so, people will get to pay, probably, $15k more than they would have - amortized over 30yrs assuming it's not used for a down payment. nice. helps the realtors.... imagine that. oops, I forgot, they are the ones that wrote the legislation.
Reminds me of the old chesnut "when in trouble - double" So the 8,500 credit becomes 15,000, and the Fed prove that they are prepared to gamble us into eternal damnation....
Government is DESPERATE... to prevent housing prices adjusting to affordable level. Will probably happen anyway, so we should all be prepared for a lonnnnng, cold winter. (That's figurative, of course.. I'm thinking "decade or two".)
It would be nice to afford an average house with average wages but the upkeep of owning a house and taxes alone would be impossible to keep up with, there is a house maybe about 8 miles from where I live, its on the market for 1.2M in a quiet town where the school systems are an A+, the taxes are between 25k-30k a year, just to afford something like this you would have to clear at least $150,000 a year. The people are moving out because he lost his job about 6 months ago and just landed a new one in europe. Aside from that I have gone to condos/coops near me up for sale, I stopped looking, however I still have the listings and go back from time to time to see if they have sold. Most have not sold and some have dropped prices approx 15% in the last 3 months with still no buyers. One I looked at was approx $259k, in the last 3 months it has been lowered to $215k, 17% decrease in 3 months and even if someone came into buy it you could easily take off another 3-5%. I think they will be lucky to get anything above $205,000.
Mr. Geithner is aware that USD is toilet paper and that the country is in deep "sh.t". A couple of billion more of toilet paper money is not bothering anybody anymore. I am just pitty for anybody paying taxes in the U.S. of A.
KB Homes or Centex (I can't remember which one, right now) came right out and publicly said they've developed new floor plans that allow them to shave 30% to 40% off the cost of construction of their homes, so as to better allow them to compete with "foreclosure sale prices," as that's where there real competition is. The problem for them is that in many parts of the country, prices are still in freefall, and the foreclosed homes that these new floor plans are priced near are twice the size or larger...
here in sacramento, the shadow housing market is 50% of all currently for sale houses. It's actually getting reasonable once again. 3-4 bedroom houses, 2.5 bath for 250k is a huge improvement.