If you are like me you are wishing that the senate and house would hurry up and get the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) passed. The reason I’m eager to see the bill get passed is that it keeps changing, and I’d like to get to the final version so I can at least guess how this bill will affect real estate. Most recently I heard that there were senators who were fighting to get that $15,000 credit for home buyers taken out of the plan. Well, that is NOT a good thing from my point of view. So we wait, wonder and worry. The $15,000 credit seems like a very positive part of the bill:
The National Association of Home Builders (NAHB), the organization applauded Senate passage of economic stimulus legislation.
“The enhanced $15,000 tax credit offers a powerful incentive for home buyers to get off the sidelines and represents the best opportunity for economic recovery,” said NAHB Chairman Joe Robson, a home builder from Tulsa, Okla. “Congress must make sure that the full $15,000 tax credit remains in the final stimulus plan.”
The bipartisan amendment to the stimulus package, offered by Sens. Johnny Isakson (R-Ga.) and Joe Lieberman (D-Conn.) and approved by unanimous voice vote, would create a $15,000 home buyer tax credit available to all purchasers of a principle residence for one year after its date of enactment. The tax credit would not have to be repaid and buyers could claim it against their 2008 and/or 2009 tax returns.
The $15,000 home buyer tax credit would replace and sunset a much narrower tax credit that was enacted last year. Available only to first-time home buyers, the current $7,500 tax credit works like an interest-free loan that must be repaid over a 15-year period. It is set to expire on July 1. (excerpt from Lowes article)
We need to increase the demand for housing, since the housing market is a big component of the economic crisis we are facing. I’ve contacted my representatives, and suggest you contact yours. It is possible to do more than simply wait it out.
On the FSP (Financial Stability Plan), when I listened to the media pundits later, after having heard Tim Geithner present the plan for myself, I was wondering if they were listening to someone else, and heard a completely different plan. Don’t you just hate that, when the corporate media begins to put a spin on what someone said, changing it and turning it into something else? It just amazes me. That’s the problem with allowing our media to be bought up by big corporations. It gets harder and harder to find news that is not biased toward corporate opinion when we no longer have independent news journalists. Tim Geithner presented a comprehensive and ambitious plan, and the media acted as if he hadn’t presented any plan at all. I find myself going to The Huffington Post and other alternative news sources to counteract the corporate owned media.
On another note, I’ve added a link to another real estate blog, and intend to add others. The first one I’ve added is to “The Foreclosure News Blog.” In this day of increased foreclosures I decided this would be a good blog to have on the blogroll. I’ll be reading other real estate blogs, and maybe some financial blogs, and if I like them, I’ll add them here.
Tags: arra, foreclosure, fsp, recovery, reinvestment
