Expanded tax credit enticing - Henderson mortgage applicants be aware

The drama is over for Las Vegas valley's - including Summerlin, Southern Highlands, Green Valley, North Las Vegas, Anthem and Mountain's Edge - residents. The first-time home buyer tax credit has been extended because many considered it a strong demand booster for the ailing housing market and more of the same is needed at least for the time being. In fact, it was expanded to include the move-up buyer as well, a factor that should further power the demand side. Let's look at a few of the more appealing aspects a move-up buyer can enjoy with the up to $6,500 tax credit.


The contract deadline is April 30, 2010, preferably with the mortgage already approved and ready to go, and closing needs to happen by June 30. That's the time line.

The move-up, or repeat, buyer is one who has owned and lived in the same property five consecutive years of eight years before the purchase date. He can buy a home that is less expensive than the existing one.

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Southern Nevada - Las Vegas, Henderson, Summerlin - housing stats on the mend in October

Las Vegas real estate has recently been the punching bag of many industry observers and for a good reason. Mortgage foreclosure rate here is still reaching for the moon, housing inventory remains high and the economic picture is painted in dark colors. True, mortgage rates are enticing and home prices have plunged and have together provided some hope, but a lot more needs to happen for it to reach the "normal".


What's encouraging is that the vital signs are slowly improving, with emphasis on the word slowly.

As was reported by GLVAR, or Greater Las Vegas Association of Realtors, 3,535 single-family houses were closed in October, logging a nice 5.3% boost from September. This actually translates into a 30.1% jump from a year ago, a strong show of progress. As a note of caution is the fact that much of the demand still comes from first-time buyers and opportunistic investors. They are almost exclusively feasting on the lower end of the price scale.

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Las Vegas mortgage defaults increasingly strategic - mortgage walkaways rise among wealthy

The real estate market has been cruel, to be perfectly honest, to homeowners across the country. Housing values in many cities and regions have dropped so far and fast that it's sometimes hard to keep track of it all. Much less understand how the utter devastation is possible. But that is the cold reality every homeowner is faced with today.


Southern Nevada - with communities like Las Vegas, Summerlin, Henderson, Southern Highlands, Anthem, Green Valley and Mountains Edge - has absorbed some of the most severe blows of them all to its real estate prices. In the same boat are at least Arizona, California and Florida. Industry observers are talking about values often dipping below replacement cost. With that type of erosion comes another grim problem; dragging scores of mortgage borrowers underwater on their homes.

Many Las Vegas homeowners are increasingly thinking of walking away from the obligation. The more they are upside down, or underwater, the more likely it is that they'll do just that. It's hard to consider moral responsibility that much any more when in-the-red numbers are typed in six figures.
 
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Subprime loans make a comeback - Las Vegas mortgage borrowers go FHA

Mortgage loans that were labeled subprime just a few years ago were partly responsible for the notorious real estate bubble. When it burst and let all the air out, the subprime product quickly disappeared from the bloodied scene. Many housing observers warmed up their fingers over keyboards and wrote all these tearful obituaries, believing it would be gone for good. But guess what? It's now back.

This much-criticized mortgage segment has adopted a new backer, however. Subprime used to be pretty much exclusively conventional lenders' territory, until the recent thermonuclear event. With their exit a new player emerged to fill the void, Ginnie Mae, a wholly-owned government corporation created within HUD. Ginnie Mae is another adorable name in the mortgage arena, besides Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

Ginnie Mae operates a little differently from its above-mentioned and better-known sister agencies. It guarantees investors timely payment of interest and principal on MBS, or mortgage-backed securities, supported by federally insured loans, meaning FHA, and federally guaranteed loans, in this case VA. The majority of its guarantees go to these two organizations. Ginnie Mae is not in the business of buying or selling loans or issuing MBS.

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Las Vegas real estate values rise thanks to Washington

Housing prices have been in a free fall in most sectors of the nation for a long while, much longer than anyone would’ve predicted. When mortgage financing is hard to come by and supply far outpaces demand that’s usually what will follow. The weak economy is also a major contributor to this. Lately, though, prices have begun to stabilize across the map.

Southern Nevada – Las Vegas, Henderson, Green Valley, Summerlin, Southern Highlands, Pahrump, Mountains Edge, Henderson and Mesquite among the communities here – is a good example of that. The lower end of the marketplace is rather busy here as investors and first-time home buyers do their thing and pick up bargain properties. The statistics are somewhat slanted because of the proportionally high impact of this particular segment. The mid-range and upper end in Las Vegas are still quite soft due to lack of demand, as expected, and difficulties in securing home loan approvals.

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