A man using Craigslist to aid in his renting of properties he did not own was arrested late Thursday night, Fairfax County police said.

Richard Hiner, 31, of Catlett, allegedly advertised rental homes on Craigslist, bringing potential renters on tours of the properties and then having them sign a rental contract with a down payment.
His victims would later learn the properties were bank-owned and in foreclosure.
Police were notified of the scheme by four victims between July 13 and July 18.
Detectives posing as potential renters responded to an online advertisement and arrested Hiner when he arrived for the meeting.

Increase in sales tax is a bad deal for renters

Gov. Martin O’Malley, as part of his budget proposal, recently proposed that Maryland sales and use taxes would increased to 6 percent and applied to property management services. That means renters in apartments who use property management services will pay that tax through higher rents.


Homeowners and condo owners should take note. Many homeowner associations and condo boards are managed by professional management companies, and will also pay a 6 percent tax on top of their management fees. Those taxes will ultimately be paid by the property owners in higher HOA and condo assessments. This tax is bad enough when considering its impact on renters, but it will hit homeowners too.

This proposal is inconsistent with the governor's pledge to help working families. Maryland should work to help housing affordability not make it worse.

Small business takes it on the chin from this tax too!

Any small business renting space from a building owner using a property management service will ultimately pay this tax as it is passed down to them though higher rents. The property management tax is a bad deal for small business as well as homeowners and renters.

(Terry Fox, gazette.net)

Home sales slump in Md.

21.1% fewer sold in spring; prices in area hold up

Maryland's housing market took a beating in the spring selling season, recording one of the biggest drops in sales in the nation.

Homeowners in the state sold 21.1 percent fewer homes during the second quarter than they did a year earlier, the National Association of Realtors said yesterday. That was nearly double the 10.8 percent drop for the nation as a whole. The numbers, which track existing homes, are annualized and adjusted for seasonal variations.

Despite the steep sales decline, pricing in the Baltimore metropolitan area held up. The median price of a single-family home gained 3 percent in the April-June quarter over the same three months a year earlier, according to the association. Nationally, prices fell 1.5 percent.

The slump in sales in the April-June period preceded the current turmoil in the mortgage industry, which was ignited by failures in subprime loans made to buyers with shakier credit. Now, as foreclosures mount and more lenders go out of business, it has become harder to qualify for a mortgage, narrowing the pool of potential buyers.

That's a sharp contrast to what happened during the housing boom, when relaxed lending standards and the proliferation of adjustable-rate, interest-only and other nontraditional loans led to rising sales and prices.

"All of us were on a nice bubble, and everybody was waiting for that bubble to fizzle," said Thomas C. Shaner, executive director of the Maryland Association of Mortgage Brokers. "Well, it popped."

Lawrence Yun, senior economist with the National Association of Realtors, thinks prices in the Baltimore area are holding up because the economy continues to create high-paying jobs.

"There's not a panic in the market," agreed John McClain, senior fellow at the Center for Regional Analysis at George Mason University. "There are still people out there who need to live here because we still have job growth."

But sales might be better if prices were dropping.

Maryland home prices doubled from 2000 to 2005, an unusually big gain even for the U.S. boom years. Incomes didn't rise nearly as fast. With half the homes now selling for more than $325,000, some would-be buyers just can't make the numbers work.

"Affordability has been eroded," said Celia Chen, director of housing economics for Moody's Economy.com. "If prices are not falling off, that's going to constrain sales."

She thinks the local housing market probably won't improve until the middle of next year, and that's assuming no more nasty surprises.

"Conditions can easily become much worse than we expect because of all the issues arising right now in the mortgage markets and financial markets," Chen said.

Only Florida, Nevada, Arizona and Tennessee saw bigger decreases in second-quarter sales than Maryland. Florida - a state that, like Maryland, recorded some of the biggest price increases in the country during the housing boom - had a 41 percent slump in sales.

In all, 41 states plus the District of Columbia recorded declines.

Maryland's annualized sales pace in the second quarter was just under 93,000 home sales, compared with about 118,000 the same time last year, the National Association of Realtors said.

Existing homes aren't the only part of the market feeling the pinch. The National Association of Home Builders said yesterday that its index of builder confidence for August fell to its lowest level since the recessionary days of January 1991. Builders say the credit crunch is causing problems not only for borrowers with shaky credit but also for prospective buyers who need "jumbo" loans of more than $417,000.

It's hardly helpful for expensive markets such as Howard County. Nearly half the existing homes in Howard are selling for more than that price, let alone the big new homes.

"That's a scary thought," said Pat Hiban, an associate broker at the Pat Hiban Real Estate Group with Keller Williams Realty in Ellicott City. With interest rates on jumbo loans rising, some would-be buyers are reconsidering whether to purchase a home, he said.

Yun said mortgage troubles will hold back demand during the short term. But he said the subprime bust has propelled buyers with less-than-perfect credit back to loans insured by the Federal Housing Administration, a segment of the financing market that was all but abandoned during the go-go days of the boom.

He expects small gains in prices in the Baltimore area in the near future.

Yun noted signs of nationwide improvement in prices during the second quarter with 97 metropolitan areas out of 149 showing year-over-year gains in price, up from 83 in the first quarter and 68 in the fourth quarter of last year.

But Chen thinks some of the second-quarter increases were artificially high. Median prices might have been skewed upward by a drop-off in sales of cheaper homes, she said, because the subprime market was in trouble before interest rates rose for jumbo loans.

"The lower end of the housing market is falling off quickly, more quickly, because of all the problems of the subprime lending market," Chen said.(baltimoresun.com)

Jury awards $4 million in lead case

Damages could be reduced under state-cap law, attorney for city housing authority says.

A city jury has found that the Housing Authority of Baltimore City should pay $4 million in damages to two siblings poisoned by lead paint in their publicly owned rowhouse in the 1980s.

The verdict - issued Thursday - directed $2.5 million to Joseph Avery Jr., 23, of the 3000 block of Rosedale Court and $1.5 million to his sister, Lisa Avery, 21, of the 1700 block of McCulloh St.

The family filed suit against the housing authority in 2005.

The damages could be reduced to a maximum of $350,000 for each sibling under the state payment caps in place at the time they were tested for lead poisoning, said J. Marks Moore III, the attorney for the housing authority's insurance company. The city may appeal the verdict.

But Bruce H. Powell, the Averys' attorney, said he plans on challenging the state cap in a post-trial hearing Aug. 29.

"You have a right to a jury trial, and you have a right to what the jury awards you," Powell said. "The jury thought that they were compensating these people in a way that was fair, and that's not the case."

Lead poisoning, which often occurs when children ingest chipped household paint, can cause mental problems, including cognitive deficits and aggressive behavior.

At the four-day trial, a vocational rehabilitation expert testified that the Avery siblings show symptoms of lead poisoning. Both were in special education, and neither earned a high school diploma.

Last year, 1,274 children in Maryland had lead poisoning, according to statistics from the Maryland Department of the Environment.

That figure includes 936 newly reported cases, 573 of which occurred in Baltimore.

As more research has emerged highlighting effects of lead poisoning, the amount in damages paid by property owners has increased, Moore said.

Since the early 1990s, Moore has handled at least 200 lead poisoning cases for the housing authority, with 10 reaching trial. When he started, a typical verdict ordered $200,000 in damage payments, he said.

"Now, you see just about all of them in the millions," he said. "They really don't have a basis in relation to the underlying facts of the case. I think they're excessive."

The housing authority deferred questions about its lead poisoning cases to Moore.

Ruth Ann Norton, executive director of Baltimore's Coalition to End Childhood Lead Poisoning, said that most current cases of childhood lead poisoning can be blamed on private landlords rather than public housing.

Many city houses built through the 1950s included lead paint. Since it was banned nationwide in 1978, the city has worked to repair lead-tainted houses it owns and reach out to poisoned children, Norton said.

"There has been much progress made there in the intervening 20 years, and so a child living in city-owned housing today would have hopefully a much different experience," she said.

The Averys' mother, Trina Ashley, moved into a Gilmor Homes rowhouse on Bakbury Court in 1984, shortly before giving birth to Joseph. The housing authority had built the home in 1940 with specifications that indicated that lead paint was used.

While living in the home, Ashley repeatedly complained about flaking lead paint, Powell said. In 1986 and 1987, the children were tested for lead and found to have levels that were acceptable at the time but later considered poisonous by Centers for Disease Control and Prevention standards.

In 1988, the Health Department tested the home for chipped lead paint and found it in five locations.

The only location where the lead concentration exceeded acceptable amounts was the front door, and whether the now-deceased surveyor's report indicated lead had been found in the other locations was a trial issue.

A month after the house was tested, the family moved. (baltimoresun.com)

Washington, DC: Mayor Hopes for $117 Million Yearly

Mayor Adrian M. Fenty said on Monday that he wants to allocate $117 million in new revenue every year as part of a plan to protect and create affordable housing in the District.

According to an outline of the initiative, which Fenty (D) presented to more than 500 Washington Interfaith Network members, 30 percent of new housing units built on city-owned land must be affordable for low-income residents.

The plan calls for a partnership between the city and the interfaith network to produce 5,000 homes as part of a network project that creates low-income housing. The houses would be built in transitional neighborhoods such as Columbia Heights, Brightwood, Deanwood, Bellevue and Washington Highlands, said Sean Madigan, communications director for the office of the deputy mayor for planning and economic development.

"This is very aggressive, but a lot of people say the city is really facing an affordable housing crisis, so steps like this are necessary," Madigan said.

The Rev. Christine Wiley of Covenant Baptist Church in Southwest, which was the host of the event, praised Fenty's proposal. "I usually come up here shaking my finger at somebody," she said.

The District lost 312 affordable units between 2001 and 2005, according to a recent report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office.

Fenty's announcement comes a year after he pledged at a meeting with interfaith network leaders that he would implement the group's Vote Neighborhoods First agenda, which asked for $1 billion to be committed to neighborhood revitalization.

Many D.C. residents have seen available housing transformed into high-priced condominiums. Patricia Moten, an interfaith network member who is minister at First Rock Baptist Church, said the steady gentrification is pushing low-income residents out of their homes and into relatives' crowded residences.

Brenda Jordan, president of the Pleasant Park Tenant Association, said the tenants in her building plan to buy it in October. Their company representatives told them last year that they had received an offer to turn the property into condominiums.

"The majority of the people here, we're born and raised here, and we want to stay here," she said. "I know I do." (WashingtonPost.com)