Real Estate

The past year brought continued financial woes for small businesses across a wide array of industries — but not all of them. In a select few sectors, business is booming and sales expectations are soaring heading into 2013. Small agricultural companies and heavy-duty manufacturers are primed for some of the most rapid growth in the coming months, according to a new report from Sageworks based on financial data from thousands of firms with annual revenue below $10 million.

Mildred L. Sullivan, 87, who did clerical work for the federal government for 23 years before embarking on a second career as a real estate agent, died April 29 at an assisted living facility in Chesapeake, Va. She had dementia, said her son, David Sullivan. Mrs. Sullivan began her federal career as a typist with the War Department in 1942. She did secretarial work for a number of federal agencies, including the State Department, the old U.S. Atomic Energy Commission and the now-defunct Armed Forces Special Weapons...

Selling your home without a real estate agent is not for everyone. But for those who have the time, skills and emotional strength, doing so can save tens of thousands of dollars in brokerage commissions. There are three distinct phases in all home sales: presale, contract negotiation and settlement. All three phases must be successfully navigated for you to market, sell and settle on the sale of your home. Over the next three columns, I will examine each phase and provide tips from real estate professionals on how...

Constance R. McCaffrey, 81, a real estate agent in the central Maryland region for 23 years, died May 10 at the Rockville Nursing Home. She had complications from cancer, said her son Robert McCaffrey. Mrs. McCaffrey, a Wheaton resident, began her real estate career at the former Rockville firm of Colquitt-Carruthers in 1973. In the mid-1970s, she moved to the company's Wheaton office, where she continued to work until the business was acquired by Merrill Lynch in the early 1980s.

We would like to introduce a new columnist, Harvey S. Jacobs, a real estate lawyer and investor based in Rockville. He will write about all aspects of residential real estate law, addressing concerns of buyers, sellers, landlords, tenants and small investors. The Housing Counsel column by Benny L. Kass will continue. The contexts vary, but the question remains the same. People say they want to add a loved one's name to their deed and want reassurance that it's a good idea.

Shorty needed a ride home. She got confused sometimes, the result of some undefined mental condition, and wasn't always sure where she'd wandered. Her family knew this about Michelle "Shorty" Knight, all 4 feet 7 inches of her, and that's why they worried. She got in a car. It begins there, with that simple act, a 21-year-old — in many ways still very much a girl — got in a car. Aug. 22, 2002. If she'd looked up in that last moment of freedom, she...

When Stefan and Jennifer Hull beat out other interested buyers for a four-bedroom, two-bathroom Cape Cod house in Bethesda, they felt sure they'd gotten a bargain at $759,200. They were shocked when their lender's appraiser valued the home at only $744,000. Because of the low appraisal, their bank would only give them a $595,200 mortgage, instead of the $607,360 they'd been approved for initially. The Hulls said they didn't believe the home was worth the lower...

Embrace uncertainty. It is a motto for entrepreneurs as well as the subtitle of a book I found in my mailbox last week. The phrase caught my attention as I was preparing to write this column about Michael Holmes of Vienna. Five years ago, Holmes left a promising future with the Carlyle Group, the District-based private- equity giant, to run his father-in-law's chainlet of 11 automobile service stations in Northern Virginia. You could argue that there wasn't...

The defendant was an immense man, well over 300 pounds, but in the gravity of his sorrow and shame he seemed larger still. He hunched forward in the sturdy wooden armchair that barely contained him, sobbing softly into tissue after tissue, a leg bouncing nervously under the table. In the first pew of spectators sat his wife, looking stricken, absently twisting her wedding band. The room was a sepulcher. Witnesses spoke softly of events so painful that many lost their composure. When a hospital emergency room nurse described how the defendant had...

Like many desperate house hunters in popular District neighborhoods, Robert Epstein and his wife Melanie Bixby experienced their share of disappointment when several properties that seemed ideal to them were snatched up by someone else in bidding wars. During the past year, would-be buyers eager to take advantage of nearly record low interest rates have flooded the local real estate market. But the growing demand, coupled with historically low inventories, has pushed the price of the...

Martin J. Egan Jr., 80, a retired Marine Corps colonel who served as a fighter pilot and who had a second career as an Alexandria real estate agent, died March 25 of congestive heart failure at Inova Alexandria Hospital. Jack Oehme, his friend and executor, confirmed the death. Col. Egan, an Alexandria resident, flew more than 275 combat missions during the Vietnam War. He later commanded a Marine fighter aircraft squadron in Japan. His last assignment before his retirement in 1980 was at the Pentagon.

The Manassas City Council passed, 4-2, one of the city's biggest real-estate tax increases in years on Monday, generating dollars to begin a series of capital construction projects city leaders say are needed. The $100.3 million fiscal ‘14 operating budget that the council approved will pay for sidewalk widening in the town's historic Old Town business district, a new elementary school and drainage improvements, among other projects. School officials will begin to formulate plans for what a new Baldwin...

BEIJING — China's ruling Communist Party has punished 21 officials over a scandal in which they allegedly were extorted by real estate developers after being secretly filmed in liaisons with hired women. The official Xinhua News Agency said Tuesday that the party's disciplinary body in the central city of Chongqing had stripped former local district party chief Lei Zhengfu of his party membership. The scandal broke after footage of Lei having sex with one of the...

BEIJING — China's richest people are stepping up investment in U.S. real estate and other foreign assets as they try to preserve their fortunes in the face of a fast-changing economy, a report said Tuesday. The report by China Merchants Bank and the consulting firm Bain & Co. in China reflects uncertainties about abrupt shifts in an economy in which growth slowed last year to 7.8 percent from the past decade's double-digit rates. Beijing is trying to shift the basis...

Stephen Brodsky athlete, real estate agent Stephen Brodsky, 34, who was a stellar prep athlete at the Landon School in Bethesda and who worked in real estate before moving to California, died March 22 at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore. He had leukemia, his father, Mark Brodsky, said. Stephen Mason Brodsky was born in Washington and grew up in Chevy Chase. He played ice hockey from the age of 5 with a team from the Chevy Chase Club and was the captain of an undefeated club...

A $146.5 million loan that Corporate Office Properties Trust took out on 14 office properties in Maryland and Colorado was transferred to a special service firm in March as the company tries to renegotiate its terms. Issued in 2007 — near the peak of the real estate boom — the loan supported five buildings in Colorado and nine at Airport Square, a 220-acre office park in Linthicum, near Baltimore-Washington Marshall International Airport. Steve Riffee, COPT's chief financial officer, acknowledged in a call with...

The last of three parts. Dealing with the myriad legal details at the closing can be one of the most difficult parts of selling your home without a real estate agent. In previous columns, we've outlined the advantages of a for-sale-by-owner transaction — mainly, saving tens of thousands of dollars in brokerage commissions — and examined how to get started with the presale fix-up, required disclosures and contract negotiation . Here's what you need to know to navigate the...

Last in a series. "Taxation with representation ain't so hot either. " — Gerald Barzan, humorist If you own investment property, and you sell it this year, you will have to pay 15 percent capital gains tax to the Internal Revenue Service. This does not include the up-to-25 percent recapture tax on any depreciation that you took over the years. Next year, unless the Supreme Court throws out the new health-care law, the tax rate will be 18.8 percent. Why? Because...

Do you remember signing page after page of legal documents at the settlement when you bought your house? All those fees you had to approve? If you're like me, you had a nagging feeling that somehow, in some way, you were paying more than you should have been. We're entirely right to worry. A wave of lawsuits and government investigations is shining a light on suspicious dealings among some of the folks who sell us houses, mortgages, title insurance and other real estate services.

Regarding the April 22 front-page article " Big firms scooping up home bargains ": Renters and legitimate home buyers, who find themselves squeezed even more as investors seek to maximize their returns by raising sales prices and rents, are just so much collateral damage on capitalism's glorious march forward. The collusion of the federal government in this sorry spectacle — as is occurring through the placement of Section 8 tenants in many of these "investment" properties — makes this a case of crony capitalism at...