Answers by Larry Mastropieri

Your realtor is right. The earnest money doesn't disappear, it gets credited toward your purchase price at closing. So if you put down $10,000 as your deposit, that $10,000 comes off what you owe at the closing table. It's not an extra cost. It's your money, just parked in escrow until closing day. The "good faith" part just means it shows the seller you're serious while the deal is working. As long as you close, you get the credit.

You can always ask. The seller just isn't obligated to say yes. A contract can be amended any day of the week as long as both parties sign an addendum, nothing about the inspection period closing prevents that. What changed is your leverage. During the inspection window, you were holding a free option: walk for any reason, keep your deposit. You spent that option when you negotiated the repairs and moved forward. So make it easy for them to say yes. Get a licensed roofer or electrician back out for written bids on the items that got worse, and ask for a credit at closing instead of repairs. Sellers respond to a $9,400 number. They don't respond to "these feel bigger than we thought." Two things to check with your agent before you send anything: whether your financing or appraisal contingency is still open, that's your actual remaining leverage, and whether any of this is something the seller knew about and didn't disclose. That second one is an attorney conversation, not a negotiation. And don't just go quiet and stop performing while you figure it out. That's how earnest money disappears.

35 years and it's still there means the source hasn't been found yet. You've been treating rooms. The smell is coming from somewhere nobody's opened up. On a 1938 masonry two-story, I'd look at three things before anything else: the basement or crawlspace, the ductwork, and the drain lines. Cast iron waste lines from that era crack and leak inside walls and under floors, and a dried-out floor drain trap in a basement will push odor into the house year round. Air filters don't touch any of that. They clean air. They don't remove a source. Second thing, when you reinsulated the walls, was there a vapor strategy? Old solid masonry dries to the interior. Insulate that assembly wrong and you can trap moisture at the brick-to-insulation line and grow mold inside the wall you just closed up. Worth a building science guy, not a general handyman. Then the part most people miss. Your clothes and furniture are a source now too. Even if you fix the house perfectly, the soft goods re-seed it. Those get professionally treated or they go. Ozone comes last, after the root cause is gone, and you cannot be in the house while it runs. It'll kill you and it'll kill your pets. Out for 24 hours, ventilate an hour before anyone walks back in.

Good instinct, worry about the exit before the house. Most people do it backwards. A few things to know. Hold title as tenants in common if your contributions aren't equal, it lets you own unequal shares. Talk to a lender early, because if only one of you qualifies you end up with one person carrying the loan and both on the deed, and that imbalance needs addressing. The big one people miss: in most states either co-owner can file a partition action and force the property sold, regardless of share size. Friendship doesn't prevent it. A written buyout provision is your only real protection, So get a co-ownership agreement drafted by an attorney before you're under contract, ownership percentages, who pays what, the buyout formula and how you value the property, what happens if one of you stops paying or wants out. And here's the free test: bring up putting it in writing and watch how he reacts. If that conversation makes him defensive, you've learned something while it still costs you nothing.

Probably not, and this surprises almost every seller. Copyright attaches to whoever pressed the shutter. Paying for the shoot bought you a license to use the photos, not ownership of them. Like buying a song doesn't let you put it in a commercial. And that license is usually tied to the active listing. Once you delist, most of it goes with it. Relisting a year later and posting to your personal social are both new uses. Easy fix, though. Call the photographer directly, not your old agent. The agent never held the rights to give. Ask for a new license covering the relist plus personal use. It's cheap, and photographers handle this all the time. Worth checking your old listing paperwork too, since some photographers do assign rights to the realtor. And when you relist, say up front that you want to own the images. You'll likely pay for the shoot yourself, but then they're yours for good.

Watch the data before the street. It moves first: 1. Days on market climbing 10% to 25% with no bigger economic reason 2. Sellers accepting steeper discounts off list price 3. Homes selling just as fast, but for less than a year ago 4. Inventory piling up while nearby areas stay balanced 5. Fewer owners living there, more absentee owners 6. Building permits dropping 7. School enrollment shrinking, which usually shows up three to five years before ratings drop 8. Code violations rising in one concentrated area Boarded-up houses and empty storefronts? That's kind of too late, right? The decline already happened. But don't confuse construction mess with decline. Dumpsters and contractor trucks usually mean investors are betting on the area.

Three legs on this stool: condition, marketing, price. One's off, the whole thing falls over. Condition sets your ceiling. Marketing decides how many buyers ever lay eyes on it. But price is half your marketing strategy right there, we can do an incredible job on a home and if you picked the wrong number, you might never even be seen. Buyers search in $25k to $100k increments. Overprice it and you fall right out of the filter of the exact buyer who would've written the offer. Spring's good timing, but start the condition work now. That's the leg with a lead time.

FIRPTA = Foreign Investment in Real Property Tax Act. Plain English: when a foreign person sells U.S. real estate, the buyer has to hold back a chunk of the sale price and send it to the IRS at closing. Here's the part that surprises everybody, it comes off your sale price, not your profit. Sell an $800k condo you paid $750k for, and 15% is still $120k going to the IRS. You can sell at a loss and still get hit. Standard rate is 15%. Drops to 10% between $300,001 and $1M if the buyer is an individual who's actually going to live there, and to zero at $300k or less under the same occupancy rule. It's a prepayment, not your final tax, you file and claim the difference back. If that's your situation, get a FIRPTA specialist on it before you list. Form 8288-B can lower the withholding up front, but the IRS takes about 90 days, so late is expensive.

Roof life comes down to the material, shingle's usually good for about 20-25 years, tile 30-40, metal 50-80. That part holds whether you're in Florida or Alabama, though our sun beats up a roof faster than yours does. The "no leaks" thing is the trap, though. A dry roof can still slow a sale if the buyer's insurance company doesn't like the age, and how strict that is depends on your local market. Down here carriers get real tight past 20 years. Up in Albertville the rules are different, so check with a local agent or insurance broker before you spend a dime on a new roof. Bottom line: if it's not leaking and your local carriers aren't flagging the age, you may not need to touch it. Verify that locally first.

Yes, inspect the unit: AC, water heater, windows, plumbing, electrical. Anything inside your walls is yours. The association handles the structure, but your first job is confirming exactly where that line falls in that building. The bigger risk is the association itself. Pull the budget and the reserve study. Get the milestone inspection report if it's an older building. Florida now requires full structural reserve funding, and owners can't vote it away, so older buildings have handed out assessments over $100,000. Ask what's levied, approved, or being discussed. Read a full year of meeting minutes. That's where the real problems live, and know that some boards write four sentences for a meeting that ran an hour. Read the rules too: pets, rentals, renovations. Then protect yourself in the contract. The standard form is vague on assessments. You want language saying who pays one levied while you're under contract, one due before closing, and one approved now but billed later. Also check financing early. Fannie and Freddie now review reserve compliance, and over 1,400 Florida buildings are on the restricted list. Get an agent who's closed a lot of condos, not one who dabbles.

Honestly most people ask the wrong things. How long you been doing this, how many homes you sold. Doesn't really tell you much. Stuff I'd actually ask: 1. How are you pricing my house? If they can't break it down into condition, marketing, and price as three separate things, that's a red flag. Pricing is basically half your marketing. 2. What's the marketing plan? Real photos, video, paid ads, a soft launch before going live. If the answer is "we'll throw it on Zillow," keep looking. 3. How many deals did YOU close last year. Not the team. You. Big difference between someone doing 15 a year and someone doing 100. 4. When an offer comes in, are you calling the lender first? Are you asking them real stuff, like did they verify income, pull credit, run it through underwriting? If the contract says 30 days for loan commitment and the lender can't do 14, that file isn't done. That's a buyer with a letter, not a real preapproval. That's the interview right there. I wrote a more detailed article about it if you would like to check it out: https://www.discoversouthflorida.com/faq/what-questions-should-a-listing-agent-ask-the-loan-officer-about-a-buyer/

No standard split, and there never was one. The seller's deal with their listing agent and what's offered to the buyer's agent are two separate negotiations, nothing requires them to be equal. Since the 2024 rule changes, the buyer-side number isn't published on the MLS, so it comes in as part of the offer and gets negotiated along with price and terms. Rates themselves vary quite a bit, so worth asking an agent who works your area.

Full disclosure, I'm a South Florida guy, I won't pretend to know the Grand Rapids market or be your agent up there. But the fundamentals travel, so here's what matters anywhere. First, define what "investment property" means for you two: a pure rental you never touch, or something you'd use part of the year? House hacking vs. straight investing are completely different plans, nail that down together first. And run honest cash-on-cash: mortgage, taxes, insurance, maintenance, vacancy, all of it. The Midwest is generally a cash-flow market, so let a sharp local operator tell you what's realistic. Last thing, and I love the "or several", that's the whole secret. Money and knowledge both compound. Deal ten beats deal one. Find a local agent and lender who actually invest, not just sell. That's your real first move.

Start with three agents, not a website. Have three agents who actively sell in your area walk the property independently and give you their opinion of value. Where those three numbers overlap is where your market actually sits. One of them closed something on the next street last month. One has a buyer who just lost out nearby. One knows what's about to hit the market and compete with you. Different vantage points, same house. Use the Zestimate as a rough starting point and nothing more. Zillow publishes their own accuracy data, median error runs about 1.74% on homes actively listed, but it jumps to 7.2% off-market. On a $500,000 house that's a $35,000 miss. One in four off-market estimates lands more than 10% off. The algorithm has never been inside your kitchen and has no idea whether your backyard faces water or a strip mall parking lot. One filter when you pick the three: look at actual transaction volume, not the marketing. Someone doing 10 or 15 deals a year isn't pricing enough homes to have real instinct. That comes from reps. It should cost you nothing, and it shouldn't take two weeks to get a number.

Two things tell you if it's real: the contract and the escrow deposit. Get it in writing on a standard FAR/BAR contract. If it's an email, a letter of intent, or some document their office made up, that's not an offer yet. Then ignore the proof of funds PDF; those are easy to fake, and the bank won't tell you much anyway. Ask them straight: how much are you putting in escrow, and when? Under FAR/BAR, they've got three business days after signing to wire it. If it doesn't show up, they've defaulted, and you move on. $60,000 with a $100 deposit is nothing. $60,000 with $10,000 sitting at a real Florida title company is a conversation. And make sure that escrow agent is an established title company or an attorney's trust account, not somebody they picked. One more thing: is $60,000 actually close to what the place is worth? These outfits aren't calling to pay retail. Get a real read on value before you sign anything, and have an agent or attorney look at the contract first.