This tongue-in-cheek solution for reviving housing sounds as likely as any of the other schemes out there:
Now that we have a new (and improved) tax credit of $6500 rolling through Congress to the "move up" buyers we’ll see if government can incentivize that class to start daytrading homes as well. The only issue is so many of them are underwater on their homes, it is sort of difficult to buy a new house (even with government handing free money out) when you still have to deal with that unfortunate investment you made in your old one.
Unless, a new national fraud is institutionalized – that is (1) buy the new house with the taxpayer’s money & "super cool FHA mortgages", and (2) then walk away from the old house / mortgage, once the new one is secured. You take a hit on your credit report but oh well – you have a new house, at a much cheaper price, and the taxpayer can deal with the mess. In about 5 years you are good to go as the default moves to the bottom of your credit report, and within 7 years…. all gone. Let’s see if we start hearing of rampant examples of this "strategy" by next spring.
It’s unlikely that a $6,500 credit for the move-up crowd will have the impact that the $8,000 did for the first time buyers. $8,000 off of a starter home is more exciting than $6,500 off of a more expensive one. That fact that it’s a poor idea though is unlikely to discourage Congress from doing it.
twist -
Don’t laugh. A year ago at AEI IV Zimmerman was already calling this scam Augustine home sales and was implying that there was enough of it going on that it was actually disguising the extent of the unsold RE inventory. Indeed, government forbearance on this practice is likely part of the effort to prevent REality from flowing through to the statistics.
Hat tip to Implode-O-Meter’s news feed which tipped me off to MISH’s recent advice column on “Strategic Defaults”. It’s little wonder that Wallison and the gang are trying to lobby for (unconstitutional) national standards on recourse mortgages
Get your free golf cart, no limits.
How about the electric car credit of 5,500 plus the State tax credit = 10,000
Catch: A golf cart cost about 10K, must be road able. Most here in Sun City and Ahwatukee already drive their golf carts to and fro.
http://bigdogcarts.com/
http://abcnews.go.com/video/playerindex?id=8934429
Business is booming in Florida: fueled by Tax dollars.
For a traditional family in a bubble imploding town, this will be a HARD move up to qualify for.
You either need to straight up qualify with both payments, (ie total of the two mortgage is under 31% or so of gross income) OR to count rent on the old home, you need to have about 20% equity… Good luck on that equity thing! [plus maybe six months reserves to cover both notes...]
Also, I am in precisely this position (well sort of, I own two homes in Tempe AZ) and the rental market is sooo darn bad that it gives me pause to move to another house. I’ll do it someday, but $6500 isn’t much to sway me, given my next purchase will be about 300K anyways…thanks but no thanks, i’m going to let this crash rock on for another year at least…I’m expecting to get a hell of a lot of home for my money in a year or two…
What a deal: It is true, you can spend your self to prosperity
“GET A FREE GOLF CART. Or make $2,000 doing absolutely nothing!”
Golf Cart Man is referring to his offer in which you can buy the cart for $8,000, get a $5,300 tax credit off your 2009 income tax, lease it back for $100 a month for 27 months, at which point Golf Cart Man will buy back the cart for $2,000. “This means you own a free Golf Cart or made $2,000 cash doing absolutely nothing!!!” You can’t blame a guy for exploiting loopholes that Congress offers.
The IRS has also ruled that there’s no limit to how many electric cars an individual can buy, so some enterprising profiteers are stocking up on multiple carts while the federal credit lasts, in order to resell them at a profit later
We need a move-down credit.
A study revealed that about 2 million people who took sub prime mortgages have slowly turned victims of foreclosure. The security corpus funds which were backing the sub prime mortgages gradually became less and less and a huge decline of the capital has been observed in big banks and federally sponsored enterprises complicating the problem further. Some of the sub prime lenders have shut down while some have filed bankruptcy. The whole vicious circle has been caused by the careless lending to borrowers who did not have adequate funds to repay and who were not sure of their affordability in the future. Investors never bothered to verify the strength of the portfolio of the borrowers before backing up the sub prime mortgage security funds. In order to qualify for loans, the borrowers had overstated their incomes. Another major factor was the low level of government oversight to the real estate bubble which was uncontrollably growing.
Read more.
http://www.housingnewslive.com/us-housing-news-articles.php