By Don Dunning | February 27, 2009
Yesterday’s post about the effectiveness of orange oil for killing termites prompted an email asking whether cleaning products with orange oil kill and/or deter dust mites. Knowing that my wife, Sonia, is into natural cleaning products, I asked her. She told me that citrus oil is used to dissolve oil and grease, allowing dirt to […]
Read MoreBy Don Dunning | February 26, 2009
Green is good and so many of us in California do what we can to preserve our increasingly fragile planet. Companies know this and some attempt to exploit our positive intentions by promoting their products as green. Orange oil treatments to eradicate termites are an example. For years, as a state director of the California […]
Read MoreBy Don Dunning | February 22, 2009
I just got another call from a struggling homeowner caught in the mortgage meltdown mess. She had read my article and wanted to know if she could hire me to help her out of her negative equity, unaffordable monthly payment situation. Seems she bought a house near Sacramento, was talked into a bad loan and […]
Read MoreBy Don Dunning | February 19, 2009
My newspaper article that appeared this past weekend in the Bay Area News Group elicited a number of strong reactions from readers. In an email, a veteran East Bay real estate attorney said, “I reviewed a contract addendum for buyers that both cancelled all the benefit of the C.A.R. contract, but was also internally inconsistent. […]
Read MoreBy Don Dunning | February 17, 2009
When is bad news good news? Answer: When the bad news is not as bad as you thought. Having lived through those past recessions, this one sure seems serious to me. If we believe all the media doom and gloom stories, however, the U.S. is maybe one step away from the “D” word. Not so, […]
Read MoreBy Don Dunning | February 12, 2009
Here’s another example of a bank’s ineptitude. I just read an article about a case of mistaken property identity that got all the way to the Nevada Supreme Court, Countrywide Home Loans, Inc., v. Thitchener, 192 P.3d 243 (Nev. 2008). According to the article, the lender’s foreclosure division confused the condominium unit of a National […]
Read MoreBy Don Dunning | February 9, 2009
I’ve already written about the difficulties California buyers and sellers are having with lenders. Well, we’re not alone. I just came across an interesting NY Times article that explains the pain being caused to Big Apple buyers and sellers. For example, many NYC lenders consider “walk-ups” substandard housing. Duh! As a New Yorker in a […]
Read MoreBy Don Dunning | February 1, 2009
Our tax dollars are bailing out banks and other financial institutions from their greedy, shoddy practices, but those same lenders are, in many cases, harming, not helping, buyers and sellers in the current housing crisis. As a director, I heard this point illustrated time and again by Realtors from across the state at our first, 2009 meeting of the California Association of Realtors (C.A.R.) in Monterey recently.
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