The Wall Street Journal has the details:
To jump-start the ailing housing market, the state set aside $100 million for qualified buyers on or after March 1. With some able to combine the Golden State's bonus with a federal credit of up to $8,000 for first-time buyers, the response has been enormous. Some $94.7 million has been claimed via 9,848 applications, according to the most recent data from the state's Franchise Tax Board.
...not everyone was a fan, anyway. Critics said it promoted building new homes and did nothing to ease the glut of existing inventory.
"All this ended up doing is adding additional supply to the California markets, many of which are among the most oversupplied in the country," Stevenson said.
I will never understand why folks are buying RE in the midst of state & federal tax credits, artificially low interest rates, rising unemployment, and a state government whose balance sheet has imploded.
ReplyDeleteThe bubble mentality is alive & well, unfortunately.
Do people really believe their 2009 RE purchase will increase in value once all the tax subsidies are removed and interest rates are higher??!!
It's definitely alive and well.
ReplyDeleteI recently received an email from a prospective buyer asking if the houses in Southwest Santa Rosa had bottomed out. Apparently, their real estate agent had told them that banks were getting rid of properties at firesale prices and by buying foreclosures they could flip them in a few months and make $20,000 to $30,000.
Good luck with that...
I had a well educated professional ask me how soon I expected house prices to recover now that the foreclosure crisis was over saturday before last.He is a busy man who has time to watch a little news on tv and maybe read the wsj a couple of times a week.My answer was never in real terms and you are joking,aren't you? he was not,and I showed him the credit suisse reset charts.I do think that there is money to be made in bulk REO and I see some high end properties of the kind that comes on the market VERY rarely that I would recommend buying to someone in the right situation simply because there is nothing you can buy that is comparable.Otherwise,no.
ReplyDeleteSo is that Calif. state tax credit in the form of an IOU?
ReplyDelete