Plain-English guides for Westchester, Rockland and Putnam homeowners: New York disclosure rules, transfer taxes, Surrogate's Court, oil tanks, septic systems, foreclosure and more.
Westchester has the highest median property-tax bill of any county in the country. Here's how to grieve your assessment, the exemptions people miss, and the honest math on selling when the taxes no longer fit your life.
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Seller's Guide
Attorney contracts, title and municipal searches, recording in White Plains, co-op boards and Surrogate’s Court: where the weeks go, and cash vs. listing.
Seller's Guide
Westchester’s co-op law gives boards 15 days to respond and 60 to decide, with a written reason for any rejection. Flip taxes, arrears, estates and your options.
Seller's Guide
Mold found at inspection? What New York’s disclosure form asks, the 10-square-foot licensing rule, why the tester can’t be the remover, and your options.
Seller's Guide
An empty house keeps costing you. Yonkers’ vacant building registry and fees, Mount Vernon’s absentee-owner rule, the 60-day insurance clause, and your options.
Tax & Legal
A death in the house isn’t a defect under New York law. What RPL 443-a protects, what it doesn’t, the Nyack haunted-house case, and how to sell.
Seller's Guide
A parent’s house too full to walk through. Who can legally sign in New York, what to pull out first, where the hazardous waste goes, and how to sell it as-is.
Inherited Homes
One sibling won’t sell. New York’s heirs property act, the 45-day co-tenant buyout right, what a partition action really costs, and how to get everyone paid.
Tax & Legal
New York’s 0.4% transfer tax, the Yonkers, Mount Vernon and Peekskill city taxes, attorney fees, commission, and the IT-2663 payment out-of-state sellers owe.
Seller's Guide
A finished basement nobody filed for, a deck permit never closed out, an in-law apartment the town never approved. What New York requires, and how to sell anyway.
Seller's Guide
Failed septic or a bad well test mostly kills financed sales. What a fix really costs, the NYC-watershed rules in Putnam and Westchester, and how to sell as-is.
Seller's Guide
Why NY's strict-liability oil-spill law stalls financed sales, the Westchester delegated-county wrinkle, real removal vs. cleanup costs, and how to sell anyway.
Seller's Guide
The $500 opt-out is gone, new flood questions are in, and 'as-is' still won't cover concealment. What 'actual knowledge' really requires of you — and when the form doesn't apply.
Seller's Guide
Flood zone vs. flood damage are two different sale problems. The insurance burden buyers inherit, the new disclosure rules, and the fastest way to sell a flood-prone home.
Inherited Homes
You need Letters from Surrogate's Court before you can sell — and the small-estate shortcut won't transfer real estate. The timeline, the carrying costs, multiple heirs, and the step-up-basis tax relief.
Landlords
You don't have to empty the building to sell it. How NY tenant law affects the sale, occupied vs. vacant, who buys occupied buildings, and the clean exit for a burned-out landlord.
Foreclosure
New York is a judicial-foreclosure state. The RPAPL 1304 notice, the mandatory settlement conference, the referee sale, your redemption rights, and how to stop the clock.
Tax & Legal
How RPTL Article 11 in-rem tax foreclosure works, the redemption period, your post-Tyler v. Hennepin surplus-equity rights, and what to do before the county takes the house.
Market Report
HGAR's county medians for Westchester, Rockland and Putnam, how long houses are actually taking to sell, and why updated homes and fixer-uppers are now behaving like two separate markets.
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