More Help for Home Buyers?
EmailCongress is debating today whether to extend the tax credit for first-time home buyers and offer it to a wider range of Americans.
Eight months after the administration introduced its plan to help spur the weak housing market, home sales have jumped. First-time buyer home sales are up 25 percent from last year and now account for 50 percent of all sales, according to the National Association of Realtors. Existing home sales rose for four months in a row for the first time in five years, thanks to the government incentive and relatively low mortgage rates.
But more help is needed, many homeowners say. Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., and Sen. Johnny Isakson, R-Ga., have introduced legislation to extend and expand the tax credit, which expires in December.
You can read more HERE.
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The program has done it’s job, the housing market is now moving in a rational rather than panic manner. They should let the tax cut end and the market hold it’s own floor.
Posted by: jhw539 | October 20, 2009, 12:45 pm 12:45 pm
Between those $250 bribes, er, grants to seniors, and all of this “help” to prospective homeowners, how many of us are left to pay for the politicians to buy the next election?
Posted by: Bob | October 20, 2009, 1:00 pm 1:00 pm
Cash for Clunkers, First Time Buyer’s Credit, etc – it’s all WELFARE funded by you and me.
Stop printing the money and end the socialization of our country!
Posted by: PatF | October 20, 2009, 1:03 pm 1:03 pm
“Between those $250 bribes, er, grants to seniors, and all of this “help” to prospective homeowners, how many of us are left to pay for the politicians to buy the next election?”
Bob | Oct 20, 2009 1:00:00 PM
Were you equally outraged by Bush’s $400 bribes – sorry, tax refunds since we had such a HUGE multi-trillion dollar surplus (literally enough to have paid off the entire national debt at the time and fund Social Security in perpetuity) forcast at the start of his presidency?
Posted by: jhw539 | October 20, 2009, 1:11 pm 1:11 pm
Jake, I just read about your exchange with Gibbs about Fox news. While in principal, I agree, it does seem kind of heavy handed, you need to look at the big picture. It was FOX that during the primaries spread the rumors that Obama was a muslim born in Kenya which permeated the mainstream so much so that a good percentage of voters still believe this to be true. If FOX continues to spread false and damaging rumors that are simply not true about the administration, death panels anyone, and those rumors then become fact in some peoples mind, the White House should just chuckle and ignore it? FOX has exactly 1 and 1/2 shows that are “straight news”. Shep Smith and MAYBE van Sustern when she isn’t hanging out with Todd. The rest of there 24 hour programming is anti-Obama all the time. Fox is simply not a legitimate news outlet. They are an opinion outlet.
Posted by: Millie | October 20, 2009, 1:26 pm 1:26 pm
A little attempted thread hijacking caught in the act? Millie must be talkin about “in principle” or is she referring to “Principal Obama” who is treating us like recalitrant students.
Don’t bring up “rumors.” It’s been a bad few days for the MSM, between the false libels spread about Rush Limbaugh, the fake Chamber of Commerce press release, and of course, Balloon Boy and his family.
The White House is using taxpayer money to blog against one news outlet. I’ll give them credit for their “audacity” in publishing their enemies list. Nixon kept his hidden, didn’t he?
Posted by: Bob | October 20, 2009, 1:35 pm 1:35 pm
lovin ya bob… agree with every word!
Posted by: linda | October 20, 2009, 1:41 pm 1:41 pm
@Bob, Fox is in the same category as Weekly World News. They consistently “preach” that his presidency is the end of humanity as we know it. And the examples you cite are a handful compared to the sewage that leaks from Fox on an hourly basis. The people that watch Fox ONLY watch Fox and they all think Obama is the Anti-Christ out to eat their children. Gosh. Those people are smart, aren’t they? Fox “News” really educates and gives both sides, don’t they?
Posted by: Miller | October 20, 2009, 1:47 pm 1:47 pm
“It was FOX that during the primaries spread the rumors that Obama was a muslim born in Kenya which permeated the mainstream so much so that a good percentage of voters still believe this to be true.”
____________________________________
Outright lies and attempts to smear by the media are fine with the right – as long as they’re aimed at Democrats. Hypocrisy would seem to be the operative word for the right.
Posted by: julieterra | October 20, 2009, 1:59 pm 1:59 pm
miller,
how on earth do you know what fox watchers do and think? do you really think we can’t tell the difference between news and opinion? i’m no fan of sarah palin but i was truly disgusted how some news outlets attacked her children. was that news? all cable outlets have ideology seep in. two out of three are liberal. i don’t believe 2/3 of the population is liberal. there is a market for fox…figure it out.
Posted by: linda | October 20, 2009, 2:05 pm 2:05 pm
jake- always appreciate your reporting!
Posted by: linda | October 20, 2009, 2:13 pm 2:13 pm
I am a DEM And I now watch FOX,. Have since this election year when most of the media took their masks off and really let us see who they are., very disturbing.
Shep loves the Dems
Hannity hates the Clintons and Obama
Glenn hates big govt
and the rest is NEWS
Americas Newsroom FAR MORE equal handed than MSNBC NBC CBS ABC CNN
same goes for the Live Desk and especially Brett Baier
most of the people who snark about fox, like me, I used to call it Faux, have not even watched anything except clips on Maddow or Olbermann of hard right commentators like Hannity complaining
NO DOUBT they have never watched Brett Baiers Special Report or Americas Newsroom or they would KNOW it is equal handed
the real point is the WH and the MSMs can no longer contain the American people, they were a firewall that kept anyone from asking ANYTHIGN about Obama during the campaign and the firewall has failed 9 months into his Presidency, We see the people he has up there like this Mao loving fool Anita Dunn and the pedophile enabler Jennings
we also see the deficit, the insistence on ramming through ginormous entitlements NOW NOW NOW despite the fact that we are broke and have subpar GDP growth forecast, and we can all see there are NO JOBS
Stop trying to stop FOX from reporting the news and focus on some damned job creation!
Posted by: jedimom | October 20, 2009, 4:56 pm 4:56 pm
The program has done it’s job, the housing market is now moving in a rational rather than panic manner. They should let the tax cut end and the market hold it’s own floor.
Posted by: jhw539 | Oct 20, 2009 12:45:15 PM
“The program has done it’s job” That’s a joke!
Now that my taxes have helped bail out all the liar loans and provided help for new home sales, the heck with the homeowners who actually could have helped the housing industry.
I’ve never missed a payment, have good credit and would like to either readjust my mortgage (which I can’t) or buy something better (which I can’t). If the government had acted swiftly instead of worrying about bailing out those that didn’t deserve the mortgages in the first place, I could have bought another home and filled it with durable goods. Now I’m stuck and have been for over a year.
Home values in my state have been forecast down another 23% in 2010. I’ll never get rid of it now but refuse to walk away because I honor my commitments.
But I’m sure you know best, jhw. “The program has done it’s job”
Posted by: Visualize Whirled Peas | October 20, 2009, 5:22 pm 5:22 pm
All that help for first time home buyers, how about some help for the poor guy who is out of work and cant pay his morgage oh i forgot the realter already got his money.
Posted by: earl | October 20, 2009, 7:48 pm 7:48 pm
wow maybe doing something good for the economy haha. the credit is the only thing that has helped the economy i am a relator and i support the credit because it works but that moron obama hasn’t even supported extending it.
Posted by: jt | October 20, 2009, 8:31 pm 8:31 pm
“wow maybe doing something good for the economy haha. the credit is the only thing that has helped the economy i am a relator and i support the credit because it works but that moron obama hasn’t even supported extending it.”
Posted by: jt | Oct 20, 2009 8:31:49 PM
“All that help for first time home buyers, how about some help for the poor guy who is out of work and cant pay his morgage oh i forgot the realter already got his money.”
Posted by: earl | Oct 20, 2009 7:48:56 PM
____________________________________
You two should get together and have a nice intelligent conversation.
Posted by: julieterra | October 20, 2009, 10:01 pm 10:01 pm
When Clinton beat Bush Senior he hung a sign from a second floor window of his campaign headquarters that read:
Its the economy, stupid!
When the ether wears off on this Presidency the sign we are going to see on the RNC headquaters will read:
Its the jobs, stupid!
All this dancing around with loan mods and bribes and artificially low rates doesn’t mean a thing if you can’t find a buyer with the courage to step up because he is afraid he might be unemployed any day now – or worse, if he is unemployed already.
Posted by: Lone Star Rules | October 20, 2009, 10:41 pm 10:41 pm
15 October 2002
“President Bush says his plan to help more Hispanic and African-Americans own their own homes will also help the U.S. economy.
“The president wants Congress to put $200 million into what he calls the “American Dream Downpayment Fund” to help 40,000 qualifying families a year make a down payment or pay closing costs.
“President Bush says he wants to close that gap with a package of financial incentives to increase the number of minority homeowners by at least 5.5 million families by the end of the decade.”
Some truth behind the origins of the housing market crash and the ensuing economic breakdown?
Posted by: julieterra | October 20, 2009, 11:20 pm 11:20 pm
Hey, good plan, let’s help millions more people–who cannot afford to pay a mortgage–to get mortgages, so we can crash the credit markets AGAIN!
We can always bail them out with hundreds of billions in taxpayer money later.
Posted by: It's the Spending, Stupid! | October 21, 2009, 10:36 am 10:36 am