Real Estate

For many years, I made attending the annual gatherings of the nation's Realtors and home builders part of my schedule. Since 2009, however, I've been able to attend these events - confined to my two least favorite locations, Las Vegas and Orlando - from my office computer. It saves time and money, and it is, in a virtual sense, just like being there. This year, however, I was beginning to feel a bit out of the loop, and, needing a day at the beach even in December, I spent $10 on a round trip from Lindenwold to Atlantic City for the regional Realtors' convention.

For the first time in four years, the Chester County commissioners voted Thursday to increase real estate taxes. Taxes in 2013 will rise 5 percent, by $32.86 for a home with the median assessed value of $165,760, according to a county news release. Under the state's formula, that assessment converts to an estimated market value of about $280,000. The millage in the 2013 budget will increase from 3.965 per $1,000 of assessed value to 4.163, the county finance office said. The tax increase, the first since the 2009 calendar year, will help cover a $5.75 million funding gap in a planned overhaul of the county's emergency system, officials said.

Jay H. Lipson, 92, of Garnet Valley, a real estate broker and appraiser in the Philadelphia region for a half-century, died of cancer Sunday, Dec. 9, at his home. Mr. Lipson was a self-employed Realtor for many years. In 1950, he opened his first real estate office in West Philadelphia, often showing homes on nights and weekends. His second office was in Upper Darby. He earned certification in real estate appraisal and became one of the area's first to pursue that specialty, his family said.

DEAR HARRY: I have a good pension plan where I work, and I have been contributing right up to the maximum allowed. The company matches my contributions up to 6 percent of my pay. Today, I saw some guru on TV telling people that any money above what the company will match should go into real estate. He was even going to the point of telling viewers to move to a bigger home with a bigger mortgage. With low interest rates and the threat of inflationary policies in Washington, he insisted that this was a no-brainer.

Alan S. Oser, 81, the New York Times' authoritative voice in real estate coverage for more than 30 years as a writer and editor, died Tuesday in Barcelona, Spain, where he was celebrating his 60th wedding anniversary with his wife, Janice. The cause was a stroke, said his son, Roy. From 1969 through 2004, several years past his nominal retirement, Mr. Oser wrote about real estate in the daily Times and in the Sunday Real Estate section. In 2004, Mr. Oser, a violinist, founded New Paths in Music, a nonprofit organization in Manhattan that presents the work of foreign composers whose music has rarely if ever been performed in this country.

Trouble remains in many real estate markets, but the continued influx of young adults and empty-nesters to Center City has resulted in increased home sales and prices in much of that area through the first nine months of 2012, according to a report released Tuesday by the Center City District. The CCD is a privately directed, municipal authority, created under Pennsylvania and Philadelphia laws, to help develop, maintain and promote the district, which includes parts of eight zip codes in the city.

James B. Horan is what bankers call a workout man. Since the 1980s, through banking crises and mortgage manias, he has earned a six-figure income helping PNC, GMAC, Capmark and other giant lenders fix damaged multimillion-dollar real estate projects by leaning on deadbeat borrowers and negotiating with new investors. Horan says he's been cursed and insulted (and sometimes apologized to) by some of the biggest real estate names in the northeast, when their payments fell behind and he came calling.

Ellis Levin, 65, of Cinnaminson and Brant Beach, N.J., a forensic accountant who worked on many major fraud investigations and audited institutions ranging from schools to international chemical giants, died Wednesday, Nov. 14, just weeks after learning he had an aggressive form of cancer. In the arcane world of accounting irregularities and audit failures, Mr. Levin was widely considered a whiz, driven by a passion to "get at the truth," as his family put it. Since graduating from the University of South Florida in 1969, he had practiced public accounting and, in the last 20 years, forensic accounting and litigation consulting.