Wills in real estate during COVID-19 period? Fixating on the house over the neighborhood. Sure, you want a home that checks off the items on your wish list and meets your needs. Being nitpicky about a home’s cosmetics, however, can be short-sighted if you wind up in a neighborhood you hate, says Alison Bernstein, president and founder of Suburban Jungle, a real estate strategy firm. “Selecting the right town is critical to your life and family development,” Bernstein says. “The goal is to find you and your brood a place where the culture and values of the (area) match yours. You can always trade up or down for a new home; add a third bathroom or renovate a basement.” How this affects you: You could wind up loving your home but hating your neighborhood. What to do instead: Ask your real estate agent to help you track down neighborhood crime stats and school ratings. Measure the drive from the neighborhood to your job to gauge commuting time and proximity to public transportation. Visit the neighborhood at different times to get a sense of traffic, neighbor interactions and the overall vibe to see if it’s an area that appeals to you.
Before you start showing your home, make sure that you do everything you can to make it look immaculate to include a thorough cleaning in addition to any repairs that are needed. This is where a good real estate agent in Germany comes into play because you can work with your agent to know about the type of sale, condition, and price of other homes for sale in your area. You should understand that buyers will look at your home and compare them with these other homes for sale. Making a real-time comparison with them will ensure that the condition of your home is up to par. You will also be able to make a few adjustments so that any comparison will come out in your favor.
Regardless of the means of meeting with clients for consultations or for signing of wills and powers of attorney, the underlying factors to ensure properly and professional prepared materials remain in place. All requirements to ensure capacity to make or revoke a will or a power of attorney remain. The need to be ever vigilant to ensure that there is no undue influence being exerted against the person making the will or power of attorney remains and is even more important for clients who are vulnerable and isolated due to self-isolation during the COVID-19 period. When the only contact is by way of a video call with the client, the need to ensure that only the client is in the room is even greater than during a face to face meeting, particularly when the client is not technically savvy and someone else has had to set up the call initially. See additional information at coronavirus news.
However, the advice remains that wherever possible, Wills and Codicils should continue to be executed in the conventional way, ie with two independent witnesses present in person with the will-maker. It is acceptable for this to be done with the parties a short distance from each other, whether outside or in adjacent rooms, or through a window or open door of a house or vehicle. Wills and Codicils can be validly executed within existing law as long as all parties have a ‘clear line of sight’ of each other throughout the signing process.
Have an Emergency Fund: If you lost your job tomorrow would you have enough money to live off while you look for a new one? If not then you’re not alone. This study found that although Americans are doing a better job at saving, around 24 percent of them (57 million people) don’t have an emergency fund. Now I don’t want to be a negative Nancy or a Debbie downer, but emergencies happen all the time. They may not happen to you, but it’s always good to be prepared. You can’t predict an emergency, but you can prepare for one. The best way to do so is to set up an emergency fund of 3-6 months living expenses. That means if you lost your job tomorrow, you’d be able to live off your emergency fund for 3-6 months while you look for a new one. Net worth can seem like a tricky topic, but it’s quite simple. Your net worth is how much money you are worth. If you were to sell everything you own, then pay off everything you owe, how much money would be left?
Real estate finance transactions have witnessed breaches, and potential breaches, of loan to value ratios (LTV) and/or interest cover ratios. Some lenders have been amenable to agreeing to LTV covenant holidays up to a period of one year (and the waiver of their rights to obtain property valuations at the borrowers’ cost for the corresponding holiday period). This has in particular been the case in the retail sector and in relation to loans that were performing pre-COVID 19. Other lenders have agreed to equity cures of financial covenant breaches, with some lenders acting in a spirit of co-operation and going as far as waiving any prepayment penalties resulting from an equity cure. We have also seen an increase in the use of cash trap and cash sweep provisions under existing facility agreements to preserve cash in the structure and ensure the servicing of debt. Find even more info at https://techbullion.com/wills-and-covid-19-safeguarding-your-assets-during-a-global-pandemic/.