The Mortgage Forgiveness Relief Act of 2007 was passed by Congress to avoid additional financial hardship that some homeowners might experience due to a foreclosure or short sale. The law affects mortgage relief that occurs from January 1, 2007 to December 31, 2012.

Normally, IRS considers partial or total debt forgiven by a lender to be treated as ordinary income. This not only affects foreclosures but even short sales where only part of the debt is forgiven would trigger additional taxes for the homeowner. There are exceptions that apply such as bankruptcy and insolvency.

The forgiveness is only applicable to taxpayers’ principal residence and only acquisition debt used to buy, build or improve the home. The additional cash taken out when refinancing a home will not be eligible for the relief unless it is used for capital improvements.

The lender is required to submit a 1099 form to IRS and provide the homeowner a copy who will file the forgiven amount on Form 982 as part of their 1040 tax return. How this affects your individual situation may differ due to other circumstances and advice from a tax professional is recommended.

Deals get killed all the time, and buyers can’t relax until they have keys actually in hand. Here are three of the most common real estate deal-killers, and some steps buyers can take to deactivate them.

1. Appraisal too low. Some buyers incorrectly believe that the best thing that could happen to them is for the property to appraise below the agreed-upon purchase price, expecting that a low appraisal forces the seller to bring the price down. In fact, so many of today’s sellers are barely breaking even, that a low appraisal is probably the most common deal-killer around. If an appraisal comes in just a tad bit lower than the contract price, usually the seller will come down if they can, or the buyer will kick in a few extra bucks. But when it comes in 5, 10 or even 20 percent low, most sellers can’t – and most buyers won’t .

Low appraisals also seem like the most difficult deal-killer to avoid, as this process is entirely out of both buyer’s and seller’s control. But there are two things buyers can do to minimize the risk. First, check the comps – i.e., recent comparable homes that have sold in the area – before making an offer; your agent will help you do this. Then, don’t make an offer bizarrely above the average range of the comparables, even if the property has multiple offers, unless you’re prepared to deal with a low appraisal a couple of weeks out.

Also, consider working with a local mortgage broker who also originates loans through its own bank (vs. walking into a large bank’s branch off the street); these lenders have the ability to choose from a smaller pool of appraisers that they know are qualified and knowledgeable about your area.

2. Property condition dramas. When the market melted down, lenders found themselves with a lot of decrepit homes on their hands. This explains two things: (1) why lenders are more concerned about property condition now than ever, and (2) the raggedy condition of so many of the “distressed’ homes on the market. Homes that have extensive wood rot, dangerous decks or electrical systems, or peeling paint and missing systems (sinks, stoves and the like) are highly unlikely to pass muster when the appraiser walks through, even if they do qualify as being worth the purchase price. And while an individual seller might be willing to do some work, many just can’t afford to; short sale and REO sellers simply refuse to make fixes, 9 times out of 10.

Prevention is the best medicine for curing this transaction ailment. If you are buying a short sale or REO property, be aware that when the selling bank says as-is, it really means as-is. Ask your mortgage broker and agent to brief you on what sort of shape your lender will require your home to be in, at minimum, and keep that standard in mind during your house hunt. Your agent can help manage your expectations about which properties will and won’t likely pass muster.

3. Loan approval takes too long. Every buyer knows they must get preapproved for a mortgage before they start house hunting, but many don’t know that preapproval is just the first in a long list of steps that have to happen before the loan becomes a sure thing. In fact, it’s common now for buyers to get their loan preapproval many months before they end up in contract, and lots can change in the interim – further extending the time it may take for their loan approval to come in.

It’s common for contracts to include a standard loan contingency period of 17 days, give or take a few. But the appraisal might take longer than that to come in, or the underwriter might have lots of questions and seemingly random nitpicks about the appraisal, or about you: they want to see your driver’s license, then your marriage license, then your divorce decree, and after that, a letter from your employer agreeing that you’ll be keeping your job even though you’re moving an hour away. It never seems like they ask for everything at once, thus it can take longer than 17 days to obtain all the requested items, turn them in and get the underwriter to sign off on them.

Until you get that green light, it’s foolhardy to remove your loan contingency, as that step renders your earnest money deposit non-refundable, under most contracts. Many a buyer is forced to either secure an extension from the seller or to let the transaction die, rather than forfeiting their deposit funds. And again, some sellers understand and will play ball, but bank sellers can be particularly resistant to loan contingency extensions, especially if there are backup offers on the table.

Best practice for buyers to minimize the chances of an overtime loan approval process killing the deal? Be ready: be ready for lots of bizarre documentation requests, be ready to provide things you’ve already been asked for, and be ready to do so quick-like – without pushing back. The faster you can turn around the things the underwriter wants, the better.

Also, it can be very helpful to work with a mortgage broker and agent that have worked together before and have close communications, so that your agent can stay abreast of any and all loan process glitches and keep the listing agent apprised of the legitimate reasons you may need an extension throughout the contingency period, rather than assuring them everything’s speeding along then having to ask for a last-minute extension.

In the wild world of dating, when you encounter a “turn-off,” you can just pack it in and not to go on another date with that guy or gal again. But turnoffs can be much more detrimental when they come up in the realm of your real estate goals. Indeed, turn a buyer off, dear sellers, and you risk not selling your home – period – or getting a lower price than you might have otherwise.

And, contrary to what you might assume, the same goes for buyers. Even in today’s ‘buyer’s markets,’ multiple offers do happen. And even in cases when you’re the only buyer on the scene, having a cooperative seller goes a long way toward everything from getting access to the place for inspections to getting a price reduction when the appraisal comes in low. Thus, the potential still exists for buyers to turn sellers off, and risk having their dream home slip right through their fingers.

As you proceed on your quest for drama-free real estate, factor in these frequently occurring gaffes that turn off buyers and sellers, and my tips for avoiding them.

Top 3 Ways to Turn a Buyer Off:  If you’re a seller courting buyers, here are 3 faux-pas to avoid:

1. Hanging out when buyers are viewing your home: Buyers stalk properties online and off, checking obsessively for price reductions and the like.  But buyer-side home stalking is unobtrusive to sellers. On the other hand, buyers can feel personally stalked and stifled in their ability to fully explore or verbally process their impressions of a home when you, seller, hang out inside your home while it’s being shown.

As soon as a buyer sees you in the house, it instantly becomes much more difficult for them to”
(a) envision themselves living there (it’s your house, after all),
(b) be comfortable opening up drawers, closet doors, etc., and
(c) express their thoughts about how this house might be exactly what they’re looking for, if they can knock out that wall and get rid of those cukoo murals you so lovingly painted in your children’s rooms.

Sellers: If you want to sell your home, it’s best to not be around when buyers are looking. Give them some breathing space and a chance to truly walk around and consider what they like and/or dislike about your home without lurking and looming (and, let’s be real – eavesdropping) nearby.

2. Showing a messy house: Life gets hectic, and it’s easy for things like laundry, dishes and other house cleaning tasks to fall by the wayside. It’s also difficult to keep the home in which you and your 4 kids, 3 gerbils and 2 Labrador Retrievers live perfectly spotless for months at a time, while you’re waiting for an offer. But when you decide that you’re going to sell your home, it’s imperative that you make a pact and a plan with yourself and your family that the place will be in tip-top shape when buyers come knocking.

Remember: your home is competing with dozens of others, as well as with buyer’s HGTV-infused visions of what their next home should look like, so first impressions really count.

Sellers: Stuffing the closet is not the answer. (Buyers will be opening that closet door, after all.) Pack up your personals like you were moving (best case: you are), and put all but the essentials in storage, if needed. Get the carpets cleaned, do the dishes, make the beds, mow the lawn, dust, sweep and mop. Ask your agent to give you a gut check on whether your idea of clean is clean enough (better yet – ask them for the number of a house cleaner who you can engage to get the job done to showable standards).

This might all seem obvious, but agents and buyers alike are constantly amazed at the condition of some of the homes they walk into. Take my word for it; I’ll spare you the ‘ewww’-inducing stories.

3. Overpricing your home: Buyers already have lots to do before making the largest purchase of their lives. They have to wrangle their finances into order, jump hoops to qualify for a loan, collect the cash for down payment and closing costs, and invest sometimes hundreds of hours into market research and house hunting. With all of this already on their plates, the prospect of trying to negotiate down a crazily high asking price is just too much work (and too outside their comfort zones) for most buyers to deal with. The average buyer won’t even bother looking at your home if the asking price is clearly high and off base compared with other similar, nearby homes for sale; they’d rather sit tight and wait .

Sellers: Price to sell from the beginning. Work with your agent to determine a price that is supported by the data on how much nearby homes have recently sold for. You’ll save yourself a lot of time and anguish and get a lot more legitimate bites from serious, qualified buyers.

Top 3 Ways to Turn a Seller Off: Buyers, if you want a home’s seller to play ball, best practice is to avoid these 3 pitfalls:

1. Unjustified, extreme lowball offers: It’s no secret that buyers have the upper hand in many markets right now. (To be clear, I said ‘many’ – not ‘every’ – your agent can help you understand what the dynamics are in your market.) But let’s be realistic, here. No seller can afford to give away their home at a price far below what it’s worth on today’s market. Lowballing a seller at a price far below the recent sales prices of similar homes in the neighborhood on the ‘let’s-take-a-stab’ plan, is highly likely to turn them off.  And that, in turn, will cause the seller to view your offer – and you – as disrespectful and wasteful of their time.

Not only will they turn down your offer, but they may not even bother with a counteroffer, rendering your efforts at securing that particular home dead in the water.

Buyers: Review the recent sale prices of similar homes in the neighborhood (aka “comps”) with your agent before you make your offer. Also, ask them to help you factor in other market data, like the average list price-to-sale price ratio and the average number of days neighborhood homes stay on the market. It’s all right to come in lower than asking, if the market data supports such an offer; just be sure your offer is based on reality – and not your fantastical hallucination about scoring the bargain of the millennium.

2. Buyer-side mortgage fails: Plenty of employed buyers with decent credit and cash in the bank have been turned down for a mortgage these past few years. That means buyers can’t assume (a) that they’ll be approved for the amount of loan they need to buy the house they want, or (b) that they’ll be approved for a loan at all. Your inability to get approved for a home loan can create all sorts of problems not just for you, but also for your home’s seller. The average seller’s  worst case scenario is that  they accept your offer only to find out a few weeks, or months, later that you can’t get the loan you need to close the deal.

Buyers: It’s not overkill to start working with a mortgage professional as far as six months or a year in advance of starting your house hunt to get pre-approved for a loan. Make sure you get a clear understanding of the amount you qualify for, then work with your real estate agent from there to determine the price range you should house hunt in. And whatever you do – don’t buy a new car, open new credit cards or even change your line of work before your escrow closes, unless you consult closely with your mortgage professional before you make that move.

Tip for Sellers: Work with your agent to vet buyers before you sign a contract. Factor in their down payment and earnest money deposit, and feel free to counteroffer these items, not just the offer price. It’s not overkill to have your agent contact the buyer’s mortgage broker to see how reliable the buyer’s pre-approval really is.

3. Bashing the seller’s home: Home bashing happens when buyers start bad-mouthing (aka “trash talking”) the place and/or the neighborhood in hopes of getting a lower asking price. Examples: pointing out all the foreclosures in the area, saying the house down the street just sold for much lower than the asking price on this house, saying you’ll need to rip out the entire kitchen before you even consider moving in – saying any of these things to a seller who happens to be at home during the showing or the inspection is probably one of the fastest ways to turn them all the way off.

Buyers: Bad-mouthing a house or neighborhood won’t work to get you a lower price. Instead, it only serves to irritate the seller and motivate them to come up with all sorts of reasons why they shouldn’t sell their home to you! Remember: homes hold incredible emotional experiences for owners. Make an offer you’re comfortable with and keep the negative comments to yourself.

If there are legitimate, factual reasons underlying your decision to make an offer at a price the seller might see as a lowball, ask your agent to respectfully communicate those facts to the seller’s agent.

In the past couple of decades, many financial planners had their clients live by what’s called the 4 percent solution. Backed by research done in the 1990s, the solution enables a retiree in the first year of retirement to take 4 percent out of their total retirement savings and use it for living expenses. Then, each year the person can increase the amount just a tad to cover inflation.

So if the person retired with $500,000 in savings, the person could use $20,000 of it for living expenses in year one of retirement. The next year they would tweak the sum to cover the cost of inflation. With inflation running at 3 percent, the tweak would be $600. In other words, for year two of retirement the person would have $20,600 in spending money from their nest egg, plus whatever they get from Social Security, pensions or part-time work.

According to research done by financial planners such as William Bengen in the 1990s, a person who removes more than 4 percent is taking a relatively large risk of running out of money prematurely in retirement. He came to that conclusion after examining numerous market conditions from the past and applying them to today’s long life spans. Often people retire in their 60s and live into their 90s. The 4 percent solution assumes people are retired for 30 years.

But the traumatic experience of two horrendous bear markets since 2000 has caused financial planners to re-examine old assumptions. After all, embedded in the 4 percent solution is the idea that an individual will have a mixture of stocks and bonds that will grow enough to replenish some of the money the person removes each year for retirement living expenses. And the brutal truth of the past few years has been that while the U.S. stock market has provided a 9.9-percent-a-year gain on average since 1926, in a single year like 2008, a person can lose more than 30 percent.

The realities have been hard on seniors, and especially on those who have never heard of the 4 percent rule and simply removed the money they wanted or needed for retirement expenses. If a person spends too freely early in retirement and then sees the well going dry at 75, it’s tough to find a job.

While research done before the 2000s skirted over periods of massive losses and especially the Great Depression, there is renewed interest in peering at brutal times as well as benevolent times in the stock market.

So new research by Chris O’Flinn, president of Elm Income Group, garnered attention at the annual conference of the Society of Actuaries last week.

O’Flinn wondered if people could still feel safe removing 4 percent from their savings and whether they could dare push the limits a little and remove 5 percent.

He went through history from 1926 through 2009, examining what a typical retirement portfolio of half stocks and half bonds would do.

The conclusion: A person who removes 5 percent of their money the first year of retirement and then tweaks it each year to cover inflation stands a 51 percent chance of running out of money in a 35-year retirement. In a 30-year retirement, the danger of running out is 36 percent. In 25 years of retirement, there’s a 20 percent chance of outliving your money.

A person who sticks to the 4 percent solution improves the odds of having enough money. Yet over 35 years, there is a 15 percent chance of exhausting your savings prematurely, and over 30 years, there’s an 8 percent chance.

The 1960s were also tough on retirees. A nasty combination of high inflation and bad returns on investments conspired to erode people’s savings faster than usual, O’Flinn said.

Some people feel comfortable with a 15 percent risk. But if you want certainty that you won’t exhaust your savings, history suggests you should be fine if you remove no more than 3.5 percent of your savings in the first year of a 30-year retirement.

Of course, that’s getting pretty lean on spending money. O’Flinn notes that another way to handle a period like we’ve encountered in the past few years is to stop taking any inflation adjustment for a year or more. The idea is to take as little as possible out of your savings so that you give the stocks time to make gains again. If you’ve removed money, it will never have a chance to heal and prop up your savings again.

Gail MarksJarvis is a personal finance columnist for the Chicago Tribune and author of “Saving for Retirement Without Living Like a Pauper or Winning the Lottery.”

©2011 the Chicago Tribune

While the process may seem overwhelming, the following tips will help accomplish the task.

1. Try not to focus on the entire house at once. Take on one project at a time and don’t allow yourself to get overwhelmed. If the room itself is too much to take on, focus on one area at a time.

2. Evaluate what you have. If you haven’t used or thought about something in over a year, it’s probably safe to get rid of it. Craigslist and eBay are great online tools that will help you cash in on things that you don’t need anymore. Or donate items you no longer need.

3. Properly store irreplaceable items. Meaningful items such as old photos, yearbooks, wedding dresses, and christening gowns should be properly stored in sealed containers. You may even want to go one step further with old photos and convert them to a digital format to ensure that they will always be safe.

4. Stay positive. Getting rid of items that remind you of your past can be an emotional process. At first it might seem difficult to part with certain things. Concentrate on what’s important to you and visualize what your home will look like when you have de-cluttered and re-imagined your space.

Downsizing requires a great deal of planning and patience.  You might find that you are needing the services of others, such as stagers, de-clutterers and junk removers, as well as a storage plan for the things you want to keep safe.

• Rehearse: Find a friend to portray your boss and try out what you plan to say. “Practice a tone that sounds friendly and assertive rather than bitter and entitled,” recommended Alexandra Levit, author of “Success for Hire.”

• Find the right time: Meet with your boss when he or she is not overly busy or distracted. “Avoid scheduling the meeting to ask for a raise as the last meeting of the day because your boss will be more focused on leaving than on considering your request,” said Ian Newton in the book “How to Get Ahead at Work.”

• Outline your strengths: Use specific examples to show why you’re an asset to the company. “Focus on the benefits your boss and the company receive from your contributions, rather than the additional money you need or desire,” Levit said.

• Consider other benefits: “If your boss is leery of giving you a salary raise, perhaps he or she will be open to giving you more vacation time, or flex time, or perhaps a bigger office or an assistant,” Newton said.

• Plan B: If you can’t get a raise immediately, see whether you can get one in the future contingent on accomplishing specific goals. “Ask your manager what you need to do to receive a raise and if it’s possible to revisit the issue in the near future,” Levit advised.

©2012 the Los Angeles Times
Distributed by MCT Information Services

Clean

No one likes a ditty house, and your what “lived in” is to you might be someone else’s “messy.”  When in doubt, clean.  It’s the least expensive way to improve your home’s initial appeal, and it’s a good way to get a jump-start on your move.

Basic: The first thing you need to do is de-clutter.  If your moving company offers storage, this is the time to use it.  Extra furniture, oddball art, pots and pans that don’t fit in the kitchen—it all needs to go.  Don’t go overboard—your house should still look like a home. It just needs to be airy enough for a buyer to put his or her mental imprint on it.  Your hackey sack collection from college won’t help.  Next up is a good, solid scrubbing.  Spend a weekend washing the floors, baseboards, and bathrooms.  Be sure to get the tops of cabinets and corners behind furniture.  Clean every piece of glass in the building.  Too many people ruin a pristine home with spotty mirrors and doors.  Don’t forget the outside of the house.  Hose down your exterior walls and driveway, trim the lawn and hedges, and remove any trash cans and clutter from sight.  If your neighbors are less-than-tidy, you might want to offer them some free help, as well.  And while you’re cleaning the garage, wash your cars, too.  They make an impression.

All-Out: If you have money to spend, install space-saving storage solutions in the garage, kitchen, and bathroom to reduce clutter.  Consider paying a service to do the deep cleaning you’re bound to miss.  Rent a pressure washer for the driveway or (if it’s a real mess and you’re feeling generous), repave.

Fix

Part of the joy of buying a new home is starting with a clean slate.  No one wants to buy an existing to-do list of nagging little fix-its.  Making small fixes now can put the buyer’s mind at ease.

Basic: Focus on inexpensive, highly-visible problems.  Doorbells, window glass, cabinet handles, and holes in walls are all easy to spot and cheap to fix.

All-Out: Take aim at long-term maintenance projects, such as pool pumps, water heaters, and air conditioning servicing.  Buyers probably won’t notice these on their own, but your agent can call attention to these facts to help reduce worries about long-term costs.

Brighten

Buyers like to see what they’re viewing.  Good lighting, vivid color, and a few visual cues can go a long way toward making your home a memorable one.

Basic: Repaint interior walls, particularly those in the bathroom, kitchen, and extremely bright areas.  White walls are particularly important, as they get dingy quickly.  Replace traditional incandescent light bulbs with compact fluorescents, which put brighter lights in your existing sockets while saving money.  Tie back curtains to let in the maximum amount of sun, which makes a house look more inviting than artificial light.  Spruce up empty or colorless zones with potted plants.  They add character to a room, but are obviously disposable if a buyer dislikes them.  Repaint your front door, mailbox, and any street numbers.

All-Out: Repainting the entire interior if it’s been more than a few years since the last paint job.  Install additional lighting in cabinets and closets.  Add new cabinet doors and counter tops.

What Not to Do

While you can certainly overspend on any of the above suggestions, their value is well-established.  Making a home cleaner, better-functioning, and more attractive is a no-brainer.  However, some improvements can go too far, and actually hurt your investment.  As a general rule, don’t build for the sake of building.  Bigger isn’t always better, and if you take a project too far, you risk going in a direction the buyer will have to undo.  For example, adding an extra bedroom might seem like a great investment, but a retired couple may prefer to use that space to install a pool in the back yard.  Upgrade the home you have, but don’t try to make it something else.

By Cormac Foster

With foreclosure rescue scams widespread as more homeowners fall behind on mortgage payments, be smart if you seek help.

A record high 2.8 million properties were hit with foreclosure notices in 2009, putting even more Americans at risk of facing foreclosure rescue scams. Homeowners who fall behind on mortgage payments need to tread carefully when seeking assistance, since foreclosure rescue scams come in many guises. A day spent researching legitimate options, from a mortgage modification or principal forbearance to a short sale or deed-in-lieu, could keep you from becoming a scam victim.

Foreclosure rescue scams run rampant

Homeowners facing foreclosure are prime targets for scam artists. The U.S. Federal Trade Commission identified 71 companies running suspicious foreclosure rescue ads, and the Better Business Bureau counts foreclosure rescue rip-offs among its top 10 scams. Understanding how these scams work can help you avoid becoming a victim.

The variations are seemingly endless, but one popular foreclosure scam involves a representative of a so-called foreclosure rescue company promising to negotiate a deal with your lender. The rep, vowing to take care of everything, will instruct you not to contact your lender, lawyer, or credit counselor during the supposed negotiations. The more brazen ones will even tell you to pay your mortgage directly to them.

Once you pay an upfront fee or hand over a few months’ worth of mortgage payments, the scam artist will disappear. You’ll be left with an emptier wallet and a mortgage that’s in even deeper trouble because no deal was cut and no payments were made on your behalf. According to John Riggins, chief executive of the Fort Worth, Texas, office of the Better Business Bureau, upfront fees can range from $500 to $5,000.

Rip-offs come in many forms

A bankruptcy foreclosure scam can involve a promise to fend off foreclosure in exchange for an upfront fee. Instead of getting you legitimate relief, the fraudster will pocket the fee and secretly file a bankruptcy case in your name. The scam may seem to work initially, because a bankruptcy filing will stop foreclosure proceedings temporarily, but they’ll resume. Compounding your problems, a bankruptcy can mar your credit report for 10 years.

Another common scam, called the bait-and-switch, results in a scam artist taking ownership of your home. You sign documents supposedly for a new loan that will make your mortgage current. What’s really happening is you’re signing over the deed of your house. In this scenario you would still owe on your mortgage but no longer own the home.

In a rent-to-own scheme, you’re told to surrender a home’s deed as part of a deal that lets you stay put as a renter. The scam artist, perhaps claiming to be able to refinance at a better rate with you off the title, promises to sell the house back to you in the future. However, terms of the deal may make it all but impossible for you to repurchase the home, or the scammer may get you evicted by raising the rent beyond your means. Either way, you end up losing the home while remaining on the hook for the unpaid mortgage.

Look out for red flags

Being aware of the warnings signs can protect you from foreclosure rescue scams. Red flags include:
•    Demands for high upfront fees.
•    Guarantees to stop a foreclosure.
•    Instructions to make mortgage payments to someone other than your lender.
•    Pressure to sign over a deed.

Legitimate foreclosure counselors won’t put on a full-court press, nor will they guarantee that you won’t lose your home to foreclosure. What they will do is review your financial situation and offer up options. Foreclosure counselors approved by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development won’t charge you a fee either.

Legitimate ways to get foreclosure help

There are a number of legitimate ways to contend with foreclosure. If you’ve missed mortgage payments, start by getting in touch with your lender. Ask to speak with someone in the Loss Mitigation Department and explain your situation.

Your lender may be able to arrange a repayment plan, called a special forbearance, based on your current economic circumstances. The lender could even give you a temporary reduction in your monthly payment or suspend payments for a period of time.

With a principal forbearance, the lender will reduce the amount of your mortgage, thus reducing your monthly payments. However, the amount of the principal reduction doesn’t disappear. Rather, it’s tacked on to the end of the loan, effectively creating a balloon payment.

A federally facilitated mortgage modification could also help. The Making Home Affordable modification program pays lenders to re-work loan terms and lower monthly payments. Be prepared to gather lots of paperwork and undergo a trial modification.

If all else fails, you may need to give up your home. If so, look into the federal Home Affordable Foreclosure Alternatives program. HAFA offers lenders financial incentives to opt for a short sale or deed-in-lieu rather than a foreclosure. In a short sale, a lender agrees for a home to be sold for less than the outstanding mortgage, and then considers the debt paid off. In a deed-in-lieu, a homeowner turns over the home to the lender, and the mortgage is closed.

Donna Fuscaldo has written about personal finance for Dow Jones, the Wall Street Journal, and Fox Business News for more than a decade. Like many homeowners, her mortgage is precariously close to being underwater.

Visit Houselogic.com for more articles like this. Reprinted from HouseLogic.com with permission of the NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF REALTORS®.