SHOW! ME! THE! MONEY!

A settlement agent would never demand that a purchaser “show me the money.” However, the settlement agent must be in receipt of all signed closing documents AND all closing funds for settlement to be complete, as Virginia is a “wet settlement state” – essentially settlement is complete when the ink on the signed closing documents is still wet, theoretically speaking.

A seller approaches you seeking a quick sale on a vacant lot. That seller communicates and interacts with you strictly via email and/or text message and uses words indicating urgency. The seller requests a list price that is less than market value. These are all potential red flags for seller impersonation fraud.

Pulitzer Prize winning writer and poet Alice Walker wrote, “In nature, nothing is perfect and everything is perfect. Trees can be contorted, bent in weird ways, and they’re still beautiful.” Well, that may be true unless said tree has been “Lollipopped.” As the old adage goes, “beauty is in the eye of the beholder,” and reasonable minds can certainly differ on the beauty and aesthetics of trees in a residential environment. And furthermore, how does one even begin to assign a value to something as subjective as the aesthetic value of a tree?