Category Archives: Real Estate

Mar 07 2 comments
Real Estate

Our Neighbors are selling their house!

our neighbors houseBob and Phylis have decided it is time to down size. Their youngest son graduated High School two years ago, and is off to college. Their middle son was married last year and has bought a house a few miles away. So, they have put their 5 bedroom, 3 bath, 3,000 SF home on 3 acres of land up for sale.

We like Bob and Phylis, it will be a shame to see them go. I also understand that two people in a large house sometimes doesn’t make a lot of sense.

It really is a nice house. Sometimes those real estate write ups with phrases like “abundance of quite” or “beautiful quaint setting” are enough to make you nauseous. I think that the description given on this listing, however, is right on the money:

Botanical Gardens surround this grand cedar contemporary on almost 3 acres with mountain views. Stone pathways lead you through the gardens to a sitting area with a hand made pond, with fruit trees and exotic plants and grasses. Huge master suite with jacuzzi and a private balcony where you can take in the best views in the area. Generous sized bedrooms with walk-in closets . Loft style atrium with an indoor garden. Huge country kitchen with breakfast bar, ceramic tile floors and large backyard deck

Sounds nice, doesn’t it?

Popularity: 3% [?]

Nov 30 2 comments
Real Estate

Who lived here before we did?

I was in Kingston, NY this afternoon on business. Kingston is the County seat for Ulster County, and as such the County Court House and County Clerk’s office where the land records are kept. Since I had an hour or so for lunch, I decided to go and see who owned the property we live on before we did. In doing this, I discovered a problem with our deed which needs to be fixed before we can sell the house. I will do a separate post on this after we have resolved the issue. For right now I will say, when you are at a real estate closing, assume nothing, check, re-check, double re-check everything you sign. Even though you are paying money to your lawyer and or the title search company, don’t assume that they will do their jobs correctly.

New York State uses meets and bounds form of real estate recording. This means that each lot has an exact deed description on file. The previous owner grants the new owner all rights to the land through a deed transfer. Thus, if you have a copy of the current deed, it lists the old deed as a basis for its authority. In such a system, in theory, a person can follow the deeds all the way back to the original land owner, which in this case would be the British Crown. This is basically what a Title search company does. So, here is what I found:

We purchased our property from Guiseppe and Elvira (deceased) Rizzi. There were technically three lots merged into one. The land transfer for the third lot follows:

  1. Guieseppe and Elvira Rizzi purchased the land from Leonard and Teresa Sobieralski on December 2, 1988 recorded Liber 1883 page 183. Lot size 1 acre.
  2. Leonard and Teresa Sobieralski purchased the land from Ruth Kates on January 11, 1982 recorded Liber 1459 page 443. Lot size 5 acres.
  3. Ruth Kates purchased the land from Hazel Markle Kohut (deceased) on February 28, 1978 recorded Liber 1387 Page 876. Lot size 5.1 acres
  4. Hazel M. Kohut purchased the land from Marguerite Markle on November 19, 1954 recorded Liber 911 Page 184. Lot size 12 and 100/1200 acres
  5. Miles E Markle (Husband of Marguerite) purchased the land from Aurelle Markle (wife of Emzy, deceased) on September 30, 1933 recorded Liver 572 page 313. Lot size 98 acres.
  6. Emzy Markel and Aurelle Markle purchased the land from Mary Tam Rose on December 17, 1892 recorded Liber 311 page 419. Lot size 98 acres.
  7. Henry Rose (husband of Mary T. Rose) purchased the land from John T. Osterhout on July 26th 1869 recorded Liber 173 page 417.

From here things get a little obscure. The Osterhout family were some of the first settlers in the area. The first record I have is a Jan Jansen van Oosterhout who was born in the Netherlands, but moved to Kingston, NY (then known as Wildwyke, New Netherlands) sometime in the early 1660’s. He married Annatje Jellis in 1663 in Kingston. There family spread out and by 1720 or so were several descendants were living in the area that is now the Town of Rochester.

In 1869, John T. Osterhout owned the land which was part of lot 15, Groote (Groten) Transport. Groote Transport is dutch for “Great Transfer” which was the name of a very large land grant by the British crown in 1730. In order to further research this, I will need to go to the Ulster County Archive building and find out more about the land grant, who the grantees were and so on.

I speculate the the Osterhout family was one of the original grantees. If that is the case, then it is very likely that the lots were parceled out and passed down from generation to generation by the use of wills and probate court. If this is true, then I will need to go to the Ulster County Probate court to follow the ownership trail back to the original grant in 1730 should I want to further research this.

The land transfer of the second lot follows:

  1. Guiseppe and Elvira Rizzi purchased the land from Ronald G. and Annamay Williams on August 20, 1976 recorded Liber 1360 page 1190. Lots size 0.26 acre. Interestingly enough, water rights to a well across the street on the lands of Minna Sims were granted in perpetuity by the will of Morris Sims as well as provisions to replace the water piping and an underground right of way. Included in the sale are one Frigidaire electric stove, one Culligan water conditioner, one Franklin stove in living room, all wall to wall carpeting in two bedrooms and living room, electric pump and motor for well.
  2. Ronald G. Williams Purchased the land from Minna Sims on August 20, 1976 in a deed that was recorded on the same day as the above deed (Williams to Rizzi). Recorded Liber 1360 page 1185. It is noted in that the deed was executed pursuant to an agreement made on March 1, 1966 between Morris Sims and Ronald G. Williams and Annamay Williams, his wife, and recorded in the Ulster County Clerks office March 28, 1966 in Liber 1180 Page 136 (right of first refusal).
  3. Morris and Minna Sims purchased the land from Hazel Markle Kohut on August 6, 1965. Recorded Liber 1170 page 365. From here Lot 2 property transfer merges with Lot 3 above, as recorded in Liber 911 Page 184 (M. Markle to Hazel M. Kohut)

The land transfer for the first lot follows:

  1. Giuseppe and Elvira Rizzi purchased the land from Ronald G and Annamay Williams on August 20, 1976. Recorded Liber 1360 Page 1190. Lot size 0.21 acre.
  2. Ronald G. and Annamay Williams purchased the land from Minna Sims on August 20, 1976. Recorded Liber 1360 Page 1185. Lot size 0.21 acre.
  3. Louis Siminofsky purchased the lot from Leah Cherney on June 8, 1908. Recorded Liber 412 Page 154. Louis Siminofsky is the father of Morris Sims (the deed recorded at Liber 1360 Page 1190 notes that Morris Siminofsky adopted the name Morris Sims before he died in 1972) Louis died on February 9, 1918 and his will was probated on February 19, 1918 which passed the land onto Morris.
  4. Samuel Raskin purchased the lot from George Sherman et. al. on June 5, 1907. Recored Liber 404 Page 382. Samuel Raskin is the brother of Leah Cherney, who was the executor of his will. Lot size is noted as 40 acres.

From here the land transfer is unclear. The Shermans owned a large parcel of land, of which their descendants still own about 60 acres or so at the end of the road. I believe they purchased the land from an Osterhout who was owner of lot 15 Groote Transport, as noted above. If this is the case, the land was likely passed down by way of wills and those proceedings would be in the Ulster County Probate Court.

The more recent lot boundary descriptions are given by geographical positions with measurements in feet. As the records get older, the descriptions often include things like “Starting at a large white pine tree with a rock embedded in a V” or “a large flat stone next to an apple tree” or “a large pile of stones on the edge of a rock ledge.” I believe I have seen a few of those rock piles while I was walking around. The older measurements are given in Rods, Chains and Links, of which I have no idea how large each one is. It is interesting to read.

Popularity: 6% [?]

Aug 16 1 comments
Real Estate

Real Estate Bubbles, Mortgages and Stock Markets

In this country, we treat our houses as more than just a place to live. It is that, but it is also an investment, a tax shelter of sorts, a tangible asset which can be borrowed against as well as a source of pride.

I have been reading (and listening) with interest about the sub-prime mortgage problems, the effect it is having on the stock market and the potential economic problems for the rest of us. I am no economist but it seems that there is just too much money floating around out there that needs to be invested in something. No longer are people content with CD’s, bonds or other safe investments, likely because the return is too small compared to riskier mutual funds and stocks. Stashing money away in the savings account? That is so 50’s of you.

As they say, hind sight is 20/20. Here is the way the road lead to our current financial issues:

  1. Back in the late 1990’s the stock market super heated with tech stocks. Remember the whole dot com debacle in early 2000? People bought into the tech stocks hook, line and sinker. Companies that had yet to make a single penny had their values double then double again because their stocks where highly sought after. Then, as in many things, what goes up, must come down. People began cashing out, prices fell, The Company that was the Wall Street darling a yesterday went bankrupt and out of business today. Such is life.
  2. In order to create a “soft landing” The Federal Reserve began lowering interest rates, down, down, way down to levels that had not been seen since WWII. Since the stock market was still under performing, many people began to look for other investment opportunities. Real estate became attractive because of the very low mortgage rates available and it is something tangible, you can walk around on land, go inside a house whereas a stock is a value attached to something that can change drastically.
  3. The housing market slowly began to heat up in 2001 and 2002. By 2003 and 2004 things were really happening. People were buying unbuilt houses on speculation and reselling them for a hefty profit. Housing prices were appreciating at 10-20 percent per year in many real estate markets. It was a seller’s market.
  4. The Fed, which has always been preoccupied with inflation concerns, raised the interest rates repeatedly until the housing market began to cool off. Then, contrary to what everyone expected them to do, left them a little higher than the historical average.
  5. Housing values began to slowly go down in most places, not to anything close to the pre-2000 levels, but a few percent here and there. Many people are now stuck owning homes that are worth less than what they paid for them and many of those people owe more on the mortgage than what the house is worth. This is known as being upside down and is nothing new. What was new was the sub prime mortgage loan. These are ARM with a short two year initial period at an interest rate below that of prime rate. After two years, the interest rates are then adjusted upward, in most cases way upward. This has left borrowers with a choice, albeit, not a very good one. Either pay the ever increasing mortgage payments, or walk away from the house and default on the mortgage. Many are choosing the latter.
  6. This in turn has left the those lenders, especially those who were lending to the high risk investors, holding the bag. As mortgages default, banks foreclose on properties that are worth less than the mortgage principle. Again, much to the chagrin of the lending institutions in question, the Fed is not doing much of anything about it.
  7. This is sending shock waves through the rest of the investors on Wall Street, causing a ripple effect in the economy.

Even though I am taking a hit on my investments because of the stock market, I think the Fed should not bail out the failed sub prime mortgage market. There has to be some risk/reward relationship involved in speculative investing. If it were not risky, then everyone would invest in it and the returns would be much lower; for example US savings bonds. The fact that an investment is high risk means that the investor can loose value but at the same time, the payoffs are higher. I do feel badly for those who were swept up in the buying craze and now own a house with an upside down mortgage.

Part of that is impulsive purchasing and not negotiating hard enough with the seller. Part of it is other market forces driven by speculation and part of it is the belief in the mythical ever rising market. Just like the dot com bust before it, super heated markets generally do not last and make adjustments downward to more realistic levels. Hopefully this lesson will be remembered by those future home buyers.

How to avoid the sub prime mortgage pitfalls:

  1. Don’t finance more than you can afford. Carefully consider your housing budget, it should be not more than 35 percent of your gross earnings.
  2. Negotiate aggressively when buying a home. Some owners will not tolerate this and get angry. No matter, walk away from the deal and look somewhere else. Research the neighborhood and see what other houses have sold for recently. Do not over pay. Do not get emotionally involved or attached to a house before you own it. Emotions are strange, sometimes irrational things. They have no place in a business deal.
  3. Be very careful when refinancing. Many people refinanced to sub prime loans thinking they would be saving lots of money on there payments. That held true for the first year or two, but then not so much. Read the fine print, ask questions, or better yet, only deal with a bank that you know. If it seems to good to be true, it probably is.
  4. Finally, hire a good attorney. Ask questions, after all, you are paying him or her to look out for your best interests. They should earn that money.

Popularity: 5% [?]