As we have been tracking the progress of the various efforts to exten
d the closing date deadline on the First Time-Home-Buyer Tax Credit, it appears that Congress is bringing things right down to the last very minute. Currently, for all qualified Buyers who put a home under contract by April 30, 2010, in order to get up to $8000 of tax credit money from the government, they must have that purchase closed by today.
Efforts have been in the works to extend that date that the homes must be closed until September 30, 2010 due to the backlog of loans that Lenders have had as a result of the surge of home buying that took place in April. As of right now, the House has passed a bill to extend the tax credit and it is now sitting in the senate. If the Senate can pass this bill tonight and get the President’s signature on it, there will be a lot of very relieved home buyers out there this evening. Close to 180,000 home buyers to be more specific. Here are some interesting numbers from an article put out by the National Association of Realtors yesterday:
Up to 180,000 home buyers will lose their tax credit through no fault of their own if Congress fails to pass an extension to the home buyer tax credit by June 30 when the closing deadline expires. Included in that number are thousands of home buyers in every state of the union, from 390 in Wyoming to 17,700 in California, according to estimates by the National Association of Realtors®.
Specifically in Georgia, it is estimated that 6,270 home buyers will stand to lose their tax credit if the senate does not pass the bill.
Hopefully, for those Buyers that did make things happen by April 30th, the date will be extended. I’ll update the blog as soon as I hear the final verdict!
Governor Perdue signed into law House Bill 261 on May 11th which provides an income tax credit for the purchase of a single-family residence during the six months between June 1 and November 30, 2009. The credit amount is the lesser of $1,800 or 1.2 percent of the purchase price. The tax credit is applied over three years, with one-third of the credit available each year (so for you people that didn’t major in math, if you got the whole $1800, that would be $600 each year for the next three years 
. If the amount of the credit exceeds the taxpayer’s tax liability, the unused credit may carry forward to the next tax year.
