Forum Archive: Posts by: helppls

I have a question regarding the part our property which I believe is called an “easement” – I’m trying to figure out what right we have as owners of that of land. The land in question is approx. 10ft in the back of our site – this 10ft makes up HALF of a common driveway shared by two long rows of townhouses (so homeowners can access their back garages.) We are the very last unit on the end of this long common driveway, yes, at a deadend that is almost a whole block deep, a magnet for those looking for a dark hideaway…

My understanding of an easement is that it allows people to use your land to travel over, but it doesn’t mean they have a right to park there, correct? I looked on the survey and its called out as “Right-of-Way.” Is that the official term? Where can I find out the laws and our rights regarding this 10ft space?

Our problems are exacerbated by our neighbor 3 houses down. He seems to tells all his friends they can park anywhere in this common driveway. He takes no responsibility for where they park and has told us to our faces, he will vouch for them if they are towed. Then there are others who do not live anywhere on the block and are looking for a place to do drugs or have backseat sex in a dark place. It’s hard to tell the two apart and the latter type will leave all sorts of trash back there after their trysts.

What would you do in this situation? We don’t want our backyards to become a breeding ground for this kind of business and yet neighbor guy is unwilling to even tell his friends to stop parking there to help us out weed out the two… he seems to think he and his guests are allowed to park anywhere, behind anyone’s house along the whole driveway easement. Is our only solution to go out there every time a car is parked, shine a flashlight inside, hope no one pulls a gun or anything if they are doing illegal stuff out there? My husband is away on trips a lot and one of his concerns is retaliation, especially when he is not around…

We closed recently and there were some things that bothered me during the process. I’m wondering if anyone experienced similar things and have any comments.

Firstly, the actual closing event was like a zoo. People were talking over each other. It was super hard to hear whenever our lawyer was trying to summarize the gist of each document we were signing. What came through my mind was how could anyone concentrate on what they were doing. Is this the norm?

I had no idea the role of the title closer. I wish I had known about this and done a little more research. From what I can gather, the title closer is selected by our lawyer? At least our title closer seemed infinitely chummy with our lawyer. Ours kept getting my name wrong. They made a big deal about my husband’s name, penning in his middle initial as that got left off. Well, we have the official deed now and my name is incorrect. The last part of the first name is now listed as part of my lastname. I kept telling the title guy over and over that the hyphen meant the first two words were my firstname but I guess he still didn’t get it. How hard is this to correct and will there be implications later on when we go to sell? The mortgage is only in my husband’s name.

After all this mix up, we were told to write the closing guy $250…

The bank has the wrong escrow amounted listed for our real estate taxes. I found out later this number is given to them by the Title guy. Somehow the bank interpreted a quarterly tax amount to be an annual tax amount. That is a HUGE under-estimate. For some reason, our lawyer’s answer to this was to tell us to write a check for the upcoming Jan’10 payment to the Title guy and pay him an extra $30 to open this escrow account. I’ve since tried to alert the bank but no one seems overtly concerned. Telling me, the computer will self-adjust when it discovers this issue.

I HATED not getting the HUD statement until I asked for it from my lawyer. Even then, the document I got was half filled out and it was hard for me to check to be sure there weren’t any bogus amounts. He kept telling me I wouldn’t understand the amounts and that things were not finalized yet.

The bank’s lawyer. At the closing I asked why there was a charge of $150 for wire transfers that did not show up in the GFE the bank had give me. The bank’s lawyer told me they were “allowed” to charge up to that amount for that service. My lawyer looked at me and told me that a GFE was only an estimate. I was so frazzled that I didn’t think to call up the bank’s loan officer to double check. Afterwards, I did call the bank and they said, the bank’s lawyers weren’t suppose to charge that. When I asked about getting the $150 back, the bank said they couldn’t take any responsibility for that since the dealings were directly between us and the bank’s lawyer. I found this really odd since THEY picked the lawyer and THEY made us deal with him. Does this sound right?

Aside from my incorrect name on the title, I realize these might be little things but this house was a huge deal for us. I wish I had found better guidance about closing day… Its bothered me a bit since and I’m eager to hear your thoughts on this stuff..