Should you walk away?

If your home is worth less than you owe, the payments are killing you and have a lender who refuses to help what will happen if you walk away? Walking away is letting the bank foreclose, giving them the keys or avoiding a foreclosure by doing a short sale. If you do one of these things how bad will it be for you? Will you get sued by your bank? Will you ever be able to get credit again? How much will Uncle Sam and the IRS want from you? It may not be as bad as you imagine. Check out my weekly column, “What are the consequences of walking away?” over at Rocklin & Roseville Today and find out.

Other Items: Happy St. Patrick’s Day! I hope you have the luck of the Irish today and all year long!

I have been reading reports about a new California bill that may require banks to wait longer before foreclosing on mortgage obligations. Last year it was taking some banks up to 9 months before they even started the foreclosure process. Today they are responding much faster to delinquent loans so this bill may be helpful to Sacramento homeowners who want to qualify for a loan modification, refinance program or who want to avoid foreclosure

Where are we going?

Happy New Year! Here we are at the final day in 2008 and looking forward to the hope of a new year. Whatever your plans are for this evening, be careful on the roads, last night was super foggy here in the Roseville area and will most like not be much better tonight.

There were some great times and occurrences this past year but it was also one of the most difficult years I have had in real estate. There were plenty of clients but getting transactions completed was more difficult than in years past and much more difficult than they should have been. Check out my weekly column over at Rocklin & Roseville Today, “Sacramento Real Estate: Where are we going?” and see where I think our Sacramento real estate market is headed in 2009.

April Fool's Day Jokes

It's April 1st again and that means there are some crazy things flying around the Internet. Some of it is difficult to tell if it a joke or not but most of it is fun. Here is a list I found earlier with links to some April 1st jokes.

· The BBC's Flying Penguin's - this one is the best April Fools' joke out there this year. You can watch the video here .
· CNET has TechCrunch acquiring TigerBeat and renaming it CrunchKids.
· Google and Sir Richard Branson launched Project Virgle and plan to colonize Mars. See also the Google Blog announcement.
· PizzaHut has become PastaHut.
· Search the future with Google Australia's gDay technology.
· Too busy to search? Let someone Google for you.
· Catch up on your old email with Gmail Custom Time. You can only send mail back in time as far as 2004. "Gmail utilizes an e-flux capacitor to resolve issues of causality."
· Scribd will scan all your documents and publish them on the Internet for free. (via Boing Boing)
· Bungie's next project is a LEGO version of Halo.
· PirateBay is relocating to the desert of Sinai.
· Orkut is now Yogurt.
· Many more Google created or inspired April Fool's jokes listed here.
· LifeHacker has a list of harmless geek pranks for those who want to prank their friends without causing permanent damage.