If you want to take advantage of the Obama administration’s housing initiative that allows first-time homebuyers to receive a federal income tax credit of up to $8,000 upon purchasing a home, time is running out. While the initiative has certainly helped home sales across the country, homebuyers have until December 1 to close a sale to take advantage of the credit.
Any loan that closes before November 30th is still eligible for the credit, a fact that many homebuyers may or may not be aware of as they pursue the purchase of their first home. However, most loans take about thirty …read more

According to a Treasury inspector general, rampant fraud has become a large problem for the Obama administration’s first-time homebuyer tax credit program, leading to losses of up to $504 million. In some cases, people were able to manipulate the program to such an extent that children as young as four years old were receiving federal tax credits.
The program offers a federal income tax credit of up to $8,000, which means that such a program could provide criminals with a tidy sum of money if there are not enough controls set in place to prevent it. So far, more than 1.2 …read more

While many taxpayers and federal officials have called for the government to wind down its spending on its various federal bailout programs, the Obama administration has just announced a new housing bailout to help fix the housing market. The plan would be geared to assist state and local housing finance agencies.
These agencies help first-time and lower-income homebuyers to secure a mortgage and also help to develop or renovate rental properties. Obama administration officials have not yet placed a price tag on the program but have also assured that none of the money spent on the program will come from the …read more

The Obama administration has begun patting itself on the back for its progress in helping many troubled homeowners to avoid foreclosure due to its various federal programs. However, an oversight panel has released a statement criticizing President Obama’s program, warning that it will actually end up leaving millions of Americans vulnerable to losing their homes to foreclosure.
The Congressional Oversight Panel, a group created to keep an eye on taxpayer bailout funds, has said the administration’s predictions of how many homeowners the programs will save are vastly overstated. According to the COP, the program would most likely only prevent less than …read more

Despite the fact that the Federal Housing Administration is, by all accounts, having a difficult time holding onto its monetary reserves, the agency still maintains that it will not need to ask for any federal bailout money. This decision has been thoroughly questioned by many of the FHA’s longtime critics, many of whom wonder if the FHA is financially healthy enough to make such claims.
 
According to FHA Commissioner David H. Stevens, the surplus fund set aside to account for any unexpected mortgage losses backed by the FHA will dwindle below the stipulated amount required by Congress as early as October. …read more

Reports of a quicker global economic recovery recently began to turn investors away from the dollar and toward other riskier assets, such as stocks, or toward safer investments, such as gold. However, new reports have refuted the idea that the global economic recovery will come swiftly, setting the stage for the dollar’s rebound as an investor’s safe haven.
 
Plenty of important financial events will occur next week, such as a Federal Reserve monetary policy meeting, the release of U.S. housing data, and a Group of 20 gathering. These events may compound the evidence required for investors to begin to take stock …read more

As a direct consequence of the credit crisis, the real estate market stumbled thanks to a severe drop in the amount of money that banks were willing to give to potential homeowners. The resulting drop in home prices across the board has now created a buyer’s market, leading to a massive 7.2 percent jump in the number of sales of existing homes in July.
 
The figure comes from the National Association of Realtors, which began keeping track of the statistic in 1999 and has never recorded a monthly increase as large as July’s. According to the report, home sales have picked …read more

For the first time since the beginning few weeks of 2009, the Dow Jones industrial average closed at higher than 9,00. When Thursday’s trading session was over, the Dow Jones industrial average was at about 9,069.30.
To reach that mark, the Dow Jones industrial average rose more than 2%. Other indexes showed similar improvement. The S&P’s 500 was up about 2.3% to finish Thursday at 976.30. The Nasdaq index was up to 1,973.60 on 2.5% growth, while the Russell 2000 jumped more than 3% to finish at 545.85.
Most market experts point to the positive United States housing market numbers as the …read more

A few months ago, the United States seemed to be on the brink of having a full-blown housing crisis. Now, things have started to look better for the nation’s housing market, according to the latest numbers by the National Association of Realtors.
For three straight months, houses that were previously occupied showed an improvement in sales. The number of houses on the market and sales of houses in foreclosure are both in decline — which is definitely good news.
Despite the good news, there’s also a few pessimistic experts. How will the United States housing market be affected when the $8,000 tax …read more

While the going is certainly not easy for Home Depot, especially in the wake of the sagging house market and the consequential lack of demand for home-related goods, the situation may not be as bleak as it once looked for the company. According to Home Depot, the worst part of it has come and gone, but the company also predicts rough sailing for the rest of the year.
 
Home Depot has closely monitored foreclosure rates and has expressed its frustration about the fact that 26 percent of its store base is located in the seven states in which foreclosure rates actually …read more