Q: I purchased a home in a new housing tract in January of last year for $224,950. When sales got bad, the developer cut the price of its identical homes to $199,950 — which took away $25,000 of my equity because no one would want to buy my house now. Can I sue the builder for the loss in my property’s value?

A: You can sue, but you probably will not win. A handful of such cases have been filed before in states across the U.S., and judges have always ruled that builders are free to raise or lower their prices and are not financially liable if their decisions affect the values of the entire neighborhood.

Such court decisions may seem unfair, but they really are not. If the courts were willing to make developers give back some of their money to buyers who purchased a house and the value of their property dropped, then builders also could sue for a slice of the profit if the buyers later resold the home for more than they paid for it.

Have you heard of a place called Pigtown in New York?

Sure. It’s part of the old Flatbush area of Brooklyn, named for the pigs that were once raised there and the stench that came from a long-closed dump.

About 100 years ago, a man named Charles Hercules Ebbets secretly started buying up adjacent parcels in Pigtown to build a new stadium for his fledgling baseball team, the Dodgers. Construction of Ebbets Field began in 1912, and the team played there until moving to Los Angeles in 1957. The stadium is now the site of several high-rise apartment buildings.

I am 62 and recently married a man who is 60. Both of us have grown children from previous marriages. I read your booklet about living trusts, so I called my estate planner and he said that we should consider a “qualified terminable interest property trust.” Is this the same thing as the basic living trust?

Close, but not quite. A basic living trust typically involves spouses who want their children or other heirs to inherit their property quickly rather than suffering through the long, costly probate process.

A qualified terminable interest property trust — commonly called a QTIP — is often used by remarried spouses who want to take financial care of each other while they’re both alive but ensure that their property goes to their respective children after one of them dies.