Common Sense Amidst the Chaos: Extending the Closing Deadline for First Time Home Buyers Credit

What a day – What a week!  You know what, I’m going to go out on a limb and say WHAT A MONTH! Life for the Content Queen here, in general, is at an all time high in stress & chaos.   You too?  Mmhm. I hear you my friend. YET, I seem to keep falling into one  good, exciting, and happy thing after another! And the more I acknowledge it, the more sunshine I find. It’s freaking me out a little bit… I have to keep making adjustments and modifying the plan a titch, but I’mma keep going with it.  See how far I can take it.  And no, I’m not trying to rub it in… The latest thing to make me smile is good news for about 180,000 home buyers. You might be one of them.

The home buyer tax credit has been a great program that inspired a lot of home buyers to take the plunge, and breathed life back into the housing market.  Statistics will show you that numbers are up which is awesome across the board, but that’s not all.

In addition to the increase in buyers and contracts being written, it has been great to see a return of regular buyers and sellers. For the longest time it seemed that all I was working with were investors, banks, and grouchy people. I became one of the grouchy people, in fact.  I know that as an agent my job is to facilitate sales and get paid for it. But the part that gets me EXCITED about my job is the people.  Assisting them in finding their dream homes  and sharing in their enthusiasm as they do so.  Up until now there hasn’t been as much of that and I have missed it!

So anyway! A lot of buyers followed the rules, met the deadlines and qualified for the tax credit. Here’s the problem.  The banks – the lenders and the sellers – are all back logged. We the buyers are ready to close but as the June 30th closing deadline approached, it was looking like the about 180,000 qualified buyers were going to lose their benefit while waiting in line for the turn to come up.

To be very honest, there has been so much going on in this market (in the world in general, come to think of it!) that hasn’t  made sense and didn’t seem fair, that it didn’t even occur to me there might be an extension.  We were all just fretting and working our tails off to help everything along. Thanks to the Senate’s passing of the extension yesterday, there will be a decrease in headaches being treated and wine being consumed between now and the original June 30 deadline.  Qualified buyers whose contracts were signed by April 30th now have until September 30th to get those puppies closed! Yeah!

Believe me, with deals pending for 4, 5, 6 months already, no one’s going to hear this news and start slacking. We’re ready to button them up.  But it will be with less stress and more joy,  knowing that the odds of the deal ending with a smiles, hugs, and handshakes just increased!