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President Obama signed the tax credit extension!!

First Time Homebuyers

The current law is extended until April 30, 2010. Buyers have until that date to have a signed purchase agreement. There is an additional 60 day grace period to complete the financing. More first time homebuyers are eligible because the new law raises the annual income limits from $75,000 to $125,000 for singles and from $150,000 to $225,000 for married couples.

Current Home Owners

Over 60 percent of current home owners will be eligible for a tax credit of up to $6,500 if they purchase a home by April 30, 2010. These homebuyers must have lived in their home for five consecutive years over the previous eight years to qualify. Qualified homebuyers can get the credit if they purchase a home for $800,000 or less as their primary residence between November 7, 2009 and April 30, 2010. The income limits are the same as the First Time Homebuyer listed above.

FAQ

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — President Obama signed an extension and expansion of the first-time homebuyers tax credit on Friday. The $8,000 credit was scheduled to lapse on Dec. 1 but will now be in effect through the end of June.

The $8000 tax credit video

Here is a short video explaining the federal $8,000 tax credit for first time home buyers.

Dec. 1 is coming up!

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — Use any metaphor you want: the ticking clock, sands running through the hourglass or pages falling away from the calendar. The fact is, time is running out to claim the $8,000 first-time homebuyers tax credit.

Passed earlier this year as part of the economic stimulus package, the credit is good for up to $8,000, or 10% of the purchase price, and applies to people who have not owned a home in the previous three years. (There are some income restrictions.) The best part: Unlike a similar program from 2008, the credit does not have to be repaid.

The bad part: It ends on Dec. 1.

Because it usually takes around 90 days to close on a house after a contract is signed, buyers have very little time left to act. As of Thurs., Aug. 27, there were only 96 days left before the credit ends.

“Buyers have to get a home under contract very, very soon,” said Tom Kunz, CEO of Century 21. “They probably should get out looking.”
Sense of urgency

What they will find may surprise them: Many of the prime properties have already been snapped up. Home sales have been on the upswing, and inventories are so depleted in hot markets that first-time buyers are struggling to find homes in their price range. (Check prices in your city.)

In Whittier, Calif., for example, there are few repossessed homes for sale. Those are easy to buy because there isn’t a lot of red tape and the bank wants to get rid of them as quickly as possible. Instead, most of the properties are short sales, where the sellers have to convince their lender to let them sell the house for less than they owe.

“That’s why there’s such a sense of urgency now,” said Irma Tapper, a Century 21 real estate agent in Whittier. “The banks have to approve short sales, and they’re taking three to six months to do that.”

That means a first timer putting a bid on a short-sale might not get an answer form the bank until well after the Dec. 1 deadline for the tax credit. So when an actual repossession listing hits the markets, it creates a feeding frenzy.

Chuck Whitehead, who runs the Coldwell Banker agency in Temecula, Calif., said one recent listing hit the market on a Friday and by Monday there were 57 bids.

The National Association of Realtors attributes much of this activity to the first-time buyer tax credit. It estimates that 1.8 million buyers will file for the credit, and 350,000 of them wouldn’t have been able to buy without it.

“It makes a big difference because most of these clients are in a lower price range,” said Michelle Edmunds, an agent with Coldwell Banker in Temecula, Calf., who has closed sales for six first-time buyers. “The houses they buy need work and normally they wouldn’t want to move in because of the [less than perfect] conditions the homes are in.”

That is true for Wesley Forsythe. This June, the 30-year-old computer consultant and his girlfriend bought a row house in the Fishtown section of Philadelphia. Since he paid just $80,000 for the three-bedroom, two-bath place, the credit acted like a 10% discount.

“It allowed us to expand our price range and plan additional renovations,” he said. “My mortgage is several hundred dollars less than what my new rent would have been.”

Forsythe applied for the credit immediately after closing, filing an amended 2008 tax return. The IRS cut him a check in less than seven weeks. He’s spending it now on new hardwood floors, repainting most of the interior and renovating a bathroom. He’s stretching the cash by doing much of the work himself.
Cash for Clunkers effect

Of course, analysts worry that this frenzy will dry up once the tax credit expires. They argue that without the incentive, much of the pressure on homebuyers to act quickly will vanish, and the nascent housing recovery could slump.

In many ways the tax credit is similar to the Cash for Clunkers program that ended this week. Already, auto dealers are anticipating that car sales will evaporate after accelerating during the program.

“It’s just like Cash for Clunkers,” said Robert Dye, a senior economist for PNC Financial Services Group. “It runs the risk of a let-down as the program runs its course.”

Johnny Isakson, R-Ga., who is a former real estate broker, is pushing legislation to extend the tax credit through next year, increase it to $15,000, include non-first-time homebuyers, and remove income restrictions.

The effort has drawn strong industry support.

“We need to stimulate the move-up buyer,” said Century 21’s Kunz, “so it works its way up the pricing food chain. That’s what we need to get inventory moving again.”
By Les Christie, CNNMoney.com

Gallery & Brix Condo Auctions

The auctions for both properties will be held on Sunday, September 27th at the Grand Hyatt Seattle (721 Pine Street). Brix goes first starting at 1:00 PM with Gallery starting later at 6:00 PM.

http://seattlecondosandlofts.com/images/Brix_Gallery_release.pdf

Do you know what you are buying?

Real-estate contracts have grown lengthier. And new potential problems — such as your home turning out to be a former meth lab — have emerged. As a result, many home buyers and sellers may not have all the information they need to make sure their rights are protected, says Adam Morrow, a lawyer and real-estate agent with Sound Counsel Realty in Seattle.

“Basically, people get into trouble because they rely on real-estate agents for legal advice, which they’re not qualified to give,” he says.

These are some of the most common legal snarls that entangle home buyers and sellers.

The liability box. Home-sale contracts have a form called the Real Estate Transfer Disclosure Statement. Otherwise known as Form 17, this page has a very important little box. If a seller checks the box, they agree the buyer can sue them if they later discover a problem. If they leave it unchecked, the buyer can’t.

It’s a critical item that sellers and buyers should negotiate on, says Marc Holmes, a broker and a lawyer at Craig Blackmon in Seattle. When he’s advising buyers, he tells them to make sure it’s checked; sellers, he advises to leave it unchecked.

“No” vs “don’t know.” Seller-disclosure forms list possible house problems, from rats to septic trouble. The choices are to say “yes,” “don’t know” or “no,” meaning the seller knows the problem doesn’t exist. Many sellers check “no” as it seems more reassuring to buyers, even if they don’t really know. But the “no” answer opens the door to future lawsuits if a problem is found later.

More Good News

The number of closed sales of single-family homes in King County in June was up 4 percent over June 2008 — the first year-over-year increase since the market peaked nearly two years ago, the Northwest Multiple Listing Service said Monday.

The county hasn’t recorded that many sales in a month since October 2007.

The statistics also suggest — and agents in the field confirm — that the new buyers aren’t just first-timers searching for homes at the lowest end of the price spectrum.

Total sales in Southwest and Southeast King County — the most affordable areas — were actually down from a year ago. Sales in Seattle, in contrast, rose nearly 11 percent, with neighborhoods north of the Ship Canal leading the way.

On the Eastside, sales were up almost 4 percent overall. In the Juanita-Woodinville-Duvall area, they surged nearly 31 percent.

By Eric Pryne

Seattle Times business reporter

How is the market?

The most bearish of Wall Street economic analysts have made the same point for the past 18 months. There’s no recovery or rebound in the housing market, they said, until home builders start building again.

“Show us positive numbers on new home starts for a few months,” they say, “and then we will we agree that the housing market has finally turned around.”

Hey there bears, here are the numbers you asked for: Last week the Commerce Department reported an unexpectedly large increase in new single family home starts during May – up by seven and a half percent.

That was the THIRD consecutive monthly gain in single family starts. Total starts, including multifamily apartment starts and condos, were up by 17 and a half percent!!

A little bit of good news in Seattle

If the Seattle residential real-estate market is coming back to life — and that’s still a big if, despite a relatively upbeat monthly report Tuesday — it’s because of people like Lori Gifford. She and her fiancé, Scott Brush Goodwin, bought their first house last month. It’s a two-bedroom, one-bath former rental in the Arbor Heights neighborhood that the previous owner lost last year through foreclosure. Goodwin and Gifford paid Washington Federal Savings $249,000 for it. “I’ve been living in Seattle for 14 years, and I never really thought I could afford to buy a house,” Gifford says. But when they started looking this spring, “it all kind of came together,” she says. The key elements: Lower prices. Lower mortgage-interest rates. And new incentives for first-time buyers. The Northwest Multiple Listing Service reported Tuesday that pending single-family home sales in King County topped 2,000 in April, the first month that level has been reached since August 2007.

Homebuyer Tax Credit-2009

February 17,2009 2pm

The $790 billion stimulus package signed by President Obama today increases the home buyer tax credit to $8,000, drops the repayment feature, reinstates last year’s 2008 loan limits for FHA, Freddie Mac, and Fannie Mae loans, and provides $2 billion in additional funding for states and localities to be used to purchase, manage, repair and resell foreclosed and abandoned properties.

Homebuyer Tax Credit.

The bill provides for a $8,000 tax credit that would be available to first-time home buyers (those who haven’t owned in at least three years) for the purchase of a principal residence on or after January 1, 2009 and before December 1, 2009. The credit does not require repayment for buyers who hold onto their property for at least three years. Most of the mechanics of the credit will be the same as under the 2008 rules: the credit will be claimed on a tax return to reduce the purchaser’s income tax liability. If any credit amount remains unused, then the unused amount will be refunded as a check to the purchaser.

Washington REALTORS®