Wednesday, January 27, 2010

Mature-Market Home Buyers Look beyond Buildings, Desire Services

RISMEDIA, January 27, 2010—A survey of consumers and builders, conducted in 2009 by the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) and the MetLife Mature Market Institute, has yielded a new round of data revealing the housing preferences of the 55+ consumer. This analysis of data–the third in a series–compared the preferences of the 55-to-64 year old age group to those of the 65+ group.

The rest of the Story; http://rismedia.com/2010-01-26/mature-market-home-buyers-look-beyond-buildings-desire-services/

Friday, January 22, 2010

10 Cities Where It's Smarter to Buy

Daily Real Estate News January 22, 2010

For people who want to own a home, the premium to buy—the spread between what they’d spend to rent and what they’d pay for a mortgage—is much lower than the 15-year average in many cities.To determine what cities are smart buys, Forbes magazine computed the premium and also identified locales where economists predict home prices will go up the most over the next five years.

Here are the top 10 Cities the Magazine chose as the best places to buy right now; http://www.realtor.org/RMODaily.nsf/pages/News2010012201?OpenDocument

Thursday, January 7, 2010

The Expanded Home Buyer Tax Credit Could Chase Away the Winter Blues

By Ken Trepeta, Director, Real Estate Services
RISMEDIA, January 7, 2010

As we begin 2010, both real estate professionals and home buyers have something to look forward to and more importantly, take advantage of—the extended and expanded home buyer tax credit.
Originally created in 2008, the home-buyer tax credit has evolved from a $7,500 credit, which had to be repaid by the home buyer over the course of 15 years, to an $8,000 tax credit with no repayment required in 2009. Now, for a limited time in 2010, the $8,000 home buyer tax credit will still be available to first-time home buyers and certain current homeowners will also be eligible for a $6,500 credit.
To help everyone better understand the extended and expanded home buyer tax credit, here are some highlights of the changes.Read more: http://rismedia.com/2010-01-06/the-expanded-home-buyer-tax-credit-could-chase-away-the-winter-blues/#ixzz0bxuHPGWt