ADU stand for Accessory Dwelling Unit, and these have popped up as potential solutions to the housing shortage. Here's my take on the latest updates from the state of Massachusetts regarding the zoning changes for these units.

Transcript of Video

Today's inside real estate video will take a look at a rapidly evolving area of real estate in Massachusetts: ADUs. If you don't know what ADU stands for, this video is for you. If you want to hear about the updates that Massachusetts has recently made regarding ADU laws, then we're going to go into them, at least on a surface level, and talk about ADUs in general. As I mentioned at the beginning, if you don't know what an ADU is, it's an Accessory Dwelling Unit, and these have gotten a lot of attention in the press. Some of this is a function of the small house boom, the tiny house boom, that we've seen.

What an ADU is, basically, is an apartment. Most people who have looked at housing in Massachusetts recognize that, like most areas of the country, we have zoning. What that means is in areas where you have single-family homes, there are just single-family homes. You can't have an apartment on that particular property, but the ADU laws threaten to change that, and we'll talk about whether or not that's a good thing or a bad thing, or what the likely impacts are short term and maybe even a little bit long term. We'll try to think a little bit ahead because I'm not sure a lot of people are, but we'll take a look at that. An ADU—and for the rest of this video, I'm just going to call them standalone apartments because that's easier—that's really what they are. They're standalone apartments. Typically, they're around 900 square feet. They can be rented. It can turn single-family zoning into two families only. Essentially, that's basically what it does.

In today's video, we'll talk first about the news that came out, and we'll talk a little bit more about the restrictions that are still in place, despite the fact that Massachusetts has moved the ball forward here. Again, we're going to talk a little bit about whether or not this is a solution to the housing problem, or what kinds of other problems it's going to create. We're going to look at that, too.

Some time ago, I want to say last year around this time, Massachusetts said that ADUs are legal. Now, if you think that that was super helpful, it was not. The reason it's not is because building and zoning is primarily managed and developed by the towns themselves. It's not managed by the state. We don't have a statewide building code. We don't have statewide zoning. Now, there are exceptions to this, like Massachusetts has overrides like 40b, a classic zoning override that most people understand, and that's said at the state level. At the end of the day, it still gives cities and towns a lot of options for how to work around the state law. ADUs are going to be no different. At the end of the day, your local town or local municipality is going to decide what's legal around ADUs and what's not legal around ADUs. What happened this week is that Massachusetts came out and said they had guidelines for how the towns might want to draft their ADU laws. Basically, they said, "These are things that you should probably have in your ADU law, and these are things you should not have." Then they're going to submit them to the state, and the state will say yes, that complies with the law, or no, that does not comply with the law. But in the meantime, a lot of towns are going to set it out and wait to see what's legal and what's not legal. All of this is probably still going to take quite a bit more time. Some towns already have ADU laws, and I think one of the more interesting things about this is no one really knows what the state's going to do about pre-existing ADU laws. Are they going to say, "Well, they're okay because you wrote that before we wrote this?" Or are they going to say, "Well, you have to make changes because you're no longer in compliance with the state guidelines?" Nobody knows yet. In a lot of ways, this has gotten messier instead of cleaner.

Right now, what I can tell you for sure is that just because you went to Town A and they said yes, you can do this with very requirements, don't assume that that means Town B will say the same. Right now, the towns are going to be all over the place with what they're doing. I suspect a lot of them are going to try to tell you that right now, they don't know enough information to approve anything like that. If you've gone to a town to get something approved, you can't usually say, "Hey, I want to put this house on this lot. Can you tell me if I can do that?" That's not really how it works. What you have to do is submit the entire plan, the entire engineered plan, to the town, and at that point in time, they decide which part of the zoning piece they have to look at, whether or not it makes sense from the town's perspective and the town's zoning and building guidelines. A whole bunch of other people get in the way, depending on the land. If it gets subdivided and you talk to the neighbors, or if you need a variance, then there's a whole bunch of neighbor protocol, wetlands, and all sorts of reasons why that process takes a long time. ADUs are now going to add another level of complexity. I know a lot of people are going to rush down to their Town Hall, and they're going to say, "Can I do this?" And the town is going to go, "Maybe we don't have enough information to tell you yes or no." Even if you submit it, they may turn around and say, "The problem is, we don't know what our law is going to be, and so we're not quite sure what to tell you here." I expect that there is just going to be a lot of confusion around this. I'm going to close this video with talking about whether or not ADUs are going to be a useful solution for solving the housing shortage that we have in Massachusetts.

On the surface, it seems to make sense. Ultimately, this should create more housing stock, and that should make it so if you increase the number of houses, that should help to stop the rise of home prices. I'm not really sure that we're ever going to see so many ADUs that it starts to push it in the other direction, but you get the idea. More housing stock should allow for more people to live in the state. But there are obvious problems here as well that I don't think people are really thinking about. First of all, if I put an ADU on my property, my total property is now worth quite a bit more. So, when I go to sell that, it isn't going to be less expensive. It's going to be more expensive because I have this ADU sitting on the property. For homes that go the ADU route, their properties are going to go up in value. I'm not going to get into how much or whether or what that means you should immediately put an ADU on your property. Building anything is very expensive. You should have a longer time horizon. You're going to have to figure out, just like every builder does, how to build these without spending too much relative to the rent that you're going to collect.

It's a lot of stuff to think about here. It's just not as easy as adding more housing stock, and then everything gets cheaper. I'm not sure that that's going to work as easily as people are telling you today that it might. The other problems that we're going to run into are that this is going to bring a lot of people who are not experienced landlords. I've got absolutely nothing against people going out there and doing this for the first time. But if you build an ADU, let's say it costs you $100,000, and your plan is that you're going to collect, say, $1,000 a month in rent, that's a good plan. Hopefully, you can get $1,000 a month in rent. But what if you do it for a year and you don't like being a landlord? What if the tenant stops paying you, and now your whole mortgage, your whole house, is in jeopardy because you're not quite sure how to get rid of that tenant or how to get the tenant to pay? Maybe the tenant has a right to stay because you're not a particularly good landlord. There are a lot of issues here, and I suspect that we're going to see a fair number of stories because most of the time when people buy multi-family housing, they either have some expertise or some desire that they're going to learn that particular segment of the market, and it's very learnable. I don't think it's a huge deal, but I think that this is going to encourage a lot of people who are not really thinking about the difficulties and the risks that are involved in renting to someone who lives 10 feet from their door.

What are Betterments on Property in Real Estate

A betterment is, fundamentally, something that will make  a house or piece of property more valuable. Classic examples are:

1) Public Sewer lines being installed along a road and/or hooked up to houses

2) Roads being put it where there were no roads

3) Public Water lines being installed along a road and/or hooked up to houses

4) Natural Gas lines being installed along a road and/or hooked up to houses

There are certainly other types of betterments.  How do betterments come about?  A typical (but simplified) example might be like the one below.

Lovely Street was scheduled as part of Happy Town's sewer expansion project. As a result, a sewer line was going to be run down Lovely Street, and 100 houses that could not before connect to municipal sewer, now would be able to join the sewer system. Sixty percent of the homeowners on Lovely Street supported

the project. The estimated cost of the sewer line was 1 million dollars. Since each house would BENEFIT from the sewer connection, each house (all 100) on the street were assigned a betterment of $10,000, plus interest, to pay for the project. None of the homeowners were required to pay for any of the construction up front, but a lien (which is a loan tied to the property, like a mortgage,) was attached to each home. Each homeowner would be responsible for paying an extra $50/month to the town until the $10,000 was paid off (approximately 18 years).

Typical Situations with Betterments

1) Homeowners that don't want the betterment can still be (and often are) assigned the cost of the betterment, if the town goes ahead.  This is to prevent the "free rider" problem in economics.

2) The towns borrow the money for the construction, and typically charge the homeowners very low interest rates on the money.

3) All the information about betterments is typically available at the assessors office of each town.  The vast majority of betterments are municipal - town or city based - but I suspect that it is possible for the state to also put betterments on a property.

4) Once betterments are paid off, there is no material impact to the property.

Things Home Buyers and Home Sellers need to be Careful of with Betterments

Some banks will not allow a buyer to purchase a home with a betterment on the property. The reason is they don't want the town's debt to come before the mortgage. When it comes time to sell, that oftentimes means the seller must pay the betterment in order to sell their home.

If you are a seller:

A) You may not be aware you are paying a betterment! They are often itemized on the tax bill you receive from the town. Although most sellers are aware, some are not.

B) If you are going to sell your home, find out how much it will be to pay off the betterment. You can try to pass the cost to the buyer (and many sellers do successfully), or, it may be worth it to pay it off and remove the lien.

If you are a buyer:

A) Check to see if there are betterments on the property you are purchasing. Asking the seller is usually sufficient, but not always.

B) If the property that you are interested in has a betterment, and the seller is not able/doesn't want to pay it, see if it will be a problem for your mortgage.

C) Large betterments may have an impact on the valuation of the property. Most betterments are not large, however.

Hopefully this will help you understand what betterments are, and you can be one step closer to being a knowledgeable house hunter!

Hello!

These are fun to talk about!  Everyone loses deals.  I tend to be very thorough, and I tend to spot these issues before we get to inspection - but there's always a first time!  In my younger days, I had deals fall apart from time to time.  These are the reasons why! 

Transcript

Hello, Matt Heisler here with another homebuyer helper video, and this one is on my five home inspection deal breakers. These are all items where I know that if they are found, my deal is probably not savable. This isn't because the problems aren't fixable, but just because most of the time, the buyers have no interest, and some of them are really difficult to fix, so it's just easier to move on. If you stick around, I'll also give you five things that most homebuyers think are deal breakers but really aren't, and we'll talk about them a little bit too.

Jumping right into the deal breakers, the first thing at the top of my list is raccoons. If raccoons are living in the house, that's a deal breaker. Unfortunately, raccoons tend to make latrines, which are exactly what you would think they are. Their feces are toxic to humans, and you need Hazmat teams to go clean them up. If you find raccoons in a house, that deal is dead; it's just not going to survive that. Most homebuyers are not prepared to take that on, even if the seller tells them it's okay.

Now, I have mold on here, but what I really mean is extreme cases of mold. I mean mold where it requires a ton of cleanup. All houses have mold. For the buyers out there thinking, "I'm going to find a house without mold," unless you live in the desert, where I live, it rains. We have lots of water. There's mold in every house. What you're really looking for is areas where it's extreme. When I know it's a deal-killer is if I go up into the attic and basically the entire attic is covered in mold. Those buyers are just not prepared for that. They get very nervous about it, and even though it can be cleaned up, mold can be remediated in many ways. It's usually a deal-killer.

Evidence of fire is another deal breaker. Sometimes we have home inspections and, after poking around and looking at places that are not necessarily obvious the first time you go through the house, we find evidence that the house has already had a fire. Most of the time, it's been fixed and fixed properly, but if it wasn't disclosed by the seller that their house had had a significant fire, this is usually a deal-killer. Homebuyers get very nervous about this stuff, and if they're even concerned a little bit that the house is no longer safe, they're out.

Lead paint is another concern. Most of the time, if you're looking at houses in the lead paint era, I can give you an idea of how much lead paint there is or isn't, but every once in a while, the buyer hasn't really thought about what it means to have lead paint there in terms of their cost or risk. Then we go and have a lead paint inspection, and if enough lead paint comes up, it can kill an inspection. I even had an inspection where the house was deemed lead safe. The only lead they found was in tiles, which are considered encapsulated, but it didn't matter. The buyer walked, which again is ridiculous, but it's indicative of what I'm talking about here, which is that there are just some things that homebuyers can't get past.

Finally, termites. I'm not talking about a little termite damage, but I'm talking about significant termite damage. The reason is very simple. Neither the seller nor the buyer, in terms of the inspection, had any idea how much damage there really has been. It's because termites will do damage behind the walls, so the only way to find out is you've got to open up the whole house. Most of the time, what's going to happen in these situations is the deal is going to fall apart. The seller is going to hire someone to fix it, and then they're going to put the house back on the market. That's usually going to happen when there are cases of significant termite damage.

Do these have to break deals? Should you break your deal? It really depends on the issues, your level of risk tolerance, and the price you're getting compensated in order to put up with those issues. I wouldn't do it for nothing. I mean, I'd do it for some level of compensation, some level of deal that I was getting in that particular transaction.

We're wrapping up here with the five deal breakers for this video. This video ran a little long, so in the next video, I'm going to talk about five things that come up where the homebuyer almost always wants to walk away, but they really shouldn't because they aren't that serious a problem, and I'll tell you why. Stick around for that video and subscribe if you want to see it, and we'll talk to you next time.

What is a 1031 Exchange in Real Estate? How Does it Work?

Here is how you can defer your capital gains taxes in real estate - the magical 1031 exchange!  This useful construction can be a useful tool in the serious investors portfolio.

Transcript

Okay, today we're going to talk about, 1031, exchange,. Iif you're looking at this video, you've probably heard about a 1031 exchange, and you're trying to get some more information. And this is the video for you. So, we're going to talk about 1031 exchanges in real estate, and uh really, sort of go over what they are. And then how they work, why they work, and then, how you want to be careful about, uh, getting them to work so? And we're just going to Dive Right In here and describing what a 1031 is is a little complicated. But basically, it comes about because when you buy an investment building, those buildings are depreciated. Now, when you depreciate a building that reduces your taxes and we'll go over how that happens as we do it. Uh, when a building is sold. However, the capital gains taxes are going to become due, and those are a part of the depreciation, which we'll also review. Unless, of course, you buy a similar investment, in which case you can basically roll over the depreciation into the new building, and you can keep it going. This defers your capital gains taxes, which is a very effective tax strategy for people who would wish to defer their capital gains, so there's not a lot of situations where you can defer. Capital gains taxes on an investment, but this is one of them, and this is why a 1031 exchange can be a very useful technique for investors of real estate. So, I used a lot of words there. We're going to try and break everything down and make sure people understand it. So, the first is a lot of people don't know what depreciation is. So, again, I will try to explain this as simply as I can by trying to make it simple. That means that it's not entirely accurate, so you should not use this for tax advice. Please talk to a CPA and make everyone's tax situations different. Yours is probably different, too, but this is an overview. And as far as an overview goes, this is what you need to know about depreciation. So, buildings for tax reasons are giving a useful lifespan of about 30 years now. It's a little shorter, I think it's 28 and a half, but 30 is an easier number to do math with. So, that's what I'm using here. Okay. Now, if you buy a property for 400 right, it sits on land. So in this hypothetical example, we're going to say that the land is valued at 100K, and the building itself is valued at 300K. That means that the building'Absolutely! Here's the updated document with improved formatting and clarity, incorporating the information you provided:

Okay, today we're going to talk about 1031 exchanges. If you're watching this video, you've probably heard about a 1031 exchange and are trying to get more information. This video is for you. We're going to discuss 1031 exchanges in real estate and go over what they are, how they work, why they work, and how to be careful when using them.

Describing what a 1031 exchange is can be a little complicated. Basically, it comes about because when you buy an investment building, those buildings are depreciated. When you depreciate a building, it reduces your taxes, and we'll go over how that happens. However, when a building is sold, the capital gains taxes become due, and those are a part of the depreciation, which we'll also review. Unless, of course, you buy a similar investment, in which case you can basically roll over the depreciation into the new building and keep it going. This defers your capital gains taxes, which is a very effective tax strategy for people who wish to defer them. There aren't many situations where you can defer capital gains taxes on an investment, but this is one of them. This is why a 1031 exchange can be a very useful technique for real estate investors.

I used a lot of words there, so we're going to try and break everything down and make sure people understand it. First, a lot of people don't know what depreciation is. I will try to explain this as simply as I can. This means that it's not entirely accurate, so you should not use this for tax advice. Please talk to a CPA, as everyone's tax situation is different. Yours is probably different, too, but this is an overview. As far as an overview goes, this is what you need to know about depreciation.

Buildings, for tax reasons, are given a useful lifespan of about 30 years now. It's a little shorter, I think it's 28 and a half, but 30 is an easier number to do math with, so that's what I'm using here. Now, if you buy a property for $400,000, it sits on land. In this hypothetical example, we're going to say that the land is valued at $100,000, and the building itself is valued at $300,000. That means that the building's total value for IRS purposes is $300,000, and that is what we depreciate. You cannot depreciate land, so you can't just look at the purchase price of what you paid and then depreciate the entire thing. Land is land, and it can't be depreciated.

For this example, our building is worth $300,000. The depreciation rate is over 30 years, so that means every year, you get to depreciate the building by $10,000, which reduces your taxable gain. What does that mean? Well, let's say I was renting this building, and after I paid the mortgage, the taxes, collected all the rent, and paid the water bill, and did all the other things that landlords do, at the end of the year I had made on paper a $10,000 profit. That's a gain on my investment, and normally the IRS would look at that and say, "You made ten thousand dollars on that investment. That's income, right? It's rental income, so we're going to tax you on it." But in this particular example, I have $10,000 of depreciation that wipes out my $10,000 gain, so I'm not going to pay taxes on that $10,000 today.

Good investors love depreciation because it defers their taxes out into the future and is fundamentally one of the more advantageous tax things in real estate that you can do. But I keep using the word "defer." Why? Because the IRS is keeping track of your depreciation, and those taxes haven't gone away. When do you have to pay the piper? You have to pay the piper when you sell the building.

In my hypothetical example, we're going to say that you've owned the building for 10 years, and you sell it for $500,000. I hope you made more, but it's an example, and I'm trying to keep the numbers simple. When you're looking at it as a person, you're saying, "Well, I bought this property for $400,000. I sold the property for $500,000. I made $100,000." But that's not how the IRS looks at it at all. The IRS says, "Well, you depreciated it. You told us that the useful life had gone down by $10,000 a year for 10 years, which is $100,000. You had a $300,000 building, but you told us it was only worth $200,000. The land's worth $100,000, that's $300,000, and you sold it for $500,000. We don't know how it magically became $500,000, but it didn't depreciate, it appreciated. Because it appreciated by $200,000, now you owe taxes on $200,000, not $100,000."

If you hadn't taken the depreciation, which I believe you have to, but theoretically, if you hadn't taken the depreciation, then the IRS would look at it the same way you do: $400,000 to $500,000. You only owe taxes on the $100,000. But in this case, that's not how it works. This is not how it works in real estate in general. You will owe taxes on the $200,000, unless you do a 1031 exchange, which is why we're talking about it today.

A 1031 exchange can defer these capital gains taxes, but there are a lot of rules. The first thing you need to know is that a 1031 exchange will require you to buy another investment property. Since you're exchanging one investment property for another investment property, the IRS considers this a like-kind exchange, and it does need to be similar. You can't, for example, exchange a mobile home for a house. If you had a mobile home and you were renting it out, you can't exchange that for a house. That's probably not considered a like-kind exchange. A mobile home is considered personal property, and real estate is not. Because of those differences, it's not going to be a like-kind exchange, and so there are limits to what you can swap out.

Can you swap out residential for commercial? Yes, generally, that's allowed. Can you swap out a condo that you've been renting out for a multi-family building? Yes, generally, that's allowed, but it does need to be like-kind. If you have questions about this, please contact your CPA. Do not contact them after you've tried to do this. Do it before so that you understand where he sees the line.

In addition to the fact that it must be a like-kind exchange, you must buy a building that's more expensive than the one you just sold. In our example, if you sold it for $500,000, you would need to buy the next property for at least $501,000. Generally, it's hard to get it that close, but you get the idea. You would have to buy something more expensive. Most investors do exactly that. If they've owned a property for a while, they may find that they're under-leveraged, and by buying a more expensive property, you can get that leverage back in line. I'm not going to talk about leverage in real estate in this video. That's for another day, but as far as like-kind exchanges go, this is a pretty common thing to be doing.

The trick here is during the transaction when you're selling one and buying the other, you don't have access to any of the funds that were generated by the sale. In my example, you had a paper gain of $100,000. That gain is actually going to be a little bit bigger because you've been paying down the mortgage theoretically over that time. After commission and fees, in my hypothetical example, you're probably going to have like $120,000, maybe a little bit more, and that money goes to someone who's authorized to hold on to 1031 money, an exchange agent. Usually, this is an attorney. Most attorneys can hold 1031 exchange money. There are people who specialize in this, but honestly, I would just try to find one who's also an attorney who can handle your transaction. I think that is the easier way to go. He holds on to all the proceeds, a hundred percent of the profits. I want to be clear you are not going to see any of this money. Okay, because you have to take all of that money, all of those profits and roll it into the new purchase.

The tricky part here is that you need to do this relatively quick. Okay, there are timelines for when you need to identify a building, and when you need to close on that building actually own that building. And if you go past those timelines, then you're going to have to pay the cap gains. That's how it works, so it needs to be a like-kind exchange. It needs to be more than the property you sold, and it needs to be done very quickly. So they've changed the rule on it a little bit, but ultimately, what you're really looking at is, you have to identify and close on the next property in 45 to 60 days depending on, uh, how how your transaction actually ends up working? This is an overview if you're actually going to do 1031 exchange. Make sure you talk about your particular situation with someone who's done the 1031 exchange before to make sure that you don't just by accident. Violate any of the IRS rules and invalidate yourself from being able to defer these taxes. Overview of a 1031 exchange. If you're thinking of doing one and you call up your regular real estate agent and they say. I don't really know what it is, and I don't know how to do it. Uh, then you should probably hunt around for someone who does, who is comfortable dealing with, uh, exchanges, because again. You know if you're if your paperwork's out of line by a week, the IRS is going to care about that quite a bit, and you're going to end up with a tax bill that you don't want to pay. So, a 1031 exchange can be a great way to defer your capital gains taxes and increase your leverage in real estate, and those can be a great way to make sure that you keep the good times rolling. If you have any questions about this, reach me out in the comments below. Thanks!

One Bedroom Apartments

Ah, the one bedroom.  When you're on a budget, as an investor or just for yourself, the one bedroom looks like an attractive place to go.  It's cheap!  Sure, it's not big, but you don't need a lot of space. What's the harm?  You can always sell it later when you need something bigger. But you need to consider this property carefully.

The Problem with One Bedrooms

The problem with one bedrooms is they only have one bedroom!  And usually, the price difference between one and two bedrooms isn't that much.  So when things get soft - which means when the market is not hot - people almost always choose the 2 bedroom over the one bedroom.  That means one bedroom prices can vary wildly in various markets.

When Things are Good in the Real Estate Market

One bedrooms in this market look like a good way to save money.  Let's take a complex I know well (but shall remain nameless in this post).  Currently, the two bedrooms are selling from 160-180K.  The one bedrooms are 140-150K.  It looks like you can save quite a bit of money there! And it looks rational.  A one bedroom should be cheaper.  Of course, in 2017, prices are very good!  And the market is very hot.  But lets say, for example, that changes?  What can we expect? 

When Things are Bad in the Real Estate Market

It's the downturns that are problematic, with condos and one bedrooms especially.  Would you like to know how the very same one and two bedrooms that I discussed did during the last downturn?  That's great, I happen to have that information.  

The last downturn was very bad.  Nothing was spared.  2 bedroom apartments were selling at just 85-95K in this complex.  That was pretty representative of what happened.  So if you bought at the last top, you lost 50K in value - and certainly your whole downpayment - and it was a long ride back up (prices didn't really recover until 2013, 2014 in many parts of MA.)  But the one bedrooms did far worse.  They dropped to as low as 44,000.  Most of the sale prices were 55-59K, but even at 60K, you're talking about losing 60% of your valuation.  Ouch. 

Think ahead Investor of the One Bedroom!

And don't think - if you're an investor - that you can just ride it out.  Rents also went down 25%.  Which means you'll go from a property that makes "Break even" to one that is just hemorrhaging cash - and you can't sell it without taking an enormous loss.  Today, you can probably get $1000 for that one bedroom, but in bad market, you'd be lucky to get $600.  That's $5000 in lost income, each year.  Paying someone else's mortgage is not what investing in real estate is about.  

Hey, Wait a minute......

That's right if you've made it this far, you may have realized something.  Buying 1 bedrooms in a downturn is an EXCELLENT way to make money!  When the recovery hits, you'll be making a tremendous amount in equity.  If you'd bought a 1 bed in the down turn, at 55K, you could put 20% down, (which is 11K), rent it out, and today you could sell for $140K easily.  You'd probably averaged 3K in rent a year for 7 years (21K) and net 90K in equity, or almost $15K in profit per year.  15K in profit for just 11K down!!!  That's a winning formula.   Now, next time, prices won't get so low, but the pattern will be the same.  Bottom line, make sure you know you're goals when buying a 1 bed (or any condo!) near a market top.  

An Educated Home Buyer is a Happy Home Owner. Read On!

• What is a pre-foreclosure house and how can I buy one?
• What should the humidity in my home be to prevent mold and mildew and other moisture issues?
• How can I reduce the risk of a failed title V and take care of my septic system?
• Have a home? Quick 10 ways to save money!
• Can I win my bid war by dropping contingencies, and should I do that?
• Prices and assessments are up! Do you need to file an abatement?
• When you sign your offer, you’re promising a lot of things unless you legally exclude them. Don’t get surprised!

About Matt Heisler

Matt Heisler is a real-estate professional and owner of this website. He has been selling homes in MA for buyers and sellers for over 20 years. He is an expert in foreclosure purchases, short-sale purchases, short-sale sales, buy and hold investing, fix and flip investing, and of course traditional residential home sales. He is happy to take questions as they pertain to real estate on Title V, Radon, Termites, Sump Pumps, Roofs, Foundations, Wells, Septic Systems, Cash-Flow, Staging, and a host of other housing issues. As a Vanderbilt University alumnus, he is proud to serve his local community.

*All information is posted in good faith and is assumed to be reliable, but may rely on third party information sources.

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Tax rates in Massachusetts by Town! If you'd like this list sorted by tax rate, click here! 

Hello!  

The latest market report is out!  With 2024 firmly in the books, we take a look back at the year and review what we saw.  Last year and the current inventory levels give us good clues as to what this year could be like!  As is typical, I'll review some numbers - total sales, days on market, even rentals!  All designed to give you a firm grip on where we are in Massachusetts as far as real estate goes.  Pro Tip:  I have some interesting information in here about downsizing, if you want to hear my thoughts!!  

Asbestos is scary!  I know most buyers have a pre-conditioned response to Asbestos - and it's not good!  But despite all the scary commercials, Asbestos isn't as dangerous as a lot of other things people have in there homes.  Let's take a look at Asbestos:  How it got there, what to do about it - and most importantly- how does the valuation of a home change?

Hello!

In this video, I cover the mistakes I see often when listing an apartment for rent.  We'll look at how to make a showing request, how to fill out an application, and things not to do while at the showing!

In this video, I give you a strategy for figuring out if a home remodel is the right decision for you.  Many times, it is not the right fit for you!  While many publications on the internet say you "Must" or "Need" to do this renovation or that renovation, the truth is every home and every home seller's situation is different.  

That doesn't mean you can't start to figure out if the process is one you should do!  Generally, I walk homeowners through the strategy outlined below (or a similar version of it, everyone is different!).  Then we can figure out what the best path forward is.  I'm a big fan of identifying the "biggest bang for the buck" when it comes to home renovations, and I love helping home sellers make money on their renovations!