Some sellers take new steps before hosting open houses
Some sellers are taking greater precautions before showing their homes to prospective buyers as the COVID-19 pandemic flares again.
Q. We have been shopping around to buy our first home. Some of the sellers and their agents will not even let us tour their property unless we first provide them with a “loan-pre-approval” letter from a bank that says we can obtain a loan that is large enough to close a deal. Is this not unusual?
A. Not really, especially now that the pandemic has made many sellers wary of letting potential buyers traipse through their homes if they cannot first prove that they have the financial wherewithal to complete a transaction.
It is important to understand the difference between a loan “pre-qualification” and a mortgage “pre-approval.” A pre-qualification, or “prequal,” is basically just a lender’s ballpark estimate of how much a buyer might be able to borrow based on a cursory look at the buyer’s financial situation.
A pre-approval is more in-depth and takes more time to obtain. The lender usually requires the borrower to provide a variety of documents, such as several recent pay stubs and bank statements, two or three years of past tax returns, W-2s or similar proof of earnings and evidence that funds for a down payment are easily available.
Taking the time to obtain a pre-approval letter can demonstrate to a seller that you are serious about buying a home, rather than a mere “lookie-loo” who enjoys touring houses that you cannot afford even as coronavirus cases have begun rising again.
Beyond requiring potential buyers to provide a pre-approval letter, many sellers today are taking additional precautions to protect against the virus when hosting an open house.
Many sellers are requiring visitors to wear face masks. Some are scheduling tours an hour or two apart to allow for proper cleaning and disinfecting of the property.
Others leave their home’s interior doors open and turn on light switches to help buyers avoid touching surfaces.
Hand sanitizers in nearly every room are becoming the “new normal,” and some sellers are even providing disposable shoe covers that you might see in a hospital or at a police crime scene to prevent visitors from tracking germs onto their floors or rugs.
REAL ESTATE TRIVIA
Sellers who insist that potential buyers first provide a pre-approval letter before touring a home should also insist that all others meet the same requirement. Failing to do so could be construed as a violation of the federal Fair Housing Act, triggering a civil lawsuit and possibly even criminal prosecution.
Q. We recently purchased a 100-square-foot, pre-cut woodshed “kit” from our local home-improvement store and assembled it ourselves in our backyard. Is the shed and all the stuff that we put in it protected by our homeowners insurance policy, even though it is not physically attached to our house?
A. Probably, though you should review your policy, then contact your insurance agent to make sure.
A standard policy, known as an “HO-3,” will help pay to repair or rebuild your home if it is damaged or destroyed by fire, hurricane, hail, lightning or other disasters listed in your contract.
“Most policies also cover detached structures such as a garage, tool shed or gazebo — generally for about 10 percent of the amount of insurance you have on the structure of the house,” according to the nonprofit Insurance Information Institute (www.iii.org).
Q. My husband and I work for the same company, and we are both being transferred to another state. We also have three children, all under the age of 10. How can we determine if there are any registered sex offenders in the area where we plan to purchase or rent our next home?
A. Start by checking the Justice Department’s National Sex Offender Public Website (www.nsopw.gov). It is a free “clearing house” for information about convicted sex offenders in all 50 states, the District of Columbia and U.S. territories.
The site lets you type in the ZIP code of the community you have targeted to see if there are convicted predators there, or enter a specified address (if you have already picked out a property) and see a list of offenders living within a 3-mile radius.
You can also call the local police department or sheriff’s office in the new community because some local law-enforcement agencies have more detailed data on convicted sex offenders than the federal website provides.
Send questions to David Myers, P.O. Box 4405, Culver City, CA 90231-2960, and we’ll try to respond in a future column.