August 2009

This is a gentle reminder that time may be running short for qualified home-buyers to find and close on a personal residence in time to claim the federal credit of up to $8,000.  As it stands right now, buyers must close on their home by November 30, 2009 in order to be eligible.  With all the new appraisal and lending requirements we've written about previously, it becomes pretty clear that you will likely need to have your new home under contract by November 1st in order to beat theat deadline.

Don't make the mistake of waiting too long; if you're eligible and plan to buy a home and claim this credit (not a tax deduction, a tax credit), time is of the essence.  And, certain segments of our market are feeling the effects of buyers buying at the lower

Based on data comparing home prices from the 2nd quarter of 2008 to the 2nd quarter of 2009, the Boulder housing market has just been ranked as the #1, strongest real estate market in the country!  Click here to read more details, but it's just encouraging for our market to be rated this highly - no matter what the criteria was.  This article was on the front page of MSN.com today and here's another link to additional information published by BusinessWeek Magazine on Yahoo Finance.

Here are the top-10 winners (in order), and the percentage of homes in that market with increasing values from 2008 to 2009:

1. Boulder, Colo., 60 percent

2. Spartanburg, S.C., 56.81 percent

3. New Orleans, 53.62 percent

4. Binghamton, N.Y., 53.61 percent

5. Fayetteville, N.C.,

We have some new federal regulations in place that may affect your closing - at least as far as dates are concerned.  Known by acronyms such as HOEPA, HERA, and HVCC, these new regulations affect the way lenders and appraisers interact with you and the ways in which information is disclosed to you.  Not a bad thing per se, but the details of these changes may require fairly diligent monitoring during your real estate transaction to avoid problems.  As an example, if anything changes during your transaction that raises the APR on your loan more than .125% (1/8th of a point) from the initial Truth in Lending (TIL), the lender must provide new disclosures to you and a mandatory 3-day waiting period before closing starts all over.  If this were to happen at