About Charles County, MD

I am excited to share that CENTURY 21 NEW MILLENNIUM HAS ADDED REAL ESTATE BRANCHES IN WALDORF AND COLUMBIA MARYLAND to better serve YOUR Real Estate needs in the Washington D.C. Metropolitan Area.

I am Margaret C. CENTURY 21 NEW MILLENIUM Real Estate Agent Serving Charles, Calvert and St Mary's Counties. The WALDORF Office will make it even easier for me to be your REALTOR® in Charles County, Maryland. If YOU are interested in Buying, Selling or Investing in Southern Maryland I am ready to help YOU.

Call or Text Margaret C. at 301 481 8407

On February 1, 2012 CENTURY 21 NEW MILLENNIUM announced that it has merged in CENTURY 21 Associates' branches in WALDORF, COLUMBIA AND ANNAPOLIS, MD. CENTURY 21 NEW MILLENNIUM is a full service Real Estate Brokerage Company including: mortgage financing, title, investing, settlement, property management, property insurance, global relocation assistance, and commercial real estate.

CENTURY 21 NEW MILLENNIUM has offices located in Annapolis, Columbia, Dunkirk, La Plata, Lexington Park, Lusby and Waldorf, Maryland and Alexandria, Centreville, Culpeper, Fredericksburg, Gainesville, McLean, Stafford, and Woodbridge, Virginia. Call Margaret C. 301 481 8407 and I will help YOU get connected.

I am Margaret C. Taylor REALTOR® qualified to help YOU Buy or Sell your home or Invest in real estate. YOU need a Buyer’s Agent, or Listing Agent, to represent YOU.

ASK A QUESTION HERE RealEstate@MargaretC.com

CALL or TEXT 301 481 8407 for a FREE Consultation. Ask for MARGARET C.

It's time to get excited, Charles County! The AMC Loews Movie Theatre in St. Charles Towne Centre is getting a much needed makeover! AMC plans to spend $4.5 Million to finally make this theater decent again.

I've hated going there the past few years, i fact I can't even recall the last time I actually sat through a movie in the old theater. The changes include a complete redesign of the lobby, concessions, bathrooms, and theaters. It's all scheduled to be completed sometime this summer, and plans include power leather reclining seats, Sony digital projectors and even perhaps an I-MAX! Anyone who lives in the Waldorf area should be thrilled with the upcoming changes, I know I am!

I remember when the theater was built, and attending movies every month during my high school years, but it's difficult to justify the ticket prices in recent years when other theaters in the DMV region are offering newer, cleaner theaters with reclining stadium seats and digital video quality. Honestly, it's a pain in the you-know-what to drive 30 miles to another theater just for better amenities, but lots of people do it.

It's a huge relief to see that AMC has finally recognized the problem and they're willing to spend millions of dollars to fix it!

Getting a bad appraisal hurts. When an appraisal comes in below the agreed sales price, it can throw an entire contract right out the window. It doesn't necessarily have to happen that way, but it is a distinct possibility. First, let's look at the "WHY" when it comes to an appraisal. A low appraisal means one of two things:

1. Your house isn't worth the contract price due to other recent sales in your area that were lower than yours.
2. The appraiser made a mistake.

You can always request a review of the appraisal if you think the appraiser made a mistake, but you (or your agent) are going to need to back that claim up with proof, i.e. other recent sales that the appraiser may have missed or omitted and the reason why you think there was an error. Hopefully the appraiser can justify changing the appraised value and the sale can continue on as normal. If not, then there are still options:

1. The seller can agree with the buyer to lower the sales price to the appraised value
2. The seller can ask the buyer to pay the difference, but understand they cannot finance that overage and would need to pay the difference in cash
3. The seller and the buyer can release the contract, and try and sell the house to someone else.

None of these options are ideal, unfortunately. If you lower the sales price, that means the seller is going to make less money from the transaction, possibly thousands less. If you ask the buyer to pay the difference, they are not obligated to say yes, and they may choose to walk away from the contract and find another home. If you do end up releasing the contract, the seller may run into another problem with the appraisal. Some types of appraisals are actually attached to your house, possibly for as long as 6 months! If the seller tries to sell it to someone else, their appraiser may be able to see the old appraisal, preventing them from writing one which is higher (and more favorable to the seller). This could make all of the seller's work trying to sell the house to someone else a worthless endeavor, so make sure you check that before cutting a contract loose.

Are Florida rooms really that bad?

A Realtor in Arizona, Elizabeth Newlin, recently wrote a howling criticism of Florida rooms called "A Bitch Slap Regarding Arizona Rooms", and I feel compelled to write a rebuttal to her commentary, because it's obvious that she just doesn't "get it".

It's probably not her fault; after all she calls these sunny, enclosed spaces "Arizona Rooms", as if Arizona was the place that invented such spaces. Unfortunately, they're an east coast creation, and her literary barbs are slightly mis-directed.

Out in Maryland we know of these home spaces as "Florida Rooms", and rightfully so. I would imagine that the Arizona heat has probably cooked Elizabeth's brain a bit too long, or she has never experienced they joy of living in a swampy, wet region of the country. Florida rooms are an essential part of a luxury home, and quite often the only barrier between homeowner and insect during the warm summer months.

Do they not have mosquitoes in Arizona? If not, I would be more than happy to have the local population shipped to her, free of charge, so that she can enjoy the constant, putrid summer scent of bug repellant on her skin, citronella candles burning on the porch, and the incessant crackling of the bug zapper struggling to keep up with the incoming horde.

Without a Florida room, the summertime experience in Washington wouldn't be complete without Benadryl on hand to reduce the swelling from the dozens of bug bites you are sure to incur, but there's more to it than just that. I've heard that Arizona isn't exactly familiar with what 2 feet of snow looks like. No worries, we can correct that too. We'd be more than happy to trade winters with Arizona and watch them struggle to dig themselves out of the next blizzard! In the wintertime a Florida rooms acts as the perfect location to place a hot tub. Nobody like to trudge through the snow in a bathing suit to jump in, and without a Florida room, that's exactly what us in Suburban D.C. would be forced to do. Being that we're not exactly fans of Pneumonia ~OR~ Hypothermia, we like to keep our hot tubs in an enclosed space.

Arizona wouldn't know anything about that though. The weather out there has spoiled them, and just because a Florida room is wasted space in THEIR state, it's a welcome addition in OURS. You see, we get rainfall more than a dozen times a year, we see blizzards in the winter, and yes, we might have a slight insect control problem, but our Florida rooms are the salvation from all of that. Just don't ask someone from Arizona, they wouldn't understand.

I'm in the midst of an unfortunate (but not entirely uncommon) situation with a bank owned foreclosure in Southern Maryland, and I thought it might be useful to share it with you. I'm in the process of buying a bank owned foreclosure (REO) that I went under contract on at the beginning of October. I was scheduled to go to settlement on November 4th. As of November 18th, I still do not have possession of the house.

I got through the loan process just fine, my lender has me fully approved and ready to go to settlement. The reason we haven't closed on the house is because the Bank that owns it is missing paperwork. The paperwork they are missing is the proof that they actually own the house and have the right to sell it to me. That's right, they can't prove the really own it.

I'd like to think that I'm somehow special. It would be great if I could use my Realtor super-powers and demand they either fix this immediately or compensate me somehow for the inconvenience (and added cost) of extending loan locks, property certifications, moving delay expenses, etc. It would be nice if they acknowledged the fact I am living out of boxes eating take-out because my kitchen is completely packed.

When Thanksgiving comes next week, I'm fairly certain the bank reps will be at home spending thanksgiving with their families crowded around a big turkey and cranberry sauce. I'd love to be doing the same, but instead I'm calling my family to apologize for canceling dinner at the last minute because I still haven't moved into my new home.

So what is a buyer to do? If the settlement were delayed because I wasn't ready, I'd be forced to spend $150 per day to extend the settlement. Because the bank selling the property is at fault, The only recourse I have is to cancel the contract or sign another extension and wait. I don't have the right to charge them a daily fee for screwing this up, and there's no telling when they're going to get this whole mess straightened out. As for me, it looks like I'll be doing Thanksgiving at the Hunan Garden this year.