Quitclaim transfers ownership of interest, not mortgage responsibility

Signing a quitclaim deed will not clear you of the responsibility of making remaining mortgage payments, nor will it stop a lender from foreclosing on the property.

If I sign a quitclaim deed that gives someone else my interest in my home, would I still be liable for making monthly mortgage payments?

Yes, you would still have a legal obligation to make the monthly payments, and the lender could still foreclose on the home.

A quitclaim deed merely transfers one person’s ownership interest in a property to someone else. It does not transfer the first person’s obligation to pay off the underlying loan, nor does it prevent the lender from beginning foreclosure proceedings.

Let’s say that the worth of your home is $200,000. If you still owe $75,000 on the loan, you would have $125,000 in equity. If you then quitclaimed the house to someone, that person would own the home and the $125,000 in equity, but you would still be legally obligated to make the remaining payments.

You would still owe the bank $75,000, even though you no longer owned the house. And since the property was pledged as collateral for the original loan, the lender could still foreclose and ruin your credit, even though you had since quitclaimed your interest in the property.

I bought a duplex earlier this year. I live in one unit, and I treat the other side as a rental. Will the IRS consider the duplex my primary residence or a rental property?

The Internal Revenue Service considers your property as both your primary residence and a rental, which means you’ll have some extra paperwork to do when you file your next income-tax return.

Assuming that your duplex is covered by a single mortgage and property-tax bill, you should deduct interest and taxes on your personal share of the property as itemized deductions on Schedule A of IRS Form 1040, just as you would if you lived in a single-family house.

Report the rental income the other unit generates, as well as a prorated share of the property taxes and all your related rental expenses, on Schedule E of Form 1040. Consult with a professional tax adviser for details.

We have a wood floor in our living room. It’s very beautiful, but it squeaks in certain areas when we walk across it. Do you know how to make it stop squeaking?

The officials at a Missouri-based trade association called the National Wood Flooring Association (www.woodfloors.

org) gives this advice: Most squeaks can be fixed by squeezing talcum powder, liquid wax or powdered graphite between the adjacent floor strips where the noise occurs.

You will need to call in an expert if the problem persists. Squeaking that occurs in an area that’s more than a foot or two wide sometimes indicates that the subfloor has come loose and must be reattached to the floor joists — a job that will cost a lot more than a bottle of talcum powder.

Our neighborhood is suffering from a terrible infestation of bed bugs. We haven’t been hit — at least not yet — but many of our neighbors have. How can we protect our home against them? What can we do if we suffer an attack, too?

Those pesky six-legged, reddish-brown insects can be found in everything from mattresses and other bedding to clothes and couches. But contrary to popular belief, the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (www.cdc.gov) states that bed bugs don’t feed on cotton stuffing. Instead, they get their nourishment by sucking blood from humans and animals, usually at night; then the bed bugs nest inside various items throughout the house during daylight hours.

One way to help keep bed bugs at bay is to cover your bedroom pillows, mattress and box spring with store-bought plastic covers or similar protective wrappings. Such covers aren’t always comfortable —

if you’re old enough, you might remember them on your mother’s or grandmother’s furniture — but they can contain a bed bug outbreak, or even prevent one.

Cut clutter in your home to reduce hiding and breeding places, and vacuum frequently.

A key sign that you may have a bedbug infestation is that you get small reddish-brown spots on your arms and other extremities that “can cause itchy, irritating welts that prompt excessive scratching and can keep you up at night,” according to the CDC.

Simply throwing your bedding and clothes in a normal washing-machine cycle won’t kill bed bugs, the CDC adds. Washing and then drying bedding at “high heat,” though, often will, and so can dry-cleaning the infested items.

Some big-box stores sell bed-bug extermination kits to do-it-yourselfers for as little as $20 to $30. However, you can expect to pay $500 to $1,500 if you want a professional to do the work for you, according to Angie’s List (www.angieslist.

com), a company that helps consumers link up with exterminators and other contractors in their area.

The best news: The CDC says that bed bugs don’t spread influenza or other infectious diseases to humans. Their biggest risk is that a bite can trigger frequent scratching, which can then cause a skin infection. Most such ailments can quickly be cured with a single antibiotic shot or a few applications of topical cream.

REAL ESTATE TRIVIA

A list based on nationwide service calls made by pest-control giant Orkin revealed that Baltimore has the biggest bed-bug problem of all. Washington, D.C., is second, followed by Chicago, New York and Columbus, Ohio.

Q. What is a “net lease”?

A. A net lease is a lease that requires a tenant to pay not only the agreed-upon rent, but to also pay some or all related expenses, such as utilities, insurance, maintenance or even property taxes.

Q. I heard a short blurb on the radio that said some heat pumps made by Carrier are being recalled because they can catch fire. This worries me because I bought a Carrier pump for my home last year. How can I find out if my heat pump is part of the recall?

A. The federal Consumer Product Safety Commission (www.cpsc.gov) announced May 11 that Carrier Corp. and its sister company, Bryant Heating & Cooling Systems, had agreed to recall a combined 25,000 Carrier Greenspeed and Bryant Evolution Extreme heat pumps because a glitch in their fuse boards could cause the units to overheat and catch fire.

The pumps were sold through Sears and smaller dealers between June 2011 and August 2016. Carrier says that it has received more than 40 reports of the pumps overheating, but that no injuries, fires or property damage have been reported.

Not all the Greenspeed and Evolution Extreme model numbers are covered by the recall. To find out if yours is affected, visit www.carrier.com or call the company’s toll-free hotline at 844-864-8233.

If your unit is indeed part of the recall, the Carrier representative will tell you how to get a free replacement fuse board installed by an authorized Carrier or Bryant technician.

Send questions to David Myers, P.O. Box 4405, Culver City, CA 90231-2960, and we’ll try to respond in a future column.