No Time For Decaf With The Tax Credit Deadline

If you’re not already out shopping for a duplex or single family home to purchase before the April 30 tax credit deadline, you’d better grab a caffeinated venti, a Realtor, and start doing some serious shopping.

There are less than six weeks left in both the $8000 first time home and $6500 repeat home buyer tax credits. To qualify for the former, you may not have owned a home in the last three years. For the latter, you must have lived in your present home for at least five years.

There are income limits, and, of course, both credits are capped at 10 percent of the purchase price, not to exceed $8000 or $6500 respectively.

It’s also important to remember that if you’re buying a duplex, triplex or fourplex, only the portion of the property you live in may be used to qualify. In other words, if you buy a duplex for $150,000 and move in to one half, you would divide $150,000 by half to get a value of $75,000. Your credit would be worth 10 percent of that figure, or $7500.

So you’ve got six weeks, right? What’s the big deal? Well, most first time home buyers I work with take longer than that to select their first home. And this year, they’re going to be competing against gallons of other first time home buyers for the “good” properties.

But won’t the tax credit be extended again? After all, not a single national media source is reporting a m

resurgence of the housing market, right?

Don’t count on it. With six weeks to go in last fall’s tax credit deadline, media and lobbyists alike were clamoring Congress to consider an extension.

To date, I’ve only seen one media story suggesting the National Association of Realtors may have begun lobbying Congress for an extension.

But largely, there appears to be no broad push for an extension.

Time to get shopping.