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This column in written by Randy LiVorsi, of the District Residential Group. A DC resident for 16 years, he is licensed in DC and VA. Randy holds a Masters in Organizational Management and Development and is a certified project manager with a current PMP. Each month he will dig into all things DC area real estate. He is also a General in the KISS Army, so get ready to rock and real estate all night, and party every day!

For first time home buyers, one of the most ‘understudied’ and intimidating parts of the purchase transaction is the process of selecting not just a lender, but also discerning what mortgage product best fits their needs.

In my experience, the most common reason first time buyers shy away from adeptly navigating this component revolves around one thing — fear.

Fear of the unknown, fear of the perceived complexities of both the products as well as the process of obtaining a mortgage. Like anything else, if an emotion drives behavior that leads to avoidance, it can result in an unnecessary ‘handicap’ that can be costly.

In this month’s installment, I share three tips to amp up your readiness as a buyer and a bonus fourth for the real overachievers!

1. Eliminate ego and critically assess your own level of knowledge.

Read, read, read, read… and then read more. Don’t be intimidated by what you identify as shortcomings.

Create a punch list of those specific items​ — whatever they may be (eg. the difference Fixed Rate Mortgage (FRM) vs. an Adjustable Rate Mortgage (ARM).

Next, do independent research — ​there’s no one you will trust more than yourself. Don’t ​rely​ on what your friend said last week — there are too many extraneous variables specific to YOUR purchase goals that likely do not align with the well meaning advice of your friend.

2. Establish a comfortable baseline where you can confidently speak to a loan officer without experiencing crippling levels of anxiety or nervousness.  (more…)

By Family Law Attorney Brian W. Reidy, founder of Reidy Law Office LLC.

The Dehli High Court — the rough equivalent of US Court of Appeals — has ruled that a woman and her toddler child must return to Illinois for final adjudication of child custody and divorce proceedings following her husband’s filing of a petition with the court for an order removing the child from the woman’s custody and returning her to the United States.

The woman, who was originally born in India but lived in the United States, was seeking to avail herself of India’s courts in an attempt to use that country’s laws in manner that would have dissolved her marriage and provided her custody of the couple’s three-year-old daughter.

The couple had traveled to India to visit the woman’s parents, but just before flying back to the United States, the woman and her daughter had disappeared.

The Hindu Marriage Act governs marriages where one or both of the individuals are of the Hindu religion. Divorce is generally frowned upon in the Hindu religion; however, the Act allows for divorce in certain situations, including allowing the wife to petition for dissolution of the marriage in the instance of rape, which is what the wife alleged.

However, the Circuit Court of Cook County, Illinois, had already exercised jurisdiction over the custody of the child, having ruled in the matter prior to the wife’s petition in India, wherein sole interim custody had been vested in the father.

“The father asked the Delhi High Court to remove his daughter from his wife’s custody and return her to the United States, arguing that the courts in India had no jurisdiction over the matter,” said Brian W. Reidy, an Illinois Child Custody Attorney with Reidy Law Office, LLC.

The Delhi High Court agreed, holding that the United States was the “Karam Bhumi” (the place with proper jurisdiction) of the couple and as such, the wife could not avail herself of the laws of her home country at the expense of the best interests of her child, a United States citizen who had only ever known life in Illinois.

This “best interests of the child” concept may be in an order from an Indian court, but the concept itself is not foreign to divorce and custody proceedings in the United States. The best interests of the child standard has long been the “polar star” for courts in child custody proceedings, the goal being to put the needs of the child ahead of the wants and wishes of the parents.

In this scenario, the mother was seeking to move to India with her child to be closer to her family and those that she knew. Though this would be good for the mother, removing the child from her life, school, friends and other family solely for the ease of the mother represented a violation of that child’s best interests for the Dehli court.

Child custody proceedings are inherently challenging and filled with conflict. An experienced child custody attorney in Illinois will help you understand the laws governing custody and work to negotiate an outcome that is favorable to you as a parent while keeping your child in mind.

Scrofano Law PC is D.C.’s premiere Criminal, DUI and Cannabis defense firm. We give anyone who cares about their future a fighting chance when they are facing the full weight of the criminal justice system.

When a friend or family member gets arrested, it is a scary, difficult and unexpected event. There is some practical information that people should know in case they get the unthinkable call that police have arrested a friend or loved one.

First, understand that the person will immediately be brought to the police district in which the incident occurred. That is also where the arrestee will ultimately have to return to get their personal property like cell phone, wallet, purse and keys. You can find the addresses and contact information for each police district here.

Second, if the person is eligible for citation release, then the police will release them after several hours of booking at that station. Eligibility requirements for citation release depend on several factors.

Once they have been processed, police will release them from the station with a Citation to Return to Court in 2 to 4 weeks.

Next, if they are not eligible for release from the station, the next place police will take them is Central Cellblock where they will likely spend the night. Contact information for Central Cell Block can be found here.

While friends and family members are not allowed to go see them at Central Cell Block, a criminal defense attorney is. It is likely they will stay the night at Central Cell Block and be brought to D.C. Superior Court where they will go before a judge who will determine whether to release them with conditions or hold them for at least 3 to 5 more days.

Before you think it cannot happen to you or a loved one, please consider the following circumstances that often lead to the arrest of folks who are ordinarily law-abiding citizens:

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By Family Law Attorney Sara Khaki, founder and owner of Atlanta Divorce Law Group. 

The 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) made extensive changes to many different aspects of corporate and individual taxation. From corporate tax cuts to increases in the estate tax limit, most individuals felt the impact of the changes in some way or another.

One of the more significantly impacted areas, however, has been divorce and alimony, because the TCJA turned the negotiation of alimony between spouses completely on its head.

“Under the old tax laws, alimony payments were an above-the-line deduction, meaning that for the individual making the payment, it’s as if they never actually earned what they paid out,” said Sara Khaki, an Atlanta Alimony Attorney with the Atlanta Divorce Law Group. “It gave the spouse seeking alimony payments a very powerful tool to argue for a higher alimony payment.”

The spouse receiving alimony had to claim the payment as income, meaning that it was taxed, but because a spouse receiving alimony very often had a low income, the taxation was much less than it would have been in the hands of the higher-earning spouse. This normally resulted in a positive result for both parties — more income for one and less tax for the other.

Under the TCJA, this scenario is reversed. Alimony payments are no longer deductible by the spouse paying, but they are not treated as income to the spouse receiving them. The argument in favor of this change is that the spouse receiving the income will have more spending power, and since it will not get added to any other income the may have, there is more of an economic impact overall for the spouse receiving the funds.

However, what it has also done is give more power to the higher-earning spouse, who is now able to tell the other spouse that because of the increased amount of taxes owed, the actual amount of money available to make alimony payments is much lower. The pot of money from which to make the payment is significantly reduced.

This change should not mean that any spouse should simply take less and be happy with it. There are many other ways to balance out the reduced alimony available in a divorce settlement that can have tax advantages.

For example, the lower-earning spouse may be able to negotiate a larger portion of the other spouse’s tax deferred retirement account by arguing that those are dollars that will be more valuable to the lower-earning spouse in the future, in exchange for lower alimony payments.

If you are considering divorce, you should consult with an experienced Atlanta Alimony Attorney to fully understand what may be available to you from an income standpoint in divorce, and to better understand what other options may be available in negotiation. A good alimony attorney should be creative and attuned to your needs, and use that to successfully negotiate in your favor.

This column is written by Metro DC Houses, a local real estate team serving DC, MD, VA made up of Colin Johnson, the immediate past President for the D.C. Association of Realtors and Christopher Suranna, the current President for the D.C. Association of Realtors.

The question we wanted to answer this month is, “do condo fees negatively impact appreciation if over an average number?”

We chose the Georgetown zip code 20007 and found over the last 10 years the average condo fee for a one-bedroom unit is $514 dollars per month.

Condo fees vary based on services provide in building, so our assumption is condos with higher fees have more services and units with lower fees have fewer services. We didn’t consider anything except bedroom-count and on average we saw fewer units sold with higher condo fees (29 units) and more with lower condo fees (52 units).

There is another thing to consider in this evaluation, borrowing power because condo fees can limit the amount a purchaser can borrow if they are only approved for a certain amount per month.

As an example, if someone is qualified to afford $2000 a month and a condo fee is $500 that purchaser can now only afford debt equal to $1500 per month and obviously interest rates vary with that amount.

Based on our findings higher condo fees do negatively impact appreciation for units that have fees above average over the last ten years. For units that have condo fees below average the properties did appreciated slightly higher. One should also note that units with higher condo fees typically sell at a higher sales price than units with lower condo fees.

In our experience, condo fees do not directly relate one-to-one on value, but it can be concluded that enough consumers did not take this into consideration when conducting comps.

It is likely in some cases a consumer compared a lower condo fee unit with one of a higher condo fee, which typically sells for a higher price and in enough of those situations probably over-valued those properties over the years.