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While buying a house can set you up for financial success, renting comes with its own benefits, like flexibility. If you can't afford a down payment or monthly payments, you may want to continue renting for now. Homeownership also costs more than just the monthly mortgage payment. This includes your mortgage, property taxes, mortgage insurance, homeowners insurance, and HOA fees, but not costs like utility bills. If monthly mortgage payments would be a financial strain, it could be better to keep renting for now.

☆ Real estate agents are tacking ludicrous 'junk fees' on to every home purchase
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-03 | by ( James Rodriguez | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +15 min

The fee goes by many names: an administrative fee, a transaction fee, or even a "regulatory compliance" fee. Despite the controversy, all signs indicate that brokerages large and small have increasingly embraced the admin fee in recent years. The vast majority of real-estate agents are independent contractors who rely on commissions to earn a living. Admin fees may be one of the most polarizing topics among real-estate agents today. "I'm in a place in my business right now where I can justify paying that," the Las Vegas agent told me.

☆ An explosion of hidden 'junk fees' is making every home more expensive
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-03 | by ( James Rodriguez | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +15 min

☆ Windfall tax seizure case in Michigan deepens appellate split on class standing issue
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-02 | by ( Alison Frankel | Thomson Reuters | Alison Frankel Has Covered High-Stakes Commercial Litigation As A Columnist For Reuters Since A Dartmouth College Graduate | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +6 min

The county auctioned Fox's property for about $25,000 — and kept the $22,000 difference between the sale price and Fox's tax obligation. But Fox’s class action did not name only Gratiot County as a defendant. Circuit Court disagreed. The 6th Circuit in the Fox case agreed with the 2nd Circuit's holding that trial courts must consider constitutional standing issues ahead of class certification. The Michigan counties that challenged class certification were represented at the 6th Circuit by Douglas Curlew of Cummings, McClorey, Davis & Acho.

"It really seems like companies have become addicted to junk fees." Junk fees are making companies billions of dollars richer and the practice spans industries, including banking, telecom, entertainment and hospitality. CNBC sorted some of the biggest junk fee offenders into three separate buckets. "Junk hotel fees and these ancillary fees are bringing in about $3 billion a year for the hotel industry," Wolfe told CNBC, citing a Consumer Reports estimate. Watch the video above to learn more about where junk fees hide, how agencies are proposing changes, where policy falls short and whether increased regulatory oversight may be enough to squash junk fees once and for all.

NEW YORK, March 29 (Reuters) - Fidelity National Financial Inc (FNF.N) will pay $3.5 million to settle New York Attorney General Letitia James' claims that the largest U.S. title insurer illegally conspired with rivals not to solicit each other's employees. Under an agreement made public on Wednesday, Fidelity also agreed to end all "no-poach" agreements within 30 days, and cooperate with James' probe into the title insurance industry. James said no-poach agreements, whether written or oral, reduce competition for workers, resulting in lower wages and benefits and impeding career growth. It promised to notify James' office if it learned of illegal no-poach agreements over the next 10 years. Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York; editing by Jonathan OatisOur Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

☆ Be on the lookout for these six red flags in the homebuying process. It could save you thousands, a real-estate attorney said.
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-17 | by ( Jordan Pandy | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +8 min

He said real-estate agents can work in their best interest, not their clients', if a contract is weak. Purposefully confusing contracts and some real-estate agents' self-serving motives have some homebuyers getting themselves into tricky positions, said Douglas R. Miller, a veteran real-estate attorney in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area. Commissions are usually around 6% of the home's sale price and split between the buyer's agent and the seller's agent. Negotiating your broker's fee can be key in saving you moneyIn a home sale, buyers' agents are actually paid by the seller. "Affiliated business arrangement" is the textbook term, and it can be dangerous for buyers, Miller said.

☆ First-time homebuyers are pretty much screwed in 2023
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-12 | by ( Alcynna Lloyd | Andy Kiersz | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

Starter homes are typically more affordable houses that are purchased by new home buyers. Their absence has made it difficult for many first-time buyers to afford homeownership. The stark indicator only illustrates that starter homes are vanishing from the US real-estate market. Starter homes are typically smaller, more affordable houses that are purchased by first-time buyers or those on a tight budget. With higher home prices, mortgage rates and property taxes, as well as a possible recession looming in 2023 — that could trigger mass job losses — the odds are stacked against many would-be first-time buyers.

☆ Opendoor slashed prices and paid buyers' agents $3,500 a house in a rush to off-load thousands of homes in the third quarter
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-01 | by ( Daniel Geiger | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +7 min

Opendoor cut prices and gave incentives in the third quarter, losing cash on much of its inventory. Opendoor has been offering buyers $15,000 credits and their brokers $3,500 bonuses. A decelerating housing market poses a challenge for iBuying companies like Opendoor, which use home-pricing algorithms to purchase homes. In the third quarter, Opendoor sold between 8,100 and 8,550 homes, according to an estimate by Datadoor, a startup that catalogs Opendoor's acquisition and sales activity across the country. The high end of Datadoor's estimate, 8,550 home sales, would be an 18% decrease in the number of sales Opendoor reported for the second quarter and 32% below the first quarter.

☆ I moved to Turkey on a whim and now work here remotely full time. I love the low cost of living and don't plan on returning to the US anytime soon.
▼ + stars: | 2022-10-18 | by ( Kaila Yu | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

Jacki Ueng started working remotely in Turkey over the pandemic as a "digital nomad." The flight I booked on Turkish Airlines had a layover in Istanbul, so I decided to go there instead. I work remotely while I travel throughout the country, exploring all its regions and meeting locals. I cringe when people ask how I go on vacation so much, because I'm not on vacation — I'm working wherever I travel. I also fell in love with the owner of that first hostel I stayed in — so that's an extra perk.

☆ Compass is in a precarious position. It's worth a fraction of its IPO valuation, it's never turned a profit, and employees say the former centerpiece of the business — its vaunted tech tools for agent
▼ + stars: | 2022-10-10 | by ( Daniel Geiger | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +16 min

Reffkin (left) and Compass cofounder Ori Allon. Tech had been central to Compass' original missionFor years, Compass executives, including Reffkin, credited the company's tech with its meteoric rise in the residential-real-estate business. Though Compass' tech team still has 700 people, many more than any rival brokerage, the September layoffs seemed to initiate what insiders expect to be continuing cuts to the unit. "Robert is like Steve Jobs but without the insight," the veteran engineer who left Compass earlier this year said. Reffkin (left) and Allon ring the opening bell at the New York Stock Exchange.

☆ Home cheat home: How real-estate agents are ripping off homebuyers
▼ + stars: | 2022-09-28 | by ( Mattathias Schwartz | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +20 min

The other day, Linda, the real-estate agent whom my wife and I used to buy our home, called me out of the blue. Real-estate agents, like doctors, are the friendly, knowledgeable face of a bewildering, price-gouging system. If Americans paid the same rate as the British, they would save more than $72 billion a year in real-estate commissions. The potential for big money, in turn, has led more and more Americans to become real-estate agents. Every dollar that is paid out in a real-estate transaction — to sellers, agents, inspectors, insurers, and the IRS — comes from you, the buyer.

☆ FASB Tweaks Upcoming Rule on Insurance Contracts to Ease Transition
▼ + stars: | 2022-09-21 | by ( Mark Maurer | ) www.wsj.com time to read: +3 min

The U.S. accounting standard setter allowed insurers that recently sold their long-term insurance business to exclude those from their balance sheets when they comply with a new accounting rule on valuing certain contracts. The FASB in 2019 and 2020 delayed implementing the rule by a year to give companies more time to prepare. Long-term contracts include agreements on annuities, endowments and title insurance, whereas short-duration contracts usually cover property and liability protection. PREVIEWOriginally, insurers that sold or disposed of their long-term policies would have needed to apply the new accounting rule on valuing certain contracts when they presented prior periods. Insurance companies supported the relief and said that disposed contracts were no longer relevant to their current operations or future cash flows.

It's a good idea to keep your emergency fund in a relatively accessible account, such as a Marcus by Goldman Sachs High Yield Online Savings account or in an Ally Online Savings Account. Ally Bank Online Savings Account Learn More Ally Bank is a Member FDIC. For that reason, you should consider how much of a monthly mortgage payment you can comfortably afford. They also encompass appraisal fees, underwriting fees, home inspection fees, credit check fees and title insurance and title search fees, among other fees. Ally Bank, for example, won't charge an application fee, origination fee, processing fee or underwriting fee.

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