Cleveland Real Estate News

Signed into law a few hours ago, there are now more financial incentives to keep up (or start) your home search, if this is a good time for you personally, to buy.  Having good housing inventory to choose from is important too.  To all who may have wanted to put their homes up for sale but figured the pool of buyers might have shrunk, there is good reason to believe it just increased exponentially.  Because now it’s also available to people who own homes but feel it’s time to get a new place to live.

Highlights:

1.  You have to purchase a home to live in (owner occupied).  This means you can buy an investment property, but you also have to live there along with your tenants.

2. If you are a first time buyer, your credit is now available to you until April of 2010.  Your tax credit is still $8000. You must not have owned a home for the past three years to qualify.

3. If you own a home but want a different one, you may qualify for a $6500 tax credit, also available through April 30th).  And you must have owned your home for 5 years (they say five of the last 8 yrs).  In reality, and in this market, buying a home when you will be selling one becomes a bit easier if you have owned it for at least 5 years…this provision makes sense to me.

4. There are income limits (in effect as of today). If you are single, you can earn up to $125,000 (it WAS $75,000).  If married, the income level goes up now to $225,000.

5.   They had some issues with fraud (IRS issues). No surprise since money was involved. Now you must attach proof of purchase (title?) to your tax returns in order to get your credit (does this mean they did not require it before? I don’t know.)

Technically, the ‘end’ date is a bit different than the last credit.  Last time you had to own your home by Nov 30th.  Period.  Now they are allowing you to have it under contract by April 30th and you must take possession by July of 2010.

Hope this helps, any other questions, please feel free to email me or call me at 216-235-3719.    Peace Out – 3C

My colleagues have been posting about this all week, but I wanted to wait until it seemed like there really was going to be an extension to the FTH Buyers Federal Tax Credit.  Yesterday it passed in the Senate (and not one Senator voted against it, imagine that).

The House passed the Home-buyer Tax Credit extension and expansion this afternoon 403 in favor and 12 opposed. The final step is the President Obama’s signature. He is expected to sign the bill tomorrow. 

Along with first time home buyers, the new Bill allows for ‘trade in’ home buyers, those who already own homes, to get a credit as well.

Once President Obama has signed the Bill, I’ll put all the details here.

No matter how you feel about bailouts and government spending our money, this tax credit seems to be the single portion of the Recovery Act that is working. (Well now the bill is part of an unemployment benefits extension too).  With Chrysler working hard to put televisions in cars instead of something useful, I’d much rather money go towards home owners.  How about  you?  Peace Out – 3C

The Cuyahoga County Board of Elections lets you check your voting location here.  My location changed for the last election (the primary) and yours may have changed too.  Let’s surprise the heck out of the Board and ALL vote…..   Peace Out – 3C

I would love to know what Ford Motor Co has done differently (as far as how they are structured) from GM or Chrysler. They just announced a 1B dollar profit for the last quarter. And they are the only major US car company not to have taken Recovery Act monies.

I don’t think it hurts that one or two of their cars are rated as high or higher by consumers, than  Toyota and Honda. The Fusion was the last car I saw to top Honda in several categories of customer satisfaction.

You can read the PD report about Ford’s profit announcement here. One quote from the PD synopsis stood out for me:
“….the company made money in its basic business of making and selling cars. In recent years, most of Ford’s financial wins have come from positive results on lending and other activities while its automotive business lagged….”

Here is a blog post from April, written on the Consumer Reports website entitled the best car you don’t know about.  (Ford Fusion)

At least there is some good news from the auto sector!  Peace Out – 3C

Every time I go to K & K Portage I leave in a great mood. The Kolar family is very special, friendly, the food is wonderful and the place is, rightfully, an institution.  It’s not just meat or deli foods or wonderful breads and fresh baked foods…they have a nice selection of wines available too. Which brings me to their upcoming event.  Hope to see you there! I’m going to let their flyer do the rest of the ’splainin’.  Peace Out – 3C 

Hats off to David Lay of David Lay Photo and one of my social media buds. He found a wonderful article on Pop City written by Elaine LaBalme. She is a Pittsburgh-er but loves Cleveland.

In her opinion, we have more ‘great’ food going on here and she lists a few of the places she likes.  A quote:

“….Cleveland’s restaurant scene is taking Midwestern

sensibility to dizzying heights….”

She also mentions the Fund For Our Economic Future and how it has garnered National attention as a successful formula. That made me smile!

You can read the article here.  Pop City is a neat site, so grab a cup of java and browse around!  Peace Out – 3C

Participated in a live chat tonight on WKYC’s website which was allegedly set up to discuss Issues 5 and 6.  The discussion was mostly of the talking heads nature (tangents on things like corruption and the Med Mart were annoying). But I was able to glean some written info on sites that everyone might find helpful. So from that standpoint, H/T to the live chat.  It was also cool to talk on line with people asking good questions and on both sides of the issue.

The League of Women Voters has a summary of the Issue 6 Charter changes and you can read the summary here.  Under Council duties I don’t see them actively involved in oversight of things like Health and Human Services, etc., but maybe that can be fleshed out later.

The 28 page Charter with governmental changes can be seen here. I got this information from the Facebook page for Issue 6. 

Hope this helps.  Peace Out – 3C

Are you old enough to remember what Turn Blue means? How about ‘Cool it with the boom booms?’  Even if you are younger, check out the documentary on PBS this week. “Turn Blue: The Short Life of Ghoulardi” first airs at 9pm on Tuesday. Ghoulardi was copied (I lived in Boston and there was a copycat there) all around the Country.  And Ernie Anderson went on to be a very successful announcer (he was the voice of The Love Boat, for example).  He brightened up the Friday nights of my youth.  Julie Washington’s PD article is here and Western Reserve’s website highlight of it here.  From tvacres.com:

Because of Ghoulardi’s fame, Cleveland Police reported crime on Friday night was far lower that any other night of the week with juvenile crime dropping some thirty-five percent during the show’s broadcast.

 Peace Out – 3C