Wondering about the Home Buyer Tax Credit?

 Here’s a handy chart to help you out.

NAR Issue Brief

Homebuyer Tax Credit Changes

National Association of REALTORS® Government Affairs Division

500 New Jersey Avenue, NW, Washington DC, 20001

 

FEATURE	Jan 1 – November 30, 2009 Rules as enacted February 2009	December 1 – April 30, 2010 Rules as enacted November 2009
First time Buyer – Amount of Credit	$8000 ($4000 married filing separate)	$8000 ($4000 married filing separate)
First time Buyer – Definition for Eligibility	May not have had an interest in a principal residence for 3 years prior to purchase	Same
Current Homeowner – Amount of Credit	No Provision	$6500 ($3250 married filing separate)
Effective Date – Current Owner	No Provision	Date of Enactment
Current Homeowner – Definition for Eligibility	No Provision	Must have used the home sold or being sold as a principal residence consecutively for 5 of the previous 8 years
Termination of Credit	Purchases after November 30, 2009. (Becomes April 30, 2010 on Date of Enactment.)	Purchases after April 30, 2010
Binding Contract Rule	None	So long as a written binding contract to purchase is in effect on April 30, 2010, the purchaser will have until July 1, 2010 to close.
Income Limits (Note: Increased income limits are effective as of date of enactment of bill)	$75,000 – single $150,000 – married Additional $20,000 phase out	$125,000 – single $225,000 – married Additional $20,000 phase out
Limitation on Cost of Purchased Home	None	$800,000 Effective Date of Enactment
Purchase by a Dependent	No Provision	Ineligible Effective Date of Enactment
Antifraud Rule	None	Purchaser must attach documentation of purchase to tax return

 This chart is just another way Dick Thackston and the REALTORS at R.H. Thackston & Company REALTORS can help you. Dick works with the other 34 New Hampshire, Vermont & Massachusetts agents in his 3 offices helping buyers find and close on homes. To see all the homes on the market today in New Hampshire, Vermont & Massachusetts visit www.dickthackston.com or give him a call today at 603.283.0622.

“I want to buy this foreclosure, but the condition is awful!”…

It seems hard to believe that some of the best deals in the home buying market can’t be purchased by the average person who would use them as a home for their family. Because of condition a substantial portion of Lender Owned Homes can’t be financed. This has been true for years.                  

Hope is now on the horizon with foreclosure filings at record levels — default notices, scheduled auctions and bank repossessions were reported on 937,840 properties in the third quarter, a 5 percent increase from the previous quarter and an increase of nearly 23 percent from Q3 2008 – the government through the Federal Housing Administration, FHA, has taken positive action.

FHA is ramping up its 203K program for the first time in years. The FHA 203K program allows homebuyers to finance a home that is at least one year old and get additional money to fix it up and bring it up to standards. The FHA doesn’t just give borrowers a blank check however, what it does is provide a system of draws against work calculated into the original mortgage when the home is purchased.

If you’re buying a bank owned or other property that will need substantial repairs the 203K process allows you to obtain bids and calculate approximate needed repairs prior to purchase and then after closing use the money to pay licensed contractors. It’s important to note that the program is not designed for “do it yourselfers” since in the process you will be expected to get real bids from real contractors. Helping you in negotiations for a Lender Owned Home and finding financing that will work well in the sale is just one of the critical ways Dick Thackston and his team can help you.

 Helping buyer’s find and purchase, defaulted properties, REO’s, has been a big part of Dick Thackston’s business since – well it feels like forever! Dick works with the other 34 New Hampshire, Vermont & Massachusetts agents in his 3 offices helping buyers find and close on Short Sales and REO properties. To see all the homes on the market today in New Hampshire, Vermont & Massachusetts visit www.dickthackston.com or give him a call today at 603.283.0622.

 

“What do you mean I don’t own my house anymore?”

Sadly the question “What do you mean I don’t own my house anymore?” is being heard more and more by real estate agents and property managers around the country and through-out our region as well.
Foreclosure filings — default notices, scheduled auctions and bank repossessions — were reported on 937,840 properties in the third quarter, a 5 percent increase from the previous quarter and an increase of nearly 23 percent from Q3 2008, according to the RealtyTrac U.S. Foreclosure Market Report. One in every 136 U.S. housing units received a foreclosure filing during the quarter — the highest quarterly foreclosure rate since RealtyTrac began issuing its report in the first quarter of 2005. Foreclosure filings were reported on 343,638 properties in September, a 4 percent decrease from the previous month but a 29 percent increase from September 2008.
Often homeowners are shocked to find that they have become part of the statistics above and the home has been taken and they no-longer own the property. Realistically no one has a greater interest in working out a short sale than the homeowner. Just because a house has an offer on it does not mean that the lender will stop the foreclosure. Helping you in negotiations for a short sale is just one of the critical ways Dick Thackston and his team can help you.
The opportunity exists for homeowners to move on with their lives a maintain and strengthen their credit ratings if a short sale is handled correctly putting them in a far better position than they will be if they allow their home to go to foreclosure and become a statistic.
Defaulted properties, REO’s, have been a big part of Dick Thackston’s business since the S&L Crisis of the early 1990’s. Short Sales are already having a major impact on real sales in the region. Dick works with the other 34 New Hampshire, Vermont & Massachusetts agents in his 3 offices helping property owners complete short sales and buyers find Short Sales and REO properties.
Helping you in negotiations for a Short Sale is just one of the ways Dick Thackston and his team can help you when they help you buy a Lender owned – REO property. To see all the homes on the market today in New Hampshire, Vermont & Massachusetts visit www.dickthackston.com or give him a call today at 603.283.0622.

What the heck are “BULK REO SALES” & why would I care?

One of the big keys to success for many in the Default Servicing world, the polite term for foreclosed properties, is Bulk REO, (Real Estate Owned), business. Bulk sales have always been around but are now expected to play an even larger part in the market than ever before. In today’s Default Servicing world where lender’s and investors – such as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac – are looking a staggering numbers of REO’s. Bulk sales to investors are seen as one of the quickest most efficient ways to get properties off the books and cash into the lender’s hands with the least amount of trouble.
Most REALTORS are just not familiar enough with the idea, let alone the process, to help their client participate in Bulk Sales.
Bulk Sales can be put together in packages with as few as six properties. The key is to learn how to get direct with the sellers of assets. Most folks haven’t a clue as to how to find sellers let alone how to work with them.
Typically the negotiations in Bulk Sales revolve around the number and location of the properties. Let’s be clear working the Bulk Sale business is not for the faint of heart. These are the properties that lenders are least interested in managing and liquidating. Bulk Sales are cash on the barrel-head no refunds, excuses or problems basis and if you don’t like it once you bought it too bad.
All that being said there is tremendous opportunity for profit.
There are two basic paths purchasers use when looking at Bulk Sales: buy rehabilitate and hold or buy rehabilitate and flip. Totally up to the purchaser of the package; either plan can be tremendously profitable; either can be tremendously risky; the seller really doesn’t care.
Defaulted properties, REO’s, have been a big part of Dick Thackston’s business since the S&L Crisis of the early 1990’s and Bulk Sales are likely to have a bigger impact than ever before on real property values in the region – in many cases Bulk Sales will even improve values in towns by drying up excess inventory. Dick works with the other 34 New Hampshire, Vermont & Massachusetts agents in his 3 offices helping investors’ liquidate and buyers find REO properties.

Helping you in negotiations for Bulk Sales is just one of the ways Dick Thackston and his team can help you when they help you buy a Lender owned – REO property. To see all the homes on the market today in New Hampshire, Vermont & Massachusetts visit www.dickthackston.com or give him a call today at 603.283.0622.

Property Taxes & You: The Forgotten Crisis for New Hampshire Property Owners

The largest single expense for most property owners in New Hampshire – short of the roof blowing off in a Hurricane – is real estate taxes.

Typically real estate taxes are paid twice a year. Tax years in New Hampshire run from April 1 through March 31. Towns send out a first levy equal to one half the prior years tax bill in June covering the period from April 1 through September 30 and a final, or corrective levy, in the late Fall or early winter after the New Hampshire Department of Revenue Administration sets individual town tax rates. Even though most towns set their budget in Town Meeting format in the early Spring, tax rates can’t be set till school districts turn in their budgets in September. The tax rate effectively becomes the total of all a towns obligations – School Budget, Town Budget, County Budget and State Property Tax divided by the towns – divided by the towns total assessments.

The process in New Hampshire is obscure to the average property owner to say the least.

Realistically, the only issue that most property owners can address is the equity of their property assessments. The New Hampshire Constitution is quite clear that taxes in New Hampshire must be equitable and fair. Equity or in-equity of property assessments is the clearest most direct method that most property owners can address tax fairness.

Representation in property tax matters is often a need due to the complexity of real estate taxation in New Hampshire. Representation is motivated by the tremendous growth in tax burdens and the complexity of the process for obtaining an abatement extremely difficult.

Dick Thackston specializes in helping property owners reducing the tax liability on their real estate through-out New Hampshire. Dick Thackston uses his knowledge of New Hampshire tax policy, individual town and New Hampshire Department of Revenue processes as well as local real estate market condition guidelines to help property owners lower their real estate taxes.

Dick Thackston will work to minimize your real estate taxes by negotiating with assessors before or after filling for a tax abatement; file appeals and represent you at hearings; during revaluations advocate for real estate property owners to minimize assessments, help real estate property owners analyze real estate property values versus market conditions.

REAL ESTATE FROM THE TRENCHES

So, Fall of 2009 is soon upon us and many of us wake up in the morning wondering “were are we now; are we there yet?” Well, we’re there. Where there is, is the question.

The stock market is either up @50% or down @30% depending upon when the money went into your IRA or 401K.

Housing affordability is at its highest since the early 1970’s. Things don’t seem to be getting worse which is the beginning of recovery. The big challenge in residential housing today is getting through the backlog of foreclosures. The impact of so many people loosing their homes is that there is a huge supply of inventory coming on the market which is likely to hold prices down for sometime to come which makes it difficult to impossible for people to make a “move-up” purchase.

Homeowners who purchased their homes in 2004 and before that did not re-mortgage during the re-finance boom of the 2005-2008 time frame are as a rule OK and will probably make money when they sell their homes but there is still often time a sense of loss resulting from the much higher prices their neighbors probably got a short time ago.

First-time buyers are walking into what will probably be the deals of a life time if they buy a lender owned home in the next several months. The government stimulus seems to be doing its job in making housing more affordable and there remains tremendous pent-up equity in these homes that will probably full a new housing boom sometime in the future but we aren’t even close to know when or how that part of the American housing saga will unfold. We do know that housing stock remains flat and that people do need a place to live so over the course of the next few years once the excess inventory is off the market house prices will rise but for the foreseeable future people should and most probably will only be buying residential real estate for one of two reasons: they need a place they can afford to live or they have financial reserves and they want to invest and hold properties as rentals over a multi-year period.