Steve Dobbs

I have a client whose mother is in a long term care facility. She would like for Medicaid to continue to pay her bills. For them to do this, all of her assets will need to be spent. The family home is her largest and last remaining asset. Once the home is sold, the proceeds will be endorsed over to Medicaid.

Normally, the family home would be a protected asset and would be shielded from Medicaid. In our case, the homeowner has moved into a nursing home with little probability of returning. It has now become a countable asset and will need to be sold. Once sold, Medicaid will file a lien on the property to protect their interest before closing.

This should be handled as a normal home sale. The difference is that Medicaid will need to sign off as this being a fair market transaction.

These sales are not uncommon. I often see them mentioned in the agent notes or not at all. Some real estate agents in Louisville KY don’t think that it is a big enough deal to point out in the disclosures.

If you have any questions about this or other real estate questions in Louisville KY feel free to contact Steve Dobbs.

The million dollar housing market always stirs some interest. The Dobbs Team was curious about Louisville KY million dollar home sales and decided to do a little investigation.

In 2011 there were 21 homes that sold in excess of a million dollars in the 5 county area of Greater Louisville. All homes were existing homes with the exception of one that was new construction. Excluded were home sales that could be considered farms due to the number of acres with the property. We found Jefferson and Oldham counties to be the only ones that met our qualifications.

To summarize first, asking price averaged $1.72 million and sales price averaged $1.43 million with an 81.2% sale price to list price ratio. 325 days were the average days on the market.

Pulling out other data made this adventure a lot more entertaining. Six of these expensive homes sold in 36 days or less; 4 happened in less than 2 days. We think that this goes to show when you have a nice luxury property that is priced properly, the homes still tend to move. When we look at the 4 sales that went under contract immediately, one was a distressed short sale luxury home. Throwing the short sale out of the equation, the 3 remaining homes brought 99% of list price. We think that this adds further emphasis that luxury houses can also bring top dollar.

Not surprisingly, we also found that the longer the house was on the market, the worse the sales price ratio became. I looked at the homes that were on the market for over 300 days and found 9 out of the 21. These brought 85% of asking price; which doesn’t seem too bad. Thinking a little harder; what about the sales price versus the original price when it was first placed on the market? Things changed dramatically with this thought process. Using this new set of numbers, I found a 59% price received to initial list price on the luxury homes in Louisville.

Being a real estate agent in Louisville made me wonder who was listing all of the properties and who was making all of the sales. The 21 sales were listed by 11 different real estate offices. One company had 7, so this was definitely significant as they had a third of the listings. The actual sales of these 21 luxury homes were scattered over 14 companies with one company having 4. One interesting note; 5 of these transactions were handled by the same agent for both buyer and seller.

If you have any questions or comments about the luxury home market in Louisville KY, give Steve Dobbs a call at 502-475-3312.

One of the agents in our Louisville KY office had questions about repairs, additions, and other items and wanted to know if inspection stickers were needed. The home in question had a recently built garage with a lot of outlets. There was a new hot water in the house along with some other newer electrical items. Her concern was that there were no inspection stickers and wondered if this was legal. Her second question wondered if a plumber or electrician can inspect and then place an inspection sticker. Her third question concerned the need for an inspection sticker.

The home in question was built in 1979 in Jeffersontown, KY and was bank owned. Of course, it was to be purchased “as-is”. There was no way to determine who had made the plumbing and electrical repairs / improvements in the past.

The Jeffersontown Code Enforcement informed her that there is no Kentucky or city requirement that a permit sticker has to be on the electrical box. If there are any problems with the electrical box, an electrician can do the repairs. If the electrician is changing something major, he would pull a permit. However, he would only be verifying the work that he had performed. In order to verify everything, the electrician or plumber would need to remove the drywall and inspect all of the wiring and/or plumbing. This could get pretty expensive.

Now the thoughts came to home insurance. As calls went to the Kentucky Farm Bureau Insurance, she was informed that an inspection permit is not a requirement for obtaining home insurance. They further stated that you cannot be denied a claim if there was a code violation.

All of this information was given to the home buyer to let him make the determination if he wanted to pursue this deal.

If you have any questions about this, feel free to contact us.

If you are looking for a new home in the Louisville KY market, Steve Dobbs and The Dobbs Team stand ready to assist and give you the best service.

In Louisville, KY and the surrounding counties, we can have a problem with Radon in our houses. The only way to know is to test. Homes with basements are not the only places that Radon can be found. Radon can be found in homes with crawl spaces and in homes on a slab foundation.

The Louisville, KY area is in a belt of higher Radon levels.

Consumers can ask for free Radon test kit from the state of Kentucky. This site also has a lot of information including Radon myths.

Most home inspectors offer to test for Radon during their regular home inspection. Normally, they will set up a meter for at least 48 hours. The Radon meter will sample once an hour and give you a current reading as well as an average. Some of the better Radon monitors have the ability to hook up to a computer and let you print out the average results as well as a graph.

This is a 48-hour graph of our house.

Obviously, this house needs Radon Mitigation with an average of 12.4.

What if a Radon level of over 4 picocuries is discovered in your new home? The EPA would recommend Radon mitigation by a professional. Costs can vary widely, but $800-1,000 is a decent range of what a lot of systems are installed. Converting a passive Radon system to an active system is the cheapest and mitigating a crawl space is the most expensive.

A passive Radon System typically is a 3-inch pipe from the sump pump area through the roof of the house. There will be a small flow of air through the pipe that occurs naturally. Converting this to an active system would involve installing a fan in the pipe providing a constant movement of air and negative pressure under the concrete.

One of the most important things in Radon Mitigation is the retest. How do you know if the radon is mitigated if you don’t test? In the example given, the retest was 6.1 and not acceptable. We were able to move the suction point and receive an acceptable reading.

We have a lot of information about Radon in KY on our website and have some PDF documents from the EPA as well as information from the state of Kentucky. Feel free to contact The Dobbs Team if you have any questions about Radon or the Real Estate market in Louisville, KY.

Real Estate agents think that this is a great time to buy with historically low home mortgage rates. Mortgage loan officers would tell you the same thing. However, some people have trouble qualifying for a loan and agents are always looking for alternatives.

KY Housing Corporation (KHC) is the state finance agency with very attractive rates. They are currently quoting rates well under 4% on a 30-year fixed rate loan. Rates such as these make it much cheaper to own a home or condo then rent an apartment.

They also have programs for down payment and closing cost assistance. There is usually a small premium to use their down payment assistance. KHC works with FHA, VA and RHS loans. They are not known as a sub-prime lender as they do insist on a good credit score and assurance that the borrower will pay back the loan.

KHC is able to use the New Issue Bond Program (NIBP) to get these great rates. The U.S. Department of Treasury provides these funds through a federal bond purchase program.

It is important to jump on these programs early. In the past, there has been a finite amount of money to loan on some of Kentucky Housing Corps special programs. As always, the early bird gets the worm.

Not all mortgage companies work with KHC, so it is best to check around and find a lender that knows how to use the Kentucky Housing program.

The Dobbs Team would advise you visit with a lender and see if you qualify for one of KHC’s loan programs. Feel free to give us a call and we will try to point you in the right direction. As always, The Dobbs Team is here to help you find your next home in Louisville, KY and the surrounding counties.