I know this for a fact. If you are an authorized user, you are only authorized to use the card and the c/c does not report anything about you to the credit reporting agencies. Your mom is solely responsible for the card. If you became a JOINT user of the card, then you are equally liable for the charges and they report the payment history to the reporting agencies. How I know this is I am from Canada and married an American. I had no US credit history and they do not take Canadian credit history here even though I had good credit back home. At first I was an authorized user of dh's cards, thinking they would report the info to the credit bureaus. When I checked my free annual credit reports, tehre was nothing on me. No info whatsoever. It wasn't until dh made the cards joint (and me ultimately responsible for the cards too) that the info was reported to my record. I also have almost the same high fico score as dh. Basically, all his credit history transferred to me and I reaped the benefit of his high score. Authorized user = no reporting to agencies Joint user = report to agencies and the user is liable for charges.

We make our initial offer based on what we feel we'd need to put into the property to make it function for us. We consider comps but don't really put much stock in them. It's not relevant for us but we do consider site value seriously & will spend quite a bit of time with due diligence. We visit the local court house & do title searches. We speak with the tax assessor's office. We speak with the zoning & building departments. We used to physically visit schools if they were new to us; but don't any longer because our kids are grown. The only dollar amount that matters, to us, is what's the total cost going to be for us to live in this house contentedly? If that number turns out to be too far off what the seller believes his property is "worth" then we move on & look for another. We're not emotional buyers. As to the home inspection. We're not too fussy. We've already taken most everything into account when we made our offer. However, with the home we currently own...we'd anticipated the south-facing sunroom would require reroofing & had included that in our offer calculations. The HI revealed that the gutters had failed (due to lack of maintenance, probably) & ice had gotten up underneath the sheathing resulting in rot we'd not anticipated. So, we went back to the seller & negotiated a price reduction from our original offer for the price to completely reroof. We then contracted for the roof replacement ourselves because we wanted to upgrade the overall quality beyond what we'd requested from the seller. Other than the roof, we didn't request the seller do anything except complete a fence he'd already started & had the materials ordered for. We didn't want to take over the project mid-stream. This wasn't part of the HI...we made our offer contingent on the fence being finished. We wouldn't request radon, asbestos, or lead paint issues to be resolved by a seller. They don't scare us & we have a number of people we could tap to remediate anything serious. Tricia

yahoo real estate, I will have to check it out - not sure there are any foreclosures in our area. So far, it's the only site I know of to find them. There's a post at city data in the real estate section, pretty sure someone left links to other sites. We lost power the other day, and all of the tabs I had open are gone. I now have to go back and sift through posts to find the stuff I wanted. :( Now that the weather is cooler, I am working in the yard too trying to get rid of all the weeds and put in a few carnations. I lost all of my carnations. I'll have to buy more when we move. I hope I can dig up the rest of the plants I want to take before it gets too cold. Rose - can you give me the link to your listing so I can see the new pics? The only new pic so far is the bedroom, I wouldn't have cropped it so much. I have to email him again to see if he'll let me have a few bedroom pics so I can use them for the ad I want to take out. I don't want to use the one he has posted since is more bed then room. If I had to do the two week closing, I would have if it would have sold the house. My mind was racing with all the things I had to think about in an insanely short period of time. The realtors even said they'd come to help pack and help find movers satisfactory to me, etc. These two are top notch and the stress I had before is totally eliminated. Gawd! I was a basket case. I saw my therapist yesterday and she said I appeared much calmer and that the last time we saw each other, just before I fired first realtor, I was climbing the walls. Yesterday as I was getting ready to dig another garden out, I looked around and thought, no way could I do it in 2 weeks. I don't doubt you are calmer, you have 2 people working on it, they sound like they know what they are doing. I'm glad you realized everything early on instead of after close to 3 months like me. I'm sure seeing your hubby and getting away helped! I must have missed the post about you putting a bid on a house. I will take a look for it. Haven't really "posted" about it. I mentioned it in a few threads but didn't make an "official" post yet. Didn't want to jinx it. The house is awesome, 1st one that hubby & I walked that said "this is it". The problem was the price and unless we took a model that someone else backed out of that was already customized, doubt we'd be able to get this model. We got a decent deal and feel pretty good about the decision. We even met the neighbor next to us, nice guy that takes pride in his property & likes to garden. Here is a link that might be useful: house

This reminds me of what happened to us 20 years ago. We listed our first home with a local realtor, she put it on the market and we got a full price offer within a week which, of course, accepted. It was subject to inspection and the very young buyers brought their two fathers to do the inspection. Surprise! The buyers backed out and the house (we thought) went back on the market. Six weeks went by with no showings, and this in a hot market. We called our realtor a few times and she told us to "be patient." So the DH told a colleage at work who happened to be an agent, and he checked the MLS, which was only in printed form at the time and not available to the public. Guess what? Our house was still listed as "sold'! We got out of our listing contract (with considerable unpleasantness, I might add) and relisted with another agent. Again, it sold for full price within a week. The delay caused us to have to take out a bridge loan so that we could meet the closing date on our new home. Because this happened to us, I would not be the least surprised if it turned out that the agent(s) in question simply hadn't bothered to update the listing. Concerning ethics, I would think it would be obvious to anyone that, since the agent owes a fiduciary duty to the seller, a mistake like this is not only a breach of ethics, but also leaves the agent liable for damages in court. Indeed, I actually had drafted a complaint, but we cooled off and simply let the matter drop without filing suit.