The National Association of Realtors is backing efforts by the The Housing Working Group of Business Roundtable to increase the efforts of our government to extend and increase the incentives to stimulate our economy and the real estate market. See the full article from NAR here.

They have already passed the $8,000 first time home buyer tax credit and recently they approved the ability to use this tax credit as a loan towards your down payment and closing costs. This currently expires sometime this November but they are looking to extend this and also possibly increase the amount to $15,000 and open this up to all buyers looking to purchase their primary residence.

Some additional initiatives they are working on:

Keep our current interest rates at an all time low for the next year.

Review current loan modification and foreclosure mitigation.

Make the increased conforming loan limits permanent.

We are making headway and things are really looking positive. We are seeing sales increase significantly over last year. It can only go up from here.

It's a good life,

Ian Anderson

We hear all the talk about what government is doing to help the housing market and assist homeowners from facing foreclosure but we really haven't seen much of an impact out in the real world. I keep hearing about all these great programs but how do you take advantage of them and who do you talk to and get answers?

The Obama administration just implemented the Making Home Affordable program offering options for homeowners that have Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac owned loans that are having trouble making their mortgage payments. This program is designed to help you qualify for a mortgage refinance or loan modification to reduce your mortgage payments to avoid foreclosure. This is a brand new program and so far it is making great strides helping over 120,000 home owners so far.

The Making Home Affordable is geared towards people that are still current on their payments and are credit worthy but have gone through a hardship or loss of income and struggling to make ends meet.

In the past it seemed that the banks would only talk to you in you were behind on your payments. In essence, it hurt the responsible people that were doing what they could to make their mortgage payment but the system seemed to benefit the people that simply gave up and stopped making payments. It almost seemed that you had to stop making payments to get the banks attention.

Click here to see if you are eligible? I will have more information to follow. Check back for more updates on the Making Home Affordable program.

It's a good life,

Ian Anderson