jolenta's Blog: National Real Estate News

Details are beginning to emerge about Obama's "homeowner stabilization plan". From the reports I'm hearing it sounds like a $75 billion plan that will attack the problem at the heart of the matter: housing affordability. While those of us who have been working hard all our lives, saving money, and who paid cash for our homes (or at the very least bought homes we could afford), it will be a tough pill watching ourselves, our children and our children's children bail out the generation who thought they were entitled to Money For Nothin'. As Cal Carter so aptly pointed out this morning, maybe Greenspan should have been watching MTV. Unfortunately it's becoming more and more clear to more and more people that if we don't straighten out this housing mess, we're…

The new tax credit for first-time homebuyers that's included in the economic stimulus package was slashed from the previously proposed $15K to just $8K and a far cry from the $20K the homebuilding industry wanted. Analysts expect the credit consisting of 10% of the value of any home up to $8K to have a smaller impact on the U.S. housing market than previously hoped. Last year, Congress enacted a $7,500 tax credit for first-time buyers (which had to be paid back over 15 years) and the impact on home sales was negligible.This time the tax credit is limited to first-time buyers who act between the start of 2009 and the end of November 2009. First-time buyers are defined as those who haven't owned a house for at least three years.

The credit of 10…