The Silicon Valley real estate “Spring Buying Season” has been very active among anxious home buyers, but there’s not a lot of turnkey, well-priced inventory for them to choose among. Yesterday I previewed four homes in San Jose and Santa Clara, and noticed the same young gal doing a drive by while I was touring. Not surprising: there are only a few homes that are on the “need to see” list. And most of them are disappointing (dirty, unkempt houses that were not even properly cleaned up or staged minimally to sell).

The federal government’s tax credits for home buyers expires at the end of April. To qualify for it, move up, move down or first time home buyers must be in contract on a property by April 30th, and must close between May 1st and June 30th.  This is a great motivation for many Santa Clara County home buyers – the tax credit can pay for new carpet, curtains, or sprucing up the landscaping on that new purchase.

The good news for residents of the Golden State, though, is that California has created a new $10,000 tax credit. There are plenty of conditions and footnotes, though, the biggest being that it must be a single family home, attached or detached (not an apartment building or investment property). A confusing element of this credit is whether buyers can use all of it, or if the benefit will be capped due to the amount of state taxes paid. To read about it first hand, here’s a link to the California Franchise Board’s statement about the home buyer tax credit. Bookmark that site as the info will be updated periodically.

Here’s the best part: get into contract on a California home in April and close escrow in May, and you may qualify for both of these tax credits!

If that doesn’t get buyers out and looking, nothing will!
(more…)

Recently I read an article on Realty Times about the tax credit for non-first time homebuyers. Did you know that it may be used for “move down” buyers as well as “move up” buyers?

There are some caveats – the home cannot cost more than $800,000 and a couple cannot earn more than $255,000 per year.  Owners must have been in the home for five consecutive years of the last eight.  This may be the ideal help for Silicon Valley seniors wanting to downsize.

To read the article on Realty Times, click here.