This will make qualification more difficult for everyone.
The FHA has a number of other changes coming to a loan office near you. They are all silent taxes on home owners. The corker is the inability to drop mortgage insurance after you have paid the balance down to 78%. In the good old days you could drop the mortgage insurance after you had paid down to the 78% of loan to value ratio. Starting in June 3, 2012, mortgage insurance will be locked in FOREVER on most loans.
Mortgage insurance adds, let’s say, $175 per month to the monthly payment. With the increase it will be over $200. If you assume you will pay down to 78% of the principal in the first ten years, then you have twenty years left on your mortgage. Whereas you could have dropped the mortgage insurance after the ten year period under the old policies, you now have to continue to pay it for the next twenty years. That’s only about $42,000 more you will have to pay. That’s a tax levied by the new Obama laws, plain and simple. You are paying for all the screw-ups the government and banks have made and continue to make with affordable housing.
If you are buying, do it now!
from GOLD Member Rod Owens
Landlords Better Watch This Closely and Take Action Now!
Kentucky led the nation on new law making Landlords the “Legal Owner” of their Tenant(s) Dogs. Now Pennsylvania follows in a close second.
Protect Yourself Now – Brand New Animal Application Forms Package
Will Your State Be Next?
ATTENTION LANDLORDS! Do NOT act like an ostrich. If you have tenants or if you are expecting tenants, you MUST take action on this now to “NIP IT IN THE BUD” as old Barney Fife screams. This will be coming to your town and your insurance company soon.
What are Your Comments about this new law and this article?
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Pennsylvania attorney Thomas J. Newell, who specializes in personal injury claims, announced that his firm has just obtained a $508,613.84 settlement from a landlord’s insurance carrier after a tenant’s pit bulls attacked a young boy.
The landlord allowed the tenant to keep the dogs.
According to Newell, the dogs jumped a three and a half foot fence into a homeowner’s yard and mauled the boy. He sustained serious injuries which required 17 surgeries.
His mother was also injured when she tried to help her son fend off the dogs. The family’s bills exceeded $500,000.
The landlord’s insurance company filed lawsuits in both federal and state courts arguing that, due to language in the policy, it could deny financial responsibility for the attack. However, Newell says he was successful in fighting those claims, and the insurance company ultimately conceded, agreeing to pay the victims the liability policy limits.
In July, an appellate court in Kentucky overruled a lower court’s decision that a landlord was not liable for injuries when a tenant’s dog bit someone across the street from a rental property. Now, landlords in Kentucky may be viewed as “statutory owners” of tenants’ dogs simply by approving a pet request.
Protect Yourself Now – Brand New Animal Application Forms Package
Conversely, a Wisconsin court decided in March, 2011 that a landlord could not be held liable when a tenant’s pit bull attacked a neighbor, enforcing a longstanding policy in the state that landlords are only liable if the animal belongs to the landlord or is specifically under their control. Judges found that being in control of the rental property is not enough to show control over the dog.
A number of cities and counties across the country, including some in Pennsylvania, have considered breed-specific legislation banning pit bulls and other breeds thought to have vicious propensities. Those laws have come under heavy opposition by animal rights advocates who say the individual dog, not the breed, determines whether the animal is a risk.
Newell says he has recently represented a number of dog attack victims throughout Pennsylvania
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Protect Yourself Now – Brand New Animal Application Forms Package
Now you have seen this happen in Kentucky, Wisconsin, Ohio and this new law WILL SPREAD across America. Think about it. If you owned an insurance company, would this be a money saver for insurance companies.
Take action now.
Share this article, Email and forward to fellow investors and REIA Groups!
What are your thoughts?
After having another Straight Line Wind Blast, Mike Butler shares tips for your tenants, insurance, restoring service quickly, along with do’s and don’ts.
The same set of storms that hit Indianapolis during the Sugar land concert causing the entire stage and rigging to crash into the audience killing 5 people.
This article forwarded from Andrew Teutsch
Before reading this article, it sure would be awesome if Bed Bugs coverage could be included in Renter Insurance policies. A dream come true for apartment owners.
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As Bedbugs Multiply, New Insurance Plans Crop Up
Bedbugs are crawling the sheets in hotels, apartment buildings and college dormitories in surging numbers, which has spawned a new enterprise for insurance companies.
The tiny, reddish bugs, ranging to about 7 millimeters, or the size of Lincoln’s head on a penny, hide in dark places like vampires during the day and suck human blood at night. Unlike those other blood-thirsty parasites, head lice, bedbugs are extremely hard to wipe out once they infest, and the cost can be very high.
Infestations of any kind — bugs, rats or cockroaches —typically are excluded from commercial property insurance policies. The cost of eradicating pests was a maintenance expense, meaning it was not covered by insurance, up until recently.
Insurers, like most of us, didn’t want to get near the bugs.
But increasing pressure from lawmakers to require coverage, along with high demand from hoteliers and property owners to protect themselves from financial loss during an infestation, has created a new market.
Last month, bedbug insurance coverage was offered for the first time by two national brokerage firms, Aon Risk Solutions of Chicago and New York-based Willis North America; and also NSM Insurance Group of Conshohocken, Pa., an insurer.
“You’ve got legislators in the state of New York Assembly who are trying to make this mandatory that insurance companies do this,” said John Lafakis, senior vice president at Willis North America and program manager for the bed bug recovery insurance. “So we figured, ‘You know what, we’re going to beat everyone to the punch.'”
The brokerage firms are leaping into an area that has exploded after years when bedbugs were rarely reported, seemingly a forgotten annoyance from another era.
“Ten years ago it was considered a minor pest issue,” said Greg Gatti, a director at Aon Risk Solutions.
Bedbugs have grabbed headlines as more and more people report the telltale red welts after staying in hotels and living in apartment buildings.
Hotels could spend an average $600 to $800 per room to eradicate bedbugs, according to experts in Connecticut. That says nothing of lost income if an infestation becomes public knowledge — on websites such as bedbugregistry.com, or in the media.
Nutmeg State Plagued
The state office that fields questions from people asking about bedbugs, the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station in New Haven, had only two inquiries in 1996. Reports started coming in more regularly in 2003 in all major cities across the state, said Gale E. Ridge, an entomologist who specializes in bedbugs at the experiment station.
Ridge is also chairman of the Connecticut Coalition Against Bed Bugs, which brings together bug researchers, pest control services and other interested parties. She recorded more than 900 reports from people who suspected they had bedbugs in the fiscal year that ended June 30, 2010, and the numbers are double or triple that for the year that ended June 2011.
The insects are now in every corner of the state. “We have a very active population here,” Ridge said.
Bedbugs aren’t known to spread disease, but they can be an annoyance because of itchy welts from their bites and the loss of sleep they cause, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The Connecticut trend mirrors what is happening across the U.S. First, bedbug reports were coming out of larger urban areas. Now, they are more widespread, affecting every town in the state, Ridge said.
Occasionally, a person will mistake Eastern bat bugs (Cimex adjunctus) with bedbugs (Cimex lectularius), which are similar in the way they look and behave. Bat bugs typically signal that bats are living in the eaves or attic.
What’s the difference?
Bedbugs are small, flat parasites, retreating by day to hiding places in bed frames, floorboard cracks and other dark corners.
by MATTHEW STURDEVANT, The Hartford Courant
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