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Monthly Archives: July 2012

Jacksonville Foreclosure List

25 Wednesday Jul 2012

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foreclosure list, foreclosures, Investment, investor

We’d like to extend an invitation your way.

Recently we’ve been providing a small group of our clients with regular updates about new foreclosed properties on the market. While most of these are investors looking for good deals, we’ve had requests from a wide range of clients interested in upsizing, downsizing, or helping members of their family with a first-time home purchase.

Would you like to be included on our list? It comes as a straightforward list as new properties become available.

If you’re interested, simply send us an email with “receive foreclosure list” to Jennifer@HanleyHomeTeam.com. We don’t want to spam anyone with information they don’t need. If you’d like to be among the first to hear about new foreclosed homes, reply so we’ll know to include you.

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JUST LISTED in Kensington!

18 Wednesday Jul 2012

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2113 Brighton Bay Tr W, Amenities, FL, Intracoastal West, Jacksonville, Just Listed, Kensington

Image

4 Bedroom/2 Bath – 2236 sq ft – born 1993 – $195,000

Click photo for more details and photos!

Large, roomy floorplan in very popular neighborhood. Convenient to Beaches, Mayport, Southside, A-rated schools, St Johns Towncenter, and Downtown. Brick and Stucco exterior, Florida Room, Open Kitchen. Master suite includes tray ceilings, large walk-in closet and bath has separate shower and garden tub. New Heat & AC last year! Community has fantastic amenities including pool, volleyball, tennis, playground, baseball field, basketball.

How to Meet your Neighbors

16 Monday Jul 2012

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advice, foster connections, friendly, good friends, neighbors

Our neighborhoods are only as strong as the bonds we have with our neighbors. If you’ve recently moved into a new home or have noticed someone new move in next door, it’s not as hard as you might think to reach out and make a connection.

While we all want to preserve our privacy, the benefits of being good neighbors far outweigh whatever “exposure” we might fear in the process. Good neighbors make safer neighborhoods. Good neighbors often can share tools and resources to reduce expenses and increase convenience. Finally, good neighbors can become good friends.

Here are a few ways to foster friendly connections:

Compliment and/or ask questions about your neighbor’s home.

Is it obvious your neighbor has a great garden? Solar panels? An enthusiasm for the classic car he washes on Sundays? Open up a conversation with a polite compliment and genuine curiosity.

Ask for advice on a project you’re considering.

While you can probably Google about any home project you’re considering, it’s also an opportunity to ask your neighbor if they know anything (or know anyone who knows) about a project you’re interested in. This could be a home maintenance project, a business, or a community event.

Partner up for home maintenance tasks.

Working with someone is a great way to build rapport. Are you thinking about pressure washing your house? See if your neighbor wants to tag team the project together. You can split the labor and the cost of the equipment rental (to say nothing of a cold one after the job is done!).

Going it alone is harder than overcoming our resistance to meeting “the strangers” next door. Break the ice, build the neighborhood. You’ll be glad you did.

We’ve helped people find good neighborhoods and can help you, too. Let’s talk: Kevin and Jennifer, REALTORS – 904-422-7626 http://www.HanleyHomeTeam.com or http://www.HanleyShortSales.com

Skip the Dorm, Buy Your Kid a Condo

12 Thursday Jul 2012

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College, Condo, Dorm, Investment, Student

By Bill Bischoff
May 14, 2012, 12:02 a.m. EDT
MarketWatch
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/skip-the-dorm-buy-your-kid-a-condo-2012-05-14

Prices in many real-estate markets may be close to bottoming out. We hope. So the old adage about buying low may be something to consider if you have a kid who will soon be heading off to college. The idea is to buy a condo for the kid to live in while attending school. That way, you’ll avoid paying through the nose for a dorm room or apartment with no hope of any profit. And if you buy a condo that has some extra space, you can rent it out to your kid’s friends and offset some of the ownership cost.

Lots of parents have made good money by following this strategy for the four or five or, God forbid, six years their kids spent in college and then selling the condo after graduation. Of course, the longer you can hold onto the property, the better the odds of cashing out for a profit. The other key factor to consider is the tax benefits. Here’s what you need to know.
Deducting college condo ownership expenses

The tax rules generally prevent you from deducting losses incurred from owning and renting out a residence that’s used more than a little bit by you or a member of your immediate family. However, a favorable exception applies when you rent at market rates to a family member who uses the property as his or her principal home. In this case, you can deduct tax losses from the rental activity (subject to the passive loss rules, which I’ll explain later). This beneficial loophole is open for you if you buy a condo and rent it out to your college-going child (and roomies, if any) at market rates.

You can deduct the mortgage interest and real-estate taxes. If you pay mortgage points, you can amortize them over the term of the loan. You can also write off all the other operating expenses—like utilities, insurance, association fees, repairs and maintenance, and so forth. As a bonus, you can depreciate the cost of the building (not the land) over 27.5 years, even while it is (we hope) increasing in value.

So where will your poverty-stricken son or daughter get the money to pay you market rent for the condo? The same place he or she would get the cash to pay for a dorm room or an apartment rented from some third party. In other words, from you! You can give your kid up to $13,000 annually without any adverse federal tax consequences. If you’re married, you and your spouse can together give up to $26,000. Your child can use that money to write you monthly rent checks. Just make sure he or she actually sends the checks and make sure they say they are for rent. Also, it’s best if you open up a separate checking account to handle the rental income and expenses. Taking these simple steps will help keep the IRS off your back if you ever get audited.
Passive loss rules may postpone tax losses

If the condo throws off annual tax losses (which it probably will after counting depreciation deductions), the passive activity loss (PAL) rules generally apply. The fundamental PAL concept goes like this: you can only deduct passive losses to the extent you have passive income from other sources -like positive taxable income from other rental properties you own or gains from selling them. Fortunately, a special exception says you can deduct up to $25,000 of annual passive losses from rental real estate provided: (1) your annual adjusted gross income (before the real estate loss) is under $100,000 and (2) you “actively participate” in the rental activity. Active participation means being energetic enough to at least make management decisions like approving tenants, signing leases, and authorizing repairs. You don’t have to mop the floor or snake out the drains.

If you qualify for this exception, you won’t need any passive income from other sources to claim a deductible rental loss of up to $25,000 annually (your loss probably won’t be that big). Unfortunately, however, if your adjusted gross income (AGI) is between $100,000 and $150,000, the special exception gets proportionately phased out. So at AGI of $125,000, you can deduct no more than $12,500 of passive rental real estate losses each year (half the normal $25,000 maximum). If your AGI exceeds $150,000 and you have no passive income, you can’t currently deduct any rental real estate losses. However, any disallowed losses are carried forward to future tax years, and you’ll be able deduct them when you sell the college condo. All in all, this is not a bad tax outcome–as long as your losses are mostly of the “paper” variety from noncash depreciation write-offs.
Favorable tax rules when you sell

When you sell rental real estate that you’ve owned for over a year, the profit—the difference between sales proceeds and the tax basis of the property after subtracting depreciation—is long-term capital gain. However, part of the gain—the amount equal to your cumulative depreciation write-offs—can be taxed at a maximum federal rate of 25%. The rest of the gain will be taxed at a maximum federal rate of no more than 15% under the current rules (which I hope will be extended to post-2012 years).

Remember those carryover passive losses that we talked about earlier? You get to use them to offset any gain from selling the condo.

Garage Storage Tips

09 Monday Jul 2012

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Garage storage tips; organization; real estate; garage; overhead storage; storage; DIY; fishing gear

Ever stumbled around in the garage at 4:30 in the morning, trying to untangle your rods and reels? It doesn’t exactly set a bright mood for a morning of summer fishing. If you’re the type that hasn’t worked out a system for storing your fishing gear, here’s a cheap DIY (Do It Yourself!) storage project that will keep those poles in prime position.

Don’t drop a mint on an expensive rack. Here’s what you need to do.

The Simple Storage System for Fishing Gear

1. Get your hands on inexpensive wire storage shelves. Buy them in short sections that you can get relatively close together (think: one end for the back of the pole, the other end for about the 3/4 mark). If you’re using deep sea poles, get more wire racks to distribute the weight.

2. Screw the racks to the ceiling of the garage, making sure to find a good stud to anchor each screw. Some racks have clip-on screw mounts. You might want to use some sort of U-bracket depending on how much weight you plan to put on the rack.

3. For rods with wide handles, use a pair of wire cutters or bolt cutters to clip out the parts of the wire rack that are in the way.

4. Slide the rods in the spaces between the wire racks, leaving enough room so lines don’t get tangled.

Just like that you have a nice overhead storage system for relatively little cash.

(Of course, if your garage is too packed for an overhead storage system, maybe it’s time to upgrade your house!)

We’d be glad to help you find a place that better suits your lifestyle. Just give us a shout at your earliest convenience: http://www.HanleyHomeTeam.com or 904-422-7626

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