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Got your eye on a new Palm Harbor home? Don’t drag your feet.

I just sold a house to a couple who had been working with me since last November.  That’s right, it took them a full year to find the house they wanted to buy.

Were these people unusually picky, or were their requirements so specific that the right house simply wasn’t available for a really long time?  I would say “no” to both counts; I think they just wanted to be very careful in what they considered a very volatile market.  They wanted to make sure they didn’t pay too much in case the real estate market continued to free-fall, and they wanted to be sure they didn’t end up with a house that was going to cost a lot to upgrade.

This couple looked very actively during the past year, and they actually made offers on several houses. But if the negotiations on those houses began to bog down, or if the sellers didn’t act like they wanted to significantly drop their prices (and do so quickly), these people would back away.

I think their attitude was exactly the opposite of buyer attitudes two or three years ago, when buyers thought they had to act very swiftly in order to get the home they wanted. Now, caution rules the day for buyers, along with low-ball offers. I don’t think the low offers come so much from a desire to play hardball as from a fear of paying too much in a market where prices may have a way to go before hitting bottom.

The point of all this is the new first-time homebuyer tax credit, which the Congress just recently passed. This new tax credit offers an $8,000 tax credit to first-time homebuyers, and a credit of $6,500 to repeat buyers. That credit for repeat buyers MIGHT entice some move-up buyers to come back into the market, which has mostly been dominated by first-time buyers.

The original tax credit, which was launched last spring and which was to run only through the end of November, made home ownership possible for many first-time buyers. This new version continues to offer that, while also offering a tidy tax credit to people who are NOT first-timers.

But here’s the bad part (and the reason why I started out by talking about those buyers who took a full year to find a home they wanted to buy); this new tax credit is authorized only through April – buyers have to have a binding contract in place by April 30, 2010.

If you think your home search may take a number of months, you’d better get started now. April will be here before you know it.

Tags: first time home buyer, Palm Harbor, real estate, tax credit

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 17th, 2009 at 5:33 pm and is filed under First time homebuyers, Palm Harbor, tax credit. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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