Safeguarding assets with strong wills during coronavirus period? Making decisions based on emotion. Buying a house is a major life milestone. It’s a place where you’ll make memories, create a space that’s truly yours, and put down roots. It’s easy to get too attached and make emotional decisions, so remember that you’re also making one of the largest investments of your life, says Ralph DiBugnara, president of Home Qualified in New York City. “With this being a strong seller’s market, a lot of first-time buyers are bidding over what they are comfortable with because it is taking them longer than usual to find homes,” DiBugnara says. How this affects you: Emotional decisions could lead to overpaying for a home and stretching your budget beyond your means. What to do instead: “Have a budget and stick to it,” DiBugnara says. “Don’t become emotionally attached to a home that is not yours.”

Any Realtor will tell you that homes that do not get shown have a tough time getting sold. The last thing you want to do is make it difficult for your agent to get their clients into your home. If you require buyers to make appointments during a restrictive timeframe or way in advance, they will more than likely go to other places that are easy to get into or even cross your home off the list.

Regardless of the means of meeting with clients for consultations or for signing of wills and powers of attorney, the underlying factors to ensure properly and professional prepared materials remain in place. All requirements to ensure capacity to make or revoke a will or a power of attorney remain. The need to be ever vigilant to ensure that there is no undue influence being exerted against the person making the will or power of attorney remains and is even more important for clients who are vulnerable and isolated due to self-isolation during the COVID-19 period. When the only contact is by way of a video call with the client, the need to ensure that only the client is in the room is even greater than during a face to face meeting, particularly when the client is not technically savvy and someone else has had to set up the call initially. Discover more info at coronavirus news.

However, the advice remains that wherever possible, Wills and Codicils should continue to be executed in the conventional way, ie with two independent witnesses present in person with the will-maker. It is acceptable for this to be done with the parties a short distance from each other, whether outside or in adjacent rooms, or through a window or open door of a house or vehicle. Wills and Codicils can be validly executed within existing law as long as all parties have a ‘clear line of sight’ of each other throughout the signing process.

You might hear the word “budget” and cringe a little, but you shouldn’t. Budgeting is not hard, and it doesn’t mean you have to stop doing things you enjoy. Budgeting is simply creating a plan for your money so you have a better idea of where it’s going every month. A popular and effective way to budget is with the 50/30/20 rule. How it works is 50% of your income goes towards the necessities (bills, food, housing, etc.), 20% of your income goes towards savings and the remaining 30% you can use for whatever you please. This is a nice and easy way to break down your paycheck, but you might need to adjust it a bit to fit your lifestyle. Mortgage: This one’s a tricky one, but mortgages are generally considered good debt. They are usually long-term loans with low interest rates, so you’ll still have money freed up for investments and such. The interest from mortgages is also tax deductible, so that’s a bonus. In the end, it’s up to you to decide whether purchasing a home is the right move, as the value of a house will not always rise as some people think. You’ll also have to add in the expenses of property tax, utilities, and home insurance.

On balance, lenders have remained cautious in their analysis of MAE (which is very complex and fact specific) and the use of the current COVID-19 outbreak to squeeze better terms from borrowers or for that matter to call an event of default. However, as the situation unfolds MAE will be something to keep an eye on, as will the question of whether lenders will come under increasing pressure to invoke MAE (notwithstanding the potential relationship and reputational implications of such action). Based on our experience, in real estate financing transactions, if an MAE has occurred it is very likely that other events of default would have also been triggered under the loan agreement, e.g. LTV or DSCR covenant breaches, and a lender will rely on those breaches to accelerate the facility or renegotiate more favorable terms, rather than relying on an MAE. Discover more information at https://techbullion.com/wills-and-covid-19-safeguarding-your-assets-during-a-global-pandemic/.