Renting A House Today? How To Check Out Your New Landlord So You Don’T End Up Out On The Curb!

 

          There was a time when all you needed to care about when you rented a home was location and amenities.  Today things just ain’t that simple.

         Your landlord could be about to lose the house putting you out on the street or he may not REALLY be the landlord.  In either case, the big loser could be you and it is easy to protect yourself.

        With a five minute search of a couple of sites on the Internet can give you an awfully good idea of just what is going on.  It is free and you do not need to be a Lawyer or a meteorologist to see what way the wind is blowing.

        The problem I hear about most when people call me looking for a good place to live is that the Landlord is in foreclosure and he did not tell the folks about that before they gave him first, last and security.   Sometimes, he seems to forget to tell them until the Sheriff is knocking on the door with a 24 hours notice to vacate.

                In the world of law where foreclosures are spawned like hurricanes off the west coast of Africa nothing happens rapidly.  And it is as easy to follow the path of a foreclosure as it is to tune to the weather report to keep an eye on a pending hurricane.

                Lis Pendens is the phrase you will see in Florida to indicate that a foreclosure has begun.  After than there will be a variety of legal activity showing the progress of the action to kick your Landlord out of the house and you with him.  In other parts of the country a Lis Pendens goes by the name Notice of Default.  Either means that an action is pending against that particular property.

                To start your real estate detective work Google the words tax collector and the name of the county where the home you are considering renting is located.

                Tax collector web sites deal with real estate and other property.  So once on the site look for real estate search, be prepared to accept the terms of service and once you get to the real estate search section enter the street address of the property in the blank asking for address and click send, or search to find the name of the owner.

                In most cases the house will be in the name of a person and will include their address as well, the address where the tax bill is sent.  Write down the name and address.  You might want to see if the taxes are paid as well.  Do not be concerned if the taxes are one to two years delinquent.  It is not nearly as bad an indicator as finding the Lis Pendens.

                Many veteran real estate investors will not pay their taxes for the last year or sometimes even the last two years.  In Florida, if the taxes are not paid, the county will sell the tax certificates to individual investors who will then pay the taxes and collect interest from the property owner when the owner finally pays the taxes.

                This used to be a great deal with interest rates of 18 per cent a year and even higher in other states.  However, when this great investment became more generally known, an investing army descended on the tax collectors and in their frenzy, they drove down the interest rate on the tax certificates and in many cases not paying your real estate taxes on time is the cheapest money you can borrow.

                Of course, it does require knowledge and discipline, but many a savvy investor has unpaid taxes for one or two years in Florida.  Other states will vary and if the taxes are not paid by the final dead line you again have the risk of losing a house.  We are not advocating not paying taxes for a year or two, but saying do not be unduly alarmed if the house you are looking to rent has taxes that are delinquent for a year or so.  Check your local laws.

                Of far greater concern is the potential for foreclosure.  This is a legal action a lender takes if the person who borrowed the money has pledged a property against the loan and has failed to pay the lender as promised.

                While there will be private correspondence between the borrower and lender prior to any legal action (normally) once the lender files his lawsuit in court it becomes a matter of public record.  Here is how you find what is happening.

                Go to the website of the clerk of court in the county where the property is located and look for the law suits that have been filed in civil court.

                Once you are in the clerk’s website look for the listing of civil actions.  Then enter the last name and first name of the landlord as they appeared on the website of the tax collector.  If nothing comes up, you are probably safe.  Check to make sure you spelled the name exactly as it appeared in the tax collector’s website.

                If there is a foreclosure action against the landlord you will see the date of Lis Pendens filed and a number of entries after that.  Suffice it to say the more stuff entered the closer it is to the day that the sheriff will be knocking on the door.  Some of these foreclosures can go on for years, but I suggest you not take that risk.

                It is possible that there is no foreclosure against the landlord, but he may be the defendant in some other sort of action.  If he is being suit for failure to pay other bills, a foreclosure may not be too far away.

                Look for your landlord’s name as a plaintiff.  This will let you know if he is business like about filing eviction and law suit to collect money owed.

                Some homes in the tax collectors website will be listed as being owned by a trust or corporation and we will tell you how to check them out in the next article in this series.

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Are public records divorce settlements in California? If so, where I can find them?

Unless they are "closed" public records are just that: public. You have to go to the specific county where divorce was granted and ask them to court records.

Why have not changed the name of the owner in public records?

so I'm about to rent this apartment, and I was making sure that the owner actually bought the house as she said and still not pay the mortgage or anything. I go to Miami-dade.gov and look for the search feature. and then I think the owner's name remains the bank? the bank does not actually have to take this time?

You can take a long time. The poor county clerk may have had all of his co-workers laid off and sink with the paperwork. Fl has been beaten very hard with severe budget cuts.

The use of private label content to create audio E-books

How to participate in a booming industry: the use of private label to create content Audio E-books

Books have always been regarded as treasures in the vaults always compact knowledge they are. Over the centuries its existence, little has changed about what books offer: information. However, as human civilization progressed, the books have gone through a long series of transformations as terms of its physical form. In ancient times, the books come in slabs of stones, piles of papyrus or parchment scrolls and with the advent of the printing industry, the volumes of textbooks as there are many men who came today are familiar.

Within the last decade, the books had a new form with the emergence of the Internet and the rise of information technology, e-books, short for electronic books, made his way to get to the open arms, or computers, mice library today. The popularity of electronic books has grown beyond market expectations. Less than three years ago, segment of e-book grew from $ 211,000 to over $ 3.3 million, a huge 1447% growth in net sales, according to the Association of American Publishers. While Therefore, conventional forms of books, such as hardcover and paperback sales fell by 10% to 43%. There is no doubt that the electronic format is becoming a popular medium that will soon replace most if not all, current patterns of publishing in the future.

A New Trend: Audio eBooks

E-books are gaining popularity because of one key element that older formats could not offer: convenience. E-books, are faster to acquire, more compact, and even cheaper than traditional books. People are always looking for ways to make everyday activities like reading, easier. Now, with this search for comfort, a new trend is emerging for the growing population of bibliophiles: the audio e-book format.

Although not as popular as form of printed text, audio books have gained popularity in recent times. At Amazon.com, the bookstore of the world's leading online audio books are even more popular than big market paperback copies. Some consumers could not find the time to read, while others read a laborious task. With audio books, book lovers are allowed to "read without reading" in their own time and place convenient, such as while driving or exercising. But books Audio can also be quite bulky or inconvenient when it accumulates, especially in its usual way of CDs and tapes. Today, however, this problem is solved by combining the comforts of both audio books and electronic books with a hybrid known as e-audio books. Talk about convenience!

How to take part in the audio industry E-book: Private Label Rights

Audio E-books seem to have great potential as a new booming industry, and of course many want to be part of a growing company during its infancy, when there are few competitors. However, being one of the first to participate in an effort as the manufacture of electronic audio books, speed and efficiency is needed. Fortunately, there is a small solution to this situation, rights private label.

Also known as private rights PLR labels allow individuals or entities to buy the products in text, and graphics software, and have the right total. This means that someone who acquires private label rights is allowed to do whatever they want, whether to modify, edit, or sell a product and claim full ownership. To start a business, such as an electronic book, audio production, you just have to buy the material, known as private label content, and transform them into the commercial form of the e-audio books.

While everyone has a certain knack for things, not all world has the combination of talents to produce something as complex as an audio eBook. But this does not mean an obstacle to the participation of an industry growth. For example, a seller or an investor who has no talent for writing, can buy private label articles, record, and combine to form an audio book e ready for sale online. It's just a matter of assembling things, it's fast and convenient. In no time you can start selling eBooks audio.

The books are here to stay, it's just how the changes occur. With the search for comfort, audio eBooks lovers of books offer a quick, cheap and practical way to digest the information that books offer. Making e-books audio is not as difficult as it appears with the option of using private label content. In these times, the possibilities are endless.

Background Check Buyer Beware

In today’s world background checks on other people have become a necessary part of our business and sometimes, personal life. What parent now days would not first check a person’s background before they hire a nanny for their children, for example? And what small business wouldn’t check the background of a person hired to manage the bank accounts of that business? Large businesses issue Requests For Proposals to choose a background check company that best suits their needs in terms of the services offered, information management, price and reliability. They then usually establish a long term relationship with that selected company. But what about the rest of us? Are we even allowed to “check up” on another person and how do we go about it?

SURPRISING TRUTH # 1: Anybody can do a background check on anybody, any time they want to. Now I know that I’ve lost some of you who now think that I am off my rocker because you know that there are all sorts of forms that you have to sign with all kinds of legal warnings with criminal penalties and such, but I’ll say it again. “ANYBODY CAN DO A BACKGROUND CHECK ON ANYONE, ANY TIME THEY FEEL LIKE IT.” Because I want you to read this whole article, I am not going to explain those statements until further into the article.

SURPRISING TRUTH # 2: There is no instant national database of all criminal records that you can access. Now I know that you are sure that I am crazy. “Why just last night on Law & Order they got the bad guy’s record . . .” There, you are talking about NCIC, the National Crime Information Center or otherwise known as the FBI files. While the FBI maintains the best and most accurate records, unfortunately, you can’t get them, unless of course you are a federally insured bank, a defense department contractor, a nuclear power plant, a branch of the government itself or some other such entity. A surprising amount of otherwise intelligent people think that there are giant government databases with information on everyone including their criminal history, job history, credit files an even what books they check out of the library and what videos they rent. If that were true, why does it take the government itself four months and $2400 to conduct its own background checks? Don’t believe me? Look here: http://www.opm.gov/extra/investigate/FIN-2002/fin02-01Attach1.asp

SURPRISING TRUTH # 3: There is a big, big difference between everywhere and anywhere. These database companies advertise that they search everywhere, or at least that’s what they want you to believe. Using the word Nationwide is designed to make you think that they check everywhere. The question then becomes, “If you don’t check everywhere, what do you check?” The answer is that you should check anywhere a person has lived or worked. Does it really help to check a database of Orange County, California if the person has always lived and worked in Orange County, Florida or vice versa?

So if there’s no such thing as an instant nationwide database what are these companies selling? First let me tell you what these databases are good for and then I’ll tell you why they are dangerous. In some states of the USA their REAL criminal records are available in some kind of publicly accessible form. It may be on the internet and it may require a subscription or acknowledgement of permissible purpose for its use, but it is available. Texas is a good example of this. For a small fee you can go online and access the REAL criminal records of the state of Texas. Florida, Minnesota and Virginia are other examples of where you can get via these database services what I call “REAL” records. The problem is that these database companies don’t tell the consumer (you) that is most cases and in most areas of the country you are getting either nothing or marginal information at best.

Here’s why. The companies that collect and sell these database records, and the hundreds of companies that re-sell this information do not emphasize the weakness of their systems. This is why they emphasize the words “instant” and “nationwide” in their promotions. Everyone wants cheap and instant as opposed to slow and expensive, don’t they? Can you imagine a website that advertises “Slow And Expensive Limited Area Background Checks.” But, in fact, some areas of the country, like the Carolinas and most of California require exactly that, records that must be searched in person at each local county courthouse.

These companies get records where they can get them for free; usually from a state’s Department of Corrections, which means you are only getting info on a person if he/she has been convicted of a felony and sentenced to prison. When most people think of a criminal history background check they think of all arrests and convictions; both misdemeanors and felonies and the court disposition, guilty or not guilty and the sentence. As you can see, if you are getting only felony convictions, you are getting only a small piece of the pie. For example; a person could be arrested a couple of times for having drug paraphernalia or a small amount of drugs in his or her possession. If the records you are getting only include felony convictions, you would have no record of that person’s drug abuse.

The other problem that these Instant Nationwide background checks have is that in many areas of the country they get nothing at all because the states or the county superior courts or district courts don’t furnish them with free records. Here is another example: Suppose you are a parent in San Francisco, Las Vegas, Salt Lake City, Boston, Atlanta or New Orleans (just to name a few) and you want to do a criminal background check. You go online and type in “background check” in Yahoo or Google and right away you see the ads for the “Instant Nationwide” background checks. You choose one of the websites that offers instant records, you pay your $19.95 or $49.95 and you put in the information on the person you want checked. Instantly the website tells you that there is no record found based on the info that you have provided. You feel great! You go ahead and tell the nanny that she can start tomorrow because she has passed the background check. Here comes the big kick in the gut. . . What the website didn’t tell you is that their database records don’t search any of those areas at all. You just paid $19.95 or $49.95 and got NOTHING, ZERO, ZIP, NADA. Disclosure: Actually the proceeding sentence is not 100% true. In Nevada and Louisiana the databases do search currently incarcerated prisoners in their respective prison systems. So if your potential nanny is in prison right now then it would tell you that he/she is in prison, but I guess you would already know that.

Now to explain the # 1 Surprising Truth: I’ll say it again: Anyone can check anyone, anytime. If you are so inclined, you can check the criminal or civil record (or lack thereof) of your daughter’s boyfriend (I do that on a regular basis) your crazy neighbor next door, your business partner, your doctor, your ex-husband, your mayor or even any of the presidential candidates. In fact, you don’t even have to be a citizen of the USA to get these records. You can walk into the Superior Court (District Court in some states) clerk’s office, in the jurisdiction where that person lives/lived, go up to the counter, fill out a slip of paper, hand it to the clerk and wait for the results. Remember that you will only get the records from that county, i.e., if a person lived in multiple counties you would have to check each of them. The subject of your search could be an axe murderer from the next county over, but your county court clerk would not have a record of it.

OK, now you’ve got the information, what do you do with it? This is the area where the law is concerned; what you do with the information! If you use this information to discriminate against a person, deny them employment, housing or entrance to a school, etc. then you are violating the law and opening yourself to big time liabilities and possible lawsuits. This is what all of the consent forms with warnings are all about. It’s not the getting of the information that the laws are concerned with but the use of it.

In summary, read the fine print and ask questions to get the real records you want.