Should Congress extend the $8,000.00 homebuyer tax credit this year?
And…
Should the $8,000.00 tax credit be open to all homebuyers?
Your thoughts?

Paul Downey figured that with all of the bad news surrounding real estate these days, selling his Melrose home would take months.
He was wrong.
So many buyers wanted the six-bedroom place that a bidding war broke out, driving the home’s price to $815,000 – $75,000 more than Downey had asked.
“The interest was remarkable right off the [...]

Congressional Budget Office delivered its latest revenue-raising options for Senate and House consideration as they write this fall’s tax and budget legislation.
Tucked away in the report are several incendiary plans that could – if adopted – cost homeowners billions of dollars. Though not formal legislative proposals, the CBO’s options represent a handy fiscal menu for [...]

This morning, I was reading one of my favorite trade magazines called Realtor. I noticed in the Septemeber 2009 issue an article “Buyer hesitation begins to dissolve” The Real Estate Expert they site in the article is Lawrence Yun the Chief Economist for the National Association of Realtors. According to Mr (sunshine) Yun the reason [...]

From the Boston Courant:
Suffolk University will house 270 students at the Holiday Inn on Cambridge Street in Beacon Hill and Hyatt Regency Hotel Inn in Downtown Crossing, where school officials say more supervision of incoming students is possible.
The school will pay about $5,000 per student to house 150 at the Holiday Inn and 120 at [...]

File under: Bernanke money – keep borrowing & printing what can go wrong.

Located in the Boston West End is a co-op building, 150 Staniford Street. The building does have some nice features such as large floor plans and indoor parking. But from what I see it doesn’t appear that Boston buyers are attracted to the co-op concept. According to MLS three co-ops are available for sale at [...]

John Leland of the New York Times has an interesting story (today) about how option ARM’s have replaced subprime as the industry bad boy.
Highlights from the New York Times article:
Mr. Clavon, 63, was planning to sell the home in a few years and retire to Palm Springs. So he got a loan called an option [...]

Let’s compare this year’s Boston condo sales to 2008:
$200,000 – $400,000 – 995 sales in ‘09 compared to 1,189 sales in ‘08
$401,000 – $600,000 – 502 sales in ‘09 compared to 696 sales in ‘08
$601,000 – $800,000 – 162 sales in ‘09 compared to 260 sales in ‘08
$801,000 – $1,000,000 – 85 sales in ‘09 [...]

Home prices in Greater Boston have increased for three straight months and the number of houses selling is up sharply, suggesting that the long housing slump is over.
June home prices were a strong 2.6 percent above the previous month, and the number of single-family homes that sold statewide in July was a whopping 12 percent [...]