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Archive for November 9th, 2009

Finding, buying and fixing up the perfect Pinellas County home

(A couple of weeks ago I posted a story by my friend, Stephanie Henningsen, who described her plans for buying (and renovating) her first home, using financing provided through the neighborhood Assistance Program of America. In this installment, Steph talks about the process of finding the right house, buying it and beginning the remodeling process.)

By STEPHANIE HENNINGSEN

I completed all the steps that NACA requested – I had a set amount in my bank account, my credit report had been checked (all was well), and I supplied them with several months of pay stubs and bank statements.

Now came the fun part – looking for my house.

Over the course of a few weeks, I drove around various neighborhoods to look for just the right place, within the right budget. NACA had agreed to loan me only about 80 percent of what I could afford for a home to make sure I didn’t suffer from payment shock, which could cause me to fall behind on the mortgage.

The trick was to find a house low enough in price so I would have enough money left in my mortgage package to fix it up.

One day I stopped at an old purple house that looked deserted. I happened to see one of the neighbors outside and began asking questions about it. He told me that the lady who lived in it had died and that her daughter now owned the place. However, he was unable to tell me the woman’s name or exactly where she lived.

So I went to the Web site of the Pinellas County Property Appraisers’ Office and typed in the address. After getting the owner’s name from the site, I called the office, got his phone number, and learned that the house was for sale (it turns out he was a home investor who had only purchased the house five months earlier). Within days I had a meeting with his agent to view the house.

Once inside the house, I fell in love. It had high ceilings, wood floors, a fireplace – everything I wanted in a home. The best part was that the price of the home was low enough so that I could afford the remodeling of it as well.

During this process, NACA provided me with a Realtor, who helped me with the home buying process, as well as helped me find the contractor who fixed up the house.

I closed on the house in June. In August, the remodeling process began, with my contractor adding an upstairs bathroom, rewiring the electrical system (it still had the knob and tube wiring from the 20s), adding central heat and air, completely remodeling the kitchen, and painting the home inside and out.

By December I moved into my newly remodeled home.

Tags: home renovation, Neighborhood Assistance Corporation of America, pinellas county, St. Petersburg

New homeowner tax credit may mean tax windfall for builders

Last week, the Congress extended the first time homeowner tax credit. But what wasn’t so obvious about that legislation is that it provides some really big tax breaks for home building companies.

Big builders like Lennar and Pulte could end up with hundreds of millions of dollars in refunds from the U.S. Treasury on taxes they paid as far back as five years, according to the Wall Street Journal. Those refunds are designed to help the companies cope with the big losses they have experienced in the past two years or so.

The tax break will apply to large companies of all kinds. But it may be of particular benefit to the country’s biggest home builders, because they have experienced some really hefty losses as the economy has tanked over the past couple of years.

Some critics say they home builders don’t really need that much help because they have been selling off assets, such as land and unsold inventory, and bargain prices and then hoarding the proceeds. One source estimates that the 10 largest home building companies are sitting on average of $1.2 billion in cash each, quite a lot more than the $616 million cash average they had just a couple of years ago.

Pulte Homes says it may receive more than $450 million in tax refunds; Lennar Homes may get refunds of as much as $300 million.

One benefit to the tax refund news: stock prices for Lennar and other builders went up last week as the legislation was announced.

Tags: home builders, tax credit