Real LI: Posts from our daily blog
ROOM FOR YOUR RIDES
Auto enthusiasts may fall in love with this Ronkonkoma house for its detached 900-square-foot custom garage.
"The garage is a car buff's dream," says Stacy Menno of Realty Connect USA in Hauppauge, who is marketing the house for $409,000.
Built to specification, the four-car garage with 12-foot ceiling is ventilated and has its own electricity, heat and cable as well as a drive-on car lift. "It's nicely laid out, very clean and well organized," says homeowner and hobbyist Richard Polizzi. "I build cars from scratch -- I do it all. I'm the guy without the TV show."
The garage also has a side porch.
As for the house -- a nine-room ranch with five bedrooms and three bathrooms -- it features wood floors, a fireplace and a wood-burning stove. "I have a great kitchen for anyone who loves to cook," says Polizzi's wife, MaryAnn. It's outfitted with a six-burner Garland stove and two commercial ovens as well as a walk-through butler's pantry. Other features include a finished basement with a gym, an outdoor deck and swimming pool, and an attached one-car garage. -- LISA DOLL BRUNO
GOOD-FAITH ESTIMATES
When you apply for a home loan, your lender is required to give you a good-faith estimate -- a list of the charges you're likely to incur in connection with the settlement of the loan. The estimate is meant to be used primarily as a tool for comparison-shopping for a mortgage.
But thanks to some stricter rules that have been in place since 2008, if some part of that estimate is off by too much from your actual cost at closing, the bank may have to pony up the difference, either by issuing a credit directly on the HUD Settlement Statement at closing or by paying you the required amount within 30 days.
For things such as title insurance, recording charges and other lender-
required services, if the lender selects the provider or the borrower chooses a lender-identified provider, the estimates must be within 10 percent of the actual costs listed on your HUD statement. For such things as transfer taxes and origination charges, there is a zero-percent tolerance -- and those can be sizable sums, says Smithtown attorney Vincent Danzi.
"What is relatively unique about our area as opposed to the rest of the country would be the extremely high transaction costs we pay here," Danzi says. "Transfer taxes in New York can account for well over $10,000 in a typical home purchase on Long Island."
New York's rules aren't well understood by all lenders, so errors are not uncommon, he says. The greatest potential for big mistakes here is in consolidation transactions, which are usually done in connection with a refinance rather than a home purchase, he says. -- KRISTIN TAVEIRA