You’ve heard the idiom, “One bad apple spoils the whole bunch”. But how many bunches get spoiled by 14,132 bad apples?

14,132 is the number of “Individuals who have received erroneous Home buyer Tax Credits totaling at least $26.7 million” according to the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA) report recently released.

Key findings in the report:

• 2,555 taxpayers receiving credits totaling $17.6 million for homes purchased prior to the dates allowed by law.
• 1,295 prisoners receiving credits totaling $9.1 million who were incarcerated at the time they reported that they purchased their home. These prisoners did not file joint returns, so their claims could not have been the result of purchases made with or by their spouses. Further, TIGTA found that 241 prisoners were serving life sentences at the time they claimed that they bought new primary residences.
• 10,282 taxpayers receiving credits for homes that were also used by other taxpayers to claim the credit. (In one case, TIGTA found that 67 taxpayers were using the same home to claim the credit.) TIGTA auditors have not fully quantified the total of these erroneous credits, but all indications are that the total will be in the tens of millions of dollars.

Oh yeah, at least 34 IRS employees erroneously received the credit too!

I’m sure that as months progress, the total number will eclipse these 14,132 apples.

The Home Buyer Tax-Credit is getting more popular as we approach the Tax-Credit Deadline.  As that deadline draws near, many home buyers are wondering who qualifies to get the tax credit.  One common misunderstanding is that you have to be a first time home buyer…truth is, you don’t have to be a first time home buyer!

I’ve put together a simple list of basic home buyer requirements:

Home Buyer Tax-Credit Requirements

$6500 Tax Credit For ‘Repeat Buyers’:

• Must have owned and resided in your current home for 5 of the last 8 years.
• Income limits for single taxpayers is $125,000;  limit is $225,000 for married taxpayers filing a joint return.
• Any Home less than $800k that will be used as a principal residence qualifies.
• Must be under contract to purchase by April 30th, 2010 and closed by June 30th, 2010.

$8000 Tax Credit For ‘First Time Home Buyers’

• All First time home buyers purchasing a new or re-sale home are eligible.
• Income limit for single taxpayers is $125,000; the limit is $225,000 for married taxpayers filing a joint return.
• Tax credit is equal to 10% of the purchase of price of the home, up to $8000 of credit.
• Any Home less than $800k that will be used as a principal residence qualifies.
• Must be under contract to purchase by April 30th, 2010 and closed by June 30th, 2010.

For more Frequently Asked Questions, check out this site!

Looking to Buy? Find your home now!

Still don’t know if you qualify? Give me a call and I’ll walk you through it!

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The MLS is the real estate industry’s favorite acronym.   For those of you that know what the MLS means, congrats, but for those that don’t know what the MLS means, this article is for you!  For example, if you’ve used my Boise MLS Home Search feature, then you know what I am talking about.  By the way, I’ll sometimes call it the “Multiple” for short!

What is the MLS?

The MLS stands for Multiple Listing Service. In Idaho, the MLS is a collection of almost all of the homes listed by Realtors. In order to directly access the MLS Database, you have to be a licensed Realtor in good standing with your local MLS Board…in my case, the Intermountain MLS. Almost every home for sale, is in the MLS and when I work with a buyer, I use the Multiple listing service to locate those homes that meet their criteria.

The multiple listing service is accessed online by Realtors, but today, some websites have their own version of the  MLS. These websites make it possible for buyers to indirectly access the multiple with limited search capabilities. In the past, the general public had no way of getting those listings without the help of a Realtor. The Internet Data Exchange is the protocol that transfers certain limited data from the multiple to an agents home search tool. Whenever you search for homes on a website, you’re accessing the IDX feed, not the MLS so the information is limited.

Whats better, a Realtors website or the MLS?

Hands down, the MLS is better.  As previously mentioned, when you search for a home on a Realtors website, you can only search based on limited information. For instance, you might be able to search based on quantity of bedrooms, baths and square feet, but you won’t be able to search based on school district or other specialized important information.

Today, I get a lot of requests from buyers trying to beat the tax credit deadline to find homes that AREN’T short sales (they can take months to successfully accomplish). To date, there are very few, if any Realtor websites that can search for all homes EXCLUDING short sales.

In addition to exclusive searching, I can access tax data, parcel information, listing history, and a number of other things that most buyers just can’t find on a Realtors website…including mine.

Probably the most concerning issue is that not all homes listed with the MLS show up on Realtor websites–even the big ones like Trulia and Realtor.com!!!

This doesn’t mean that a Boise Real Estate Agent’s website is unhelpful, it just means that buyers without the help of a Realtor are not accessing the entire market.

Why Bother Searching on My Agents Site?

Searching on your agents site isn’t a total waste. If you have the option of signing up and creating an account, do! This will allow your agent to get a good idea of what types of homes you like and what it is that you’re really looking for. In addition, you can set up email notifications that will get you in front of the best listings first!

If you are using a Real Estate company’s site to search, you’re not doing yourself any favors if you aren’t registering and working with an aggressive agent who knows the market. Recently, I’ve been doing a lot of work in South Boise and Southeast Boise, so I have an edge on agents who haven’t been working there recently. It makes for a valuable service to new buyers when their agent already knows of the great deals without having to look on the multiple. On the other hand, I have access to the ENTIRE Multiple Listing Service and can search any area and find deals within moments!

What MLS Tools do I provide my buyers?

I provide my buyers with 3 Boise Home Search capabilities:

• Boiserealestatesoup.com — This a  free site where you can do an IDX style search.  In addition, you can create an account where you can save favorite listings and search criteria and also be notified of new homes on the market as they become available.
• Listingbook — This a step up from my sites IDX.  You can not only search homes, but you can schedule showings, leave feedback, make notes and create a profile that we use to communicate online about the market.  A very, very powerful tool!  All of my clients love it!
• Intermountain MLS — Each buyer I work with gets a one on one consultation with me where I go through the Multiple Listing Service for them.  I gather all the information from you about what’s important in a home, community or whatever criteria is important to you.  I then build a profile for you and anytime a home comes onto the market, gets a price change or is modified in any way, I am the first to know about it.  There are many times where we go through the Multiple together and you can see what I see!

Start your homesearch NOW!!!

You’ve heard me call the Tax Credit a bribe, but if you’re in the market anyway, its a bonus.  The Home Buyer Tax Credit can be a useful tool for some multifamily real estate purchases as long as one of the ‘units’ is your primary residence!

Check it out!

Some Home Buyers are making a purchase just because they can get $8000.  Is this a good enough reason to buy a home?  There are many benefits of home ownership and last time I checked a one-time $8000 bribe was not one of them.

A while back I posted a video about the first time home buyer tax credit, and at the time I was concerned that nobody was taking advantage of the opportunity.  It now seems as though  many buyers are taking advantage of the extended version of the tax credit.  Perhaps the original deadline of November 30th created some urgency amongst the buyers and has urged them off of the fence to take advantage of the new deadline of April 31st, 2009.

Since posting that video have been doing some research on the real estate market I have some criticism about how many first time home buyers (even regular buyers) are using FHA loans with only 3 1/2% down in a market that is declining faster than a 3 1/2% loss per year.  I know that there are many people in my industry who are trying to stir up the market and promote the FHA loan and the Home Buyer Tax Credit to get buyers off the fence.  I’m not the only one who is saying this there are others as well who think that these loans will come back to bite us.

If you are in the market to buy a home anyhow, there’s no sense to not take advantage of $8000.  However, it is reminiscent of the current mess that we are in if a buyer is using the $8000 tax credit as a reason to purchase a home or to get them off the fence at the least.  There are many benefits to buying a home, possible tax savings (see Mortgage Interest Deduction Hustle), stability, pride of ownership, financial and educational; nowhere on that list is $8000.

Think before You Buy

It’s this type of uneducated consumerism that causes families to lose homes, banks to foreclose, and burdens taxpayers.  It’s an ill-fated attempt to try to prop up the real estate market back into a position that was never stable to begin with; leading the march are Realtors at every corner.  I would hope that if you are in the market to buy a home that your journey would consist of some self reflection, assessment of personal goals, assessment of family goals, and some education into the market not just into good deals on homes in areas that have seen double-digit declines in value — remember there’s usually a good reason that certain areas wind up being the biggest losers when the market corrects.

Get Educated!

New technological advances in real estate have made it easy for buyers to self educate themselves very quickly.  The challenge however, is that all they are educating themselves about, is what is available for sale and not the fundamentals of what makes a good purchase.  For some, this isn’t their first go around and the process may be familiar, but to their surprise, there are areas of town that have failed miserably while others have succeeded or the very least will be the first to rebound in months or years to come.

First Things First

If you have thought about buying a home in Boise or Meridian, your first step is not to see how much you qualify for from a lender, but to sit within agent whose interests are not head of yours, who was willing to educate you in a manner that will have you questioning whether or not buying real estate is good for you.

Believe it or not there are areas of town that have been good to buyers and sellers alike and will remain a good choice no matter the market conditions.  If you would like to see if buying a home is right for you please give me a call I would be happy to be honest with you and tell you that buying a home for you is not the right choice.  I would be happier to tell you honestly that if you are a good candidate to be in the market to buy real estate that now is a good time to buy in certain areas. I’d even be happy to show you where those areas are along with numbers to back up my suggestions.