FHA Conforming Loan Limits
House and Senate have extended the high-cost loan limit, $729,750, until the end of 2010, December 31; and thereafter it may fall back to $625,000. DS News
Buyer Tax Credit extension
"Under the new language in the Senate, homeowners who have lived in their home for five of the past eight years would be eligible to receive a $6,500 tax credit, while first-time buyers would still be eligible for an $8,000 credit, [expansion proposal].
"The proposal would also increase the income limits of those eligible for the program, to $125,000 per year for individuals and $225,000 for couples...
"[The] expansion would cost about $10.2 billion over 10 years and would be paid for with offsetting cuts elsewhere in the budget. Simply extending the current tax credit is estimated to cost $1 billion a month...
"Analysts say the credit has helped the housing market, although critics question whether the value is worth the cost" (Full Report on Reuter ).
November 4, 2009 - Home Buyer Tax Credit extend until April 30, 2009
see Bloomberg article by Brian Faler
HVCC (Home Valuation Conduct Code)
The HVCC which was instigated to prevent appraisal coercion, appraisal fraud. During the "hot" market, some appraiser felt the banks and real estate agents pressured them to appraise more then the property was worth, thus manipulating their valuation and putting some reputable appraisers out of business because of steep competition to conform and placing the consumers at risk for default. Read more on HVCC by Dave Biggers at Appraisal Press. A highly recommended article.
Excerpts from article:
1. Under the HVCC, any lender using a professional appraiser incurs substantial
regulatory risks and additional costs, whereas AVMs, BPOs, and other valuation
alternatives are expressly and repeatedly exempted from the same regulations and
liabilities.
2. The HVCC unduly restricts the appraiser's ability to operate a business in the same
manner as the other parties already in the transaction.
3. Lenders must be prohibited from owning or controlling, in whole or in part, any sort of
valuation entity or mechanism used in the origination of a loan.
4. All valuations, regardless of method employed, must be provided to the borrower in the
same manner.
5. Any complaints regarding the valuation process should be reported solely to the IVPI,
not to the lender overseeing the origination.
"We do believe that these five areas can be addressed, and that to fail to do so would fly in the face of the original intent of the agreement which spawned the HVCC - namely, to strengthen the independence and reliability of the valuations backing what is for most Americans the single largest source of their net worth. Eliminating coercion of appraisers is essential to ensuring that we have maximum transparency and accountability in the real estate transaction and the financial markets which depend upon them. However, a regulation which damages and circumvents the very industry it seeks to protect - and which in turn harms consumers and investors - will not get us as a nation any closer to that goal."
HVCC was to implement independent appraisal valuation of properties, independent from the influence of sales agents and independent from the influences of banks thus protecting the consumers and supporting reputable appraisal practices. However, when HVCC was implemented, it created higher cost for consumers, devastated the appraisal industry by putting many companies out of business, created profitable avenues for banks by eliminating the competitions and loop holes for them to get around HVCC requirements which resulted in questionable regulatory practices. It is because of these that it is due to go away on the 1st of January 2010.
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