3 Bedroom, 3 bath, 2 car garage built in 2003. Over 3,200 sq. ft.! 1/2 acre lot near Tradition and I95. Reduced $149,900

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Homebuyer Tax Credit

Special Rules for Members of the Military, the Foreign Service and the Intelligence Community

Recognizing their unique circumstances, Congress approved exceptions that give qualified members of the military, Foreign Service and intelligence communities an extra year to buy a home and claim the federal homebuyer tax credit. The exceptions apply to both the $8,000 tax credit for first-time homebuyers and the $6,500 tax credit for existing homeowners who purchase another home.

Extension of Tax Credit Rules

• The homebuyer tax credit extension is available for qualified purchases with a binding sales contract in place on or before April 30, 2011, and closed by June 30, 2011. Qualified service members (and if married, the service members’ spouses) who served on official extended duty outside the U.S. for 90 days or more at any time between Jan. 1, 2009, and April 30, 2010, are eligible.

• A person forced to return to the U.S. for medical reasons before completing an assignment of at least 90 days of qualified official extended duty outside the U.S. may also qualify for the one-year extension.

Exemption from Tax Credit Recapture Rules

Typically, homes that are sold or that cease to be used as a principal residence within three years of the initial purchase are subject to recapture (repayment) of the tax credit. However, qualified service members who sell or move from a tax credit home within three years of the initial purchase due to official extended duty assignments are exempt from the recapture rule.

Definitions: Qualified service member means a member of the uniformed services of the U.S military, a member of the U.S. Foreign Service or an employee of the intelligence community. Official extended duty means any period of extended duty outside the U.S. for at least 90 days during the period between Jan. 1, 2009, and April 30, 2010.

Note: Only one spouse must be overseas on official extended duty for the requisite amount of time for either spouse to be eligible for the 2011 extension to purchase a principal residence and claim the credit.

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Please read this article below from stockmarketsreview.com
Short Sale Investing – Are the Banks Focusing More on Short Sales, Instead of Foreclosure?
Posted Wednesday, May 12, 2010 by admin
Filed under: Investing

Over the past 12-24 months, in specific sections of the country the banks have been completely bombarded with foreclosures, and now they have got no choice but to lower their prices so, the people who buy REO’s and know short sale investing, can make a great deal when buying a residence directly from the banks. Many of the banks are now concentrating on Short Sales, rather than foreclosure.

Certainly it depends on which section of America you reside in. Believe it or not, there are several areas of the country where home prices have not dropped that much, while other parts of the nation, like California, Nevada, Arizona and Florida, prices have collapsed. In the regions of the county where home values have fallen drastically, you are in position to produce a great deal when buying fromthe banks . In the parts of the country where prices have fallen just a little, you may be unable to make as good a deal, but you should still be able to obtain a home for around 15% or more below current market value.

As you may already know, in case you have obtained my courses, I am not really a fan of hiring realtors when selling or buying a home. That is because historically realtors sell homes at full retail value. In my experience that is just a bad business decision.

Buying at full retail, or anywhere in close proximity to full retail value for a home is just foolish, unless it is the home you have been dreaming about and it is the home you want to live in for the rest of your life, but that is not the norm, that is a rare exception to the rule these days.

We illustrate to buyers to think more like a real estate investor, and many real estate investors are not fans of using realtors. I have never used a realtor to buy or sell any previously lived in home. However, to purchase an REO, it just could be to your benefit to make use of a realtor. BUT do not just use any realtor, find THE realtor locally whose expertise is Short Sales or REO’s.

The reason for making use of a realtor for these two kinds of purchases is 2 fold. First, you are buying the home at a Big discount and it isthe banks who are paying the realtors commission. And second, the realtor just could be doing most of the negotiating with the banks for you, and I recognize a large number of you may love that you do not have to do it yourself.

That is one legitimate reason why I authored a program with regards to how to complete a Home Short Sale. If you decide to use a realtor, you should have significantly better understanding – Now you are going to know exactly what the realtor is doing so you can keep track of what is going on through the short sale process.

Home debt a problem for many in st lucie county

Article Courtesy Lisa Gibbs, senior writerMay 5, 2010: 4:28 AM ET

(Money Magazine) — A transfer in 2005 landed Air Force major Richard Hallbeck, his wife, and two kids in Southern California smack in the middle of the real estate bubble. Home prices in the area had doubled in the past five years and were still climbing. So the Hallbecks swallowed hard and bought an $845,000 four-bedroom in a suburb of Long Beach.

The $3,800 monthly payment was high but affordable on two incomes. (Laurie, now 37, worked as a claims adjuster.) And they figured the market was so strong that when they had to move again, they’d at least break even. “Our house actually appraised over what we paid for it,” Richard, 42, recalls wistfully.

Since then, area sale prices have fallen 26% — when properties sell at all. Meanwhile, the recession cost Laurie her job, and the payment on the couple’s adjustable-rate mortgage will jump $800 in July. Next year Richard will face mandatory retirement from the Air Force, and his pension will be a third of his current $117,000 income.

All that’s got the Hallbecks anxious to move to a more affordable city — like Dayton, where they used to live. But they’re just as anxious about how much they could lose on the sale of their house.

A similar home down the street lists for $655,000, $21,000 less than the Hallbecks’ outstanding mortgage. At that price, the couple would be out $231,000, including their down payment and closing costs. “The stress has really worn on us,” Richard says.

Nationwide, about one in four home mortgages are now underwater, meaning borrowers owe more than their places are worth. No surprise, California and other bubbly states — Nevada, Arizona, and Florida — lead the nation.

While a bevy of new federal programs aim to help, underwater owners who want to move still face uncomfortable choices: Postpone the move and continue sinking money into a pit; sell for a loss, forfeiting the down payment and some savings to close the deal; desperately try to enter into a short sale; or simply walk away and face the consequences of foreclosure. If you (or your kids) are in this situation, here’s how to think about the options.

Keep on keeping on

If you don’t have to move and can afford the payments, it probably makes sense to soldier on and wait for housing prices to recover, says Denver financial planner Ross Schmidt. Moody’s Economy.com projects that prices in 61% of metro areas will return to recent peak levels by 2015.

If you live in one of the harder-hit cities — which may take 20 years to rebound — and you’re more than 25% underwater, your house won’t be a financial asset anytime soon. But as long as you’re happy to stay in it for many years, that may not matter.

In the meantime, you may be able to cut your loan balance — and lower your payments — through a new federal program that refinances existing loans into smaller FHA loans. To qualify, you must be current on payments — but it’s up to the lender to agree to it.

The Hallbecks might have been eligible for some of this aid, but Laurie is eager to move with the kids by this fall, rather than waiting until Richard retires — which will be in the middle of the school year.

Beg the bank for a break

What if you need to get out of the house? The Hallbecks initially considered renting their place out. But they’d probably lose money, given the spread between their mortgage payment and rental prices. Becoming a landlord is a risk even in areas where you can cover carrying costs, as you’re still on the hook in between tenants, says Maryland financial planner Timothy Maurer.

A cleaner option may be to ask your lender for a short sale, in which it would accept less than the loan amount. To convince the bank, homeowners must show they’re at risk of default because they can’t make payments or are so deep underwater that they’re likely to bail. (With $155,000 in savings outside of retirement accounts, it’s unlikely the Hallbecks will qualify.)

It can take months to arrange a short sale, if you’re successful at all. So for best results, work with a “distressed-property specialist,” a real estate agent who has experience negotiating with lenders. At realtor.com, select “SFR” under Find a Realtor to search for this type of specialist.

Also seek free advice from a certified mortgage consultant, whom you can find via makinghomeaffordable.gov, suggests Melinda Opperman, of Springboard Nonprofit Consumer Credit Management. Such an adviser can help you determine whether your loan type allows the bank to come after you for money later. He or she can also help ensure the loan is reported as “settled” to the credit bureaus. A mortgage listed as “settled for less than agreed” can damage your score the way a foreclosure would.

Speaking of foreclosure, University of Arizona law professor Brent White says walking away may make sense financially if you’re more than 40% underwater and could rent a similar house for less than your mortgage bill. But doing so has consequences, not the least of which may be a guilty conscience. Foreclosure stays on your credit report seven years — and can cut a 780 score an average of 150 points, per Fair Isaac. That can affect everything from your insurance premiums to your employment potential to your future ability to buy a house.

Eat the loss yourself

For the Hallbecks, the best — and fastest — option may be simply selling the house and paying any difference between the sale price and the mortgage out of pocket, says Maurer. That is a good, if not particularly palatable, choice for homeowners who have significant savings and aren’t deeply underwater. Selling this way eliminates any credit risks.

Sharon Kelly - Short Sale Professional

Psl foreclosures help and advice.

Written by Bob Adelmann Mar 23rd.

Friday’s announcement of more intervention in the housing. mortgage market will result in a deeper, longer, and more painful delay in the inevitable decline in housing prices that are necessary to clear the market. According to the Obama administration, the “broad new initiatives” will help troubled homeowners to refinance their existing mortgages with more favorable affordable ones provided directly by the government. Part of the new program is “meant to temporarily reduce the payments of [those] borrowers who are unemployed [but are] seeking a job.” In addition, the enhancements include inducements to “encourage lenders to write down the value of loans [already] held by borrowers in modification programs.”

In simple English, HAMP (the Home Affordable Modification Program), announced with great fanfare and high expectations early on in the Obama administration, isn’t working, and so more of the same is required. The original intent of HAMP was to “better assist responsible homeowners who have been [negatively] affected by the economic crisis through no fault of their own … and to help more people who owe more on their mortgage than their home is worth.”

Despite claims from the Treasury Department that “more than four million homeowners have refinanced their mortgages to more affordable levels…[and] more than one million are saving … over $500 per month through the … program,” the program “continue[s] to see challenges.” And so, the new program enhancements “will provide more opportunities for lenders to restructure loans for some families.”

So far, HAMP’s list of attempts to prop up the mortgage market include:

• support for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac so they can continue to offer below market interest rate loans;

• support for the mortgage market by buying more than $1.4 Trillion in existing toxic mortgages;

• providing additional federal funds for mortgages that the private lenders aren’t willing to provide because of excessive risk;

• pressuring lenders a “modification initiative” to reduce payments from borrowers to “affordable levels” so that they don’t walk away;

• expanding the guarantees on home loans from $625,000 per loan to $729,750 per loan;

• pressuring lenders to provide “expanded refinancing flexibilities,” particularly “for borrowers with negative equity”;

• another “initiative” to state and local housing finance agencies to “provide sustainable homeownership and rental resources for American families”;

• the First Time Homebuyer Tax Credit;

• providing $5 Billion “in support of affordable rental housing; and

• creating the Hardest Hit Fund for housing finance agencies to support homeowners in “neighborhoods hardest hit by concentrated foreclosures.”

So far, fewer than 200,000 people have been able to get permanent new loans out of the approximately seven million borrowers who are in trouble and behind on their payments. In the fourth quarter of 2009, the number of households at least 90 days past due on their mortgages grew by 270,000, and the number of foreclosures in the fourth quarter rose by 9 percent. And that number didn’t count nearly 40,000 owners who did a short sale on their home (where the lender agreed to accept less than what it was owed on the original mortgage).

The latest survey by Campbell/Inside Mortgage Finance showed that nearly half of all home purchases in February were “distressed properties” (involving homes that were acquired as part of either a foreclosure or a pre-foreclosure sale), an increase from 37 percent in November. That report stated,

Increased government efforts, including temporary foreclosure moratoriums and a push to qualify more financially troubled homeowners for mortgage modifications, temporarily reduced the number of distressed properties coming on the housing market in the fall and much of this past winter. But now a growing number of distressed properties appear to be hitting the housing market.

As more distressed properties have come onto the market, home prices are again showing signs of weakness. Average home prices for all four categories of properties–damaged REO, move-in ready REO, short sales, and non-distressed–declined from January to February in the latest survey.

All that HAMP did was to delay these foreclosures from coming onto the market in a timely manner until now. And with the expiration of the First Time Homebuyer Tax Credit of $8,000 at the end of April, that temporary acceleration of future sales into the present will cease.

In addition, more homeowners are opting for “strategic defaults.” The Los Angeles Times tells the story of Wynn Block. A 66-year-old retired psychologist, she purchased a two-bedroom home in 2006 for $385,000. The market value of her home today is “in the low-$200,000s.”  She said, “There was not a chance that house was ever going to be worth anywhere near what my mortgage was, “ so she elected to walk away.”

Credit bureau Experian and a consulting firm, Oliver Wyman, estimated in a study that nearly one out of every five homeowners who were seriously delinquent on the mortgages in the last quarter of 2008 walked away. Luigi Zingales at the University of Chicago estimated that 35 percent of defaults last December were “strategic defaults.” He added, “The fact that people are strategically defaulting…the risk that the number of people doing this might explode is significant.”

Gary North makes the excellent point that when someone walks away from a mortgage and the house is ultimately sold, the market price drags down the prices of the other homes in the neighborhood, thereby increasing the chances of other walkaways as well.

Finally, there is the “overhang” of potential resets of Alt-A and Option ARM mortgages in 2011 and 2012, which will add additional pressure on prices.

Mark Calabria, director of financial regulation at the Cato Institute, says “it was government, mostly Washington, which got us into this mess in the first place. Decades of subsidies for the housing industry have resulted in … leaving the nation with a massive inventory of vacant homes.” He points out that, “In a nation of 130 million homes, we have almost 19 million that are vacant.” And nearly seven million of those aren’t even on the market, waiting for the “market to turn” before being listed for sale. In any event, Calabria says, “Our housing markets are facing a problem of way too much [emphasis added] housing.” But Washington’s attempts to support the housing market is based on the belief “that getting construction going will reduce unemployment.”

Ultimately, home sales and consequently home construction will not be determined by expensive, wasteful, and interventionist policies, but “by family incomes and basic demographics.” Efforts such as HAMP and additional enhancements announced on Friday are simply “government pretending these fundamentals don’t matter.” He concludes that “when you’re in a hole, [the best thing to do is to] stop digging. In the case of housing, as a country, we built too much. The cure is to build less.” The only way for markets to clear, he says, is to allow supply and demand to even out, and for that to happen, prices must fall further.

All of these federal interventions are foolishness and expensive failed experiments based on false economic theories that will do nothing but extend the time, and the pain, until market prices fall enough to bring buyers back into the market. Politicians’ continued denial of reality through intervention will only delay the inevitable.

March 23, 2010 — Sharon Kelly-Brown, a Broker of Sharon J. Kelly Realty, Inc. in Port St. Lucie and has been actively involved in the community for over twenty years.

Sharon has earned the prestigious Harris Real Estate University Certified Distressed Property Designation (CDPD), having completed extensive training in negotiating and closing Short Sales. This expertise is invaluable at a time when the nation’s housing market is devastated by millions

of distressed home owners thrust into the foreclosure process.

The Short Sale of a property allows the distressed owner, through their Realtor, to find a

buyer willing to purchase their home before they are forced into the foreclosure process. The

owner can then use proceeds to repay their lender, even if the amount is less than what they

actually owe on the property. In the current economy nearly all lenders are willing to

consider Short Sales because they are less costly and time-consuming than foreclosures.

“The Harris Real Estate University CDPD designation has been invaluable as I work with

sellers and lenders on complicated Short Sales. In Port St. Lucie, more than 40% of homes are

in some stage of foreclosure. The best action against foreclosure is Short Sale. It is so rewarding to be able to help families save their homes from foreclosure.

Tim and Julie Harris, founders of the Harris Real Estate University in Las Vegas, NV, said

“Realtors such as Sharon Kelly-Brown with the HREU CDPD designation have valuable training in Short

Sales and can offer homeowners a better alternative to foreclosure, which inevitably destroys

their credit rating and prevents them from having the ability to purchase a new home.

Through my in-depth training and continuous education programs, I am trained

to aggressively seek sellers and buyers using extensive marketing techniques.”

Specializing in the sale of residential and commercial properties in the Port St. Lucie area, Sharon Kelly-Brown lists and sells homes in St. Lucie and Martin County.

Contact Sharon at 772-871-0340 for more information, or visit http://portstlucierealestatelistings.com

Contact Name: Sharon Kelly-Brown

Company: Sharon J. Kelly Realty, Inc.

Address: 950 SW Bayshore Blvd, Port St. Lucie, Florida 34983

Phone: 772-871-0340

Email: skellyre@aol.com

PHOENIX—The five states hardest hit by the foreclosure crisis have been given only weeks to plan how to spend $1.5 billion in federal funding announced by the Obama administration last month.Guidelines issued under the U.S. Treasury Department’s Fund for Hardest Hit Housing Markets on March 5 gave housing finance agencies in California, Arizona, Florida, Nevada and Michigan just six weeks to come up with plans on how to spend their share of the money.

The rush could be problematic for the states, especially because Treasury is seeking “innovative” measures to help families facing foreclosure. But some experts have been urging the administration to try the approach, believing it will be helpful and that it can be done quickly.

“This is long overdue, allowing the use of more innovative techniques,” said Ken Rosen, a real estate professor at University of California at Berkeley’s Hass School of Business.

The guidelines give wide leeway to the state Housing Finance Agencies charged with doling out the money to design programs tailored to their region’s circumstance. The money can be spent, for example, to help families who can’t pay their mortgages because of job losses, unable to refinance because plunging home values have left them “underwater,” or to give relief from second mortgage payments.

California’s Housing Finance Agency, for example, is looking at areas of the state that have been hardest hit, like the Central Valley and Inland

Empire area southeast of Los Angeles, spokesman Ken Giebel said. The agency is getting the most cash, $700 million.It will have to start from scratch with plans on how to help unemployed homeowners, for instance, and how to get the money from the federal government to the state government to the actual underwriter.

“None of this stuff is in writing, it’s all up in the air right now,” Giebel said.

Rosen suggested allowing the value of a home that is worth less than the homeowner owed to be written off, replacing that amount with a second mortgage that wouldn’t have to be paid off unless the home rose enough in value.

The homeowner would then share in the profits, providing an incentive to stay in the home. He also said programs to allow the unemployed to forgo payments for a year, with those payments wrapped into a second mortgage, would be helpful.

“There’s a lot of innovative ideas and I’m hoping we have a lot of smart people in each state who know them; I know we do in California,” Rosen said. “So I think there’s plenty of time.”

Florida is getting the second-largest share at $418 million.

Cecka Rose Green, communications director for the Florida Housing Finance Corporation, said her agency is just starting to review the Treasury requirements, but has put a team together and is reviewing programs other agencies are using. They’re looking at plans that have helped in other states and will likely cherry-pick the best.

“I think we’re taking those important first steps but we’re not close to getting any details of a plan out,” she said Friday.

Michigan is getting $154.5 million, Nevada $103 million and Arizona $125 million.

Arizona’s housing agency is also just getting started on a proposal and hasn’t identified how it might spend the money.

“I know we have a compressed time frame, but we are still looking at a number of ideas and I don’t know what we’ll be focusing on yet,” said state Department of Housing spokeswoman Kristina Fretwell.

Like other states’ officials interviewed for this story, Fretwell said there was no doubt that Arizona would get an application in by the April 16 deadline. Treasury will then spend several weeks reviewing the proposals, with a goal of getting the first cash to homeowners by summer.

The Obama administration’s plans to aid homeowners who fall behind on their payments have been problematic. The biggest effort, the Making Home Affordable program, has helped only about 16 percent of the borrowers who signed up since its launch last year. Figures released by the Treasury Department on Friday showed that as of last month, about 170,000 homeowners had had their payments reduced permanently, of which nearly 77,000 were in the five hardest hit states. About 1.1 million have enrolled in the plan overall.

Not all academics who have studied the real estate crisis agree that spending more money trying to keep people in their homes is a smart idea.

“The solution we all know that has to be done—and this sounds harsh—the borrowers have to be allowed to move through foreclosure and the houses have to be put on the market so we can get to the bottom of this mess,” said Anthony Sanders, a real estate professor at George Mason University who has testified before Congress on the foreclosure crisis.

Sanders called the $1.5 billion both too little and too much—too little, because the housing crisis has hit so many homeowners that $1.5 billion is tiny compared to the need, and too much because it targets homeowners who really can’t afford to be in their home anyway.

He pointed to the more that 70 percent of homeowners who went back into default after government mortgage relief efforts.

He also criticized letting state housing finance agencies, which are designed to help low- and middle-income borrowers, decide how to spend the money.

“To think that state agencies, who are not very good at this, are going to come up with an innovation is just kind of wishful thinking.”

The new program announced by President Barack Obama in February is meant to get more help to states where housing prices have declined by at least 20 percent.

“The biggest reason and rationale for the timeline is the urgency of the issue,” Treasury spokeswoman Andrea Risotto said. “We want to try to get relief out to these homeowners as quickly as we can.”