In the Standard & Poor’s/Case-Shiller Home Price Index report released on Tuesday, Dallas was the best performing city out of twenty in the nation. Residential values in the Dallas area were up 1.4 percent in November from a year earlier – the first increase in the price index of pre-owned homes since September 2007. (That’s a 2.5 year period.)
The upbeat Dallas numbers support other recent reports that show residential values in the area are no longer falling.
Ill-advised speculation on U.S. real estate helped set off the global financial crisis. But even after millions of foreclosures and their secondary effects rippled through economies around the world, U.S. homeowners might be making the same mistakes again.
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On Christmas Eve the Obama administration exercised its right to increase the amount of aid it could provide to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac without the permission of Congress by December 31, 2009. The administration vowed to back the mortgage giants for the next three years with tax payer money, no matter what the amount.
The North Texas housing market was mercifully spared the severe ravages of the real estate market bubble due to the fact that our prices were not overinflated in the first place and because our economy has fared better than the rest of the country. Take a look at the figures in the Standard & Poor’s/Case-Shiller Home Price Index showing Dallas’ envious position compared to 20 other markets in the US.
In March, the Department of Treasury announced the Making Homes Affordable initiative, made up of two components—the Home Affordable Refinance Program (HARP) and the Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP).
The program was created to offer assistance to as many as 7 to 9 million homeowners making a good-faith effort to make their mortgage payments, while attempting to prevent the destructive impact of the housing crisis on families and communities. It will not provide money to speculators, and it will target support to the working homeowners who have made every possible effort to stay current on their mortgage payments.
The Treasury Department recently announced updates to its Making Home Affordable program to include a second lien program and the use of short sales and deeds-in-lieu of foreclosure.
The Federal Housing Authority reported yesterday that its capital reserve ratio has fallen to 0.53%. A far cry from the congressional mandate of a 2% reserve ratio. Are we headed “Back to the Future” with another bailout due to bad lending practices that were never turned away from by the US government, no less, after last year’s financial meltdown? Continue Reading…
As reported on www.CNNMoney.com -
President Obama signed an extension and expansion of the first-time homebuyers tax credit on Friday, Nov. 6, 2009.
The $8,000 credit was scheduled to lapse on Dec. 1 but will now be in effect through the end of June. Homebuyers must sign a contract before April 30 and close by June 30. The income limits were also raised: Single buyers can now earn up to $125,000 and still get the full credit while a married couple can earn $225,000.
The bill also made more homeowners eligible to claim the credit on their taxes. First-time buyers — those who have not owned a home in the past three years — still qualify for an $8,000 rebate. But now people who want to trade up can also qualify. Those who have owned and occupied a residence for at least five years out of the past eight can claim a $6,500 tax credit if they close on a purchase by the end of June.
The following story is an article posted on The Washington Times website, Oct. 19, 2009, entitled, Easy-Money Mortgages Still Provided, By the Feds, written by Patrice Hill.
So you thought easy-money mortgages with little or no down payment for people with bad credit was a thing of the past? Think again.
You can get just such a loan today – and it’s guaranteed by the federal government.
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