We are so very happy to report that, yesterday, Congress passed a bill extending the Federal Homebuyer Tax Credit closing deadline to September 30, 2010.  This is a huge win for homebuyers and the National Association of Realtors worked closely with members of Congress to make it happen.

The extension to the home buyer tax credit applies only to transactions that had fully executed, meaning signed contracts, in place as of April 30, 2010, and have not yet closed escrow. Many of these delayed closings are due to properties being bank owned properties or short sale properties. We continue to see Banks like Bank of America drag thier feet on moving through their inventory of Short Sales. It is unfortunate that the banks can’t take a more effective approach to working these short sales, but at least Congress was able to make an adjustment to the timeframe of the tax credit so the buyer’s didn’t lose out on the benefit.

There will be no gap between June 30 and the date the President signs the bill into law.

On another positive note, Congress has extended the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) through September 30th. The bill is retroactive and will cover the lapse period from June 1, 2010, to the date the law is enacted. We worked with a lot of our buyers over the past week to really push these deals through and it was very stressful. Fortunately we were able to get all of our escrows closed on-time, but would have felt terrible if we had not been able to perform. For the buyers whose real estate agents or banks could not make the escrow close yesterday, they now have ample time to get everthing in to close escrow and receive the tax credit benefit.