Author Archives: Jay Butchko
Real Estate Disclosures by Sellers Prior to Sale
Buying a real estate property is a rollercoaster ride of hopes and disappointments. You find a listing for your dream home, but when your real estate agent contacts the seller about it, you find out that it is already under contract. You find one that is still available, and you make an offer but… Read More »
Adverse Possession Dos and Don’ts
Somewhere in one of the five boroughs, there is a vacant lot next to some warehouses, or at least there used to be when you were a kid. When your uncle would drive past it with you, he would say that the lot belongs to him, and one day he is going to build… Read More »
Will the National Association of Realtors Settlement Be a Relief to Homeowners, or Just Another Financial Burden?
Everyone knows that buying and selling a house usually turns out to be much more expensive than you expected when you first got emotionally attached to a house that you saw listed on Zillow and contacted a real estate agent about it. Throughout your conversations with loan officers and real estate agents, it seems… Read More »
What’s Going on With CLOs and the Commercial Real Estate Market?
Investing in commercial real estate requires you to make long-term plans that depend on factors which, at the time you make your plans, are virtually unknowable. Case in point, all of those people who invested in shared office space in 2019 had no idea that, in a year’s time, remote work would be the… Read More »
Are Multigenerational Households the New American Dream?
Homeownership is becoming more unaffordable by the day. Between the high interest rates and the uncertainty about buyers having to pay real estate agents’ commissions instead of sellers taking responsibility for all the commissions, it is no wonder that most Americans who have never owned a house or condominium despair of ever being able… Read More »
Can Affordable Housing Be Affordable for Landlords, Too?
In their worst moments, current landlords and aspiring real estate investors sound like supervillains in a movie where the protagonist’s goal is to stop a run-down New York City tenement building, the only home he has ever known, from being destroyed to make room for a Pilates studio and a dog park. If you… Read More »
Understanding the 5 Ds of Real Estate
Children of the 80s grew up playing a board game called the Game of Life. There is probably a phone app version of this game available somewhere, but the young generation does not experience the slow progress of your tiny plastic car across the game board, as it inches through suburbia while filling up… Read More »
Tenant Owned Buildings Are Getting Closer to Becoming Reality in New York City
The prohibitively high cost of housing in New York is so well known that it has become proverbial. The only difference is that now the rest of the country is starting to feel New York’s pain. It has been the case for as long as anyone can remember that only rich people can afford… Read More »
A Financial First Aid Kit Can Save Your Family Time and Money
Whoever creates clickbait related to estate planning must not know the golden rule of estate planning, namely that estate planning is about planning for life, not planning for death. Content creators can’t seem to resist mentioning the “D” word at every opportunity. For example, Swedish death cleaning is a great idea, but it is… Read More »
Your Plan to Work Until You Are 70 May Backfire
Ensuring financial stability during retirement is becoming more difficult for each successive cohort of retirees. Our income has less purchasing power than our parents’ income did, and employer-provided retirement pensions are getting harder to find. Today’s workers are lucky if their employers contribute to a retirement count for them at all. Even having your… Read More »