The $8,000 Home-Buyer Tax Credit Has Been Extended & Expanded

Earlier today, President Obama signed new legislation extending the deadline for the home buyer tax credit into 2010 and expanding it to include current home owners who are looking to buy a primary residence.

The Basic Requirements

You qualify for the tax credit if the:

• Home you’re buying will be your primary residence
• Purchase price isn’t more than $800,000

This credit is not a loan; it’s yours, but keep in mind you have to live in your new home for three years. If you sell the home in less than three years, you’ll have to pay back the money.

What’s Changed?

With the new legislation, buyers have more time to find a home and more buyers are eligible for the tax credit:

• New deadline: To qualify, you need to be in contract with a seller by April 30th & close on the home by June 30th (The previous deadline was November 30, 2009).
• Not just for first-time buyers anymore: Home buyers who’ve owned and occupied a home for at least five consecutive years during the past eight years are eligible for a credit up to $6,500.
• Increased income limits: Individuals making less than $125,000 and couples making less than $225,000 are eligible (The limits used to be $75K & $150K).

First-time buyers are eligible for a credit up to $8,000 on homes purchased between January 1, 2009 and June 30, 2010. Qualified homeowners can a credit up to $6,500 on homes purchased between November 7, 2009 and June 30, 2010.

Bonus Link

You can check out the full text of the bill. Scroll about halfway down to sections 11 & 12:

• Sec. 11. Extension and Modification of First-Time Homebuyer Tax Credit.
• Sec. 12. Provisions to Enhance the Administration of the First-Time Homebuyer Tax Credit.

The Market Wrap Up for September

Let’s take at look at some September numbers for Orange County and see how they compare to a year ago.

Single-Family Homes

• 1,862 re-sale houses sold, up 8% from September 2008
• The median sales price was $500,000, up 4% from September 2008

Condos

• 839 condos sold, up 12% from September 2008
• The median sales price was $300,000, up 3% from September 2008

We got these numbers from DQNews.

Dig Deeper Into the Trends

These numbers are for Orange County. To see what’s happening in your neighborhood, check out our stats & trends pages.

What trends did you see in September?

Case-Shiller: Summer Surge Benefits High Tier Most

Let’s check in on the S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Indices (HPI). Here’s a summary of the latest data for the Los Angeles area, which includes LA and Orange Counties:

Since Case-Shiller lumps LA and Orange Counties together, I won’t repeat everything I wrote on the LA Sweet Digs blog. For more analysis and some graphs of the LA Case-Shiller data, check out my post over there: Case-Shiller: Summer Surge Benefits High Tier Most

Now We’re Showing More Homes for Sale, Even Faster!

Redfin’s database of homes for sale just got more comprehensive and faster in the greater LA area. Before, we got homes for sale directly from CLAW, which serves Los Angeles County, and MRMLS, which serves the Inland Empire and the South Bay. Now, we get those listings even faster from CARETS, (California Real Estate Technology Services), a larger database of Southern California Multiple Listing Services that real estate brokers use to list homes for sale.

Here’s what changed:

• Updated on the hour, every hour: We get updated listings from CLAW every hour. Before, we only could update them once a day.
• More homes for sale: We just added 145 more listings from CLAW and 217 more from MRMLS that we previously couldn’t show. There’s one catch: to see all the details for these homes for sale, MLS rules require that you sign in with a Redfin account or register with a verified email address before we can show you all the information.
• More amenities: Before, we couldn’t tell you whether the home has wood floors, if there’s a fireplace, whether the kitchen’s got marble counters. Now we can show all these details.

We plan on switching over even more Southern California MLS’s in the near future.

Questions about the updates? Just comment below or ask a question in our website forum.

Where Were the Biggest Discounts in August?

Let’s check in on our stats to find out where buyers are currently getting the biggest discounts off asking price. If you are a potential buyer, this will help you to know which neighborhoods may be softer in terms of sale price discounts off list price, and help you know where to look for potential bargains.

In the charts below, we have taken all sales data from last month in Orange County and sorted it by city.

Methodology
In order to maintain consistency with the automatically generated statistics posted to the Redfin neighborhood pages, we have slightly tweaked the way the statistics are compiled for this post series. First, we complied a list of every sale that took place in the month, calculating each sale’s sale-to-list ratio (based on the final list price). Next, we simply take an average of every individual sale’s sale-to-list ratio to calculate an entire area’s sale-to-list ratio. Any sales that came in with a sale-to-list ratio above 150% or below 50% are excluded from the calculation, and areas with fewer than twenty sales are excluded from the top and bottom ten rankings. Interested readers may download the full data summary in Excel format (xls).

Here are the top ten areas with the largest overall discount:

The overall discount rate was lower than our last update (and barely in the positive), but since we tweaked the methodology slightly, unfortunately they’re not really comparable.

Here are the ten areas with the smallest discounts:

In the 33 areas we ranked, the median discount was 1.6%.

Here’s the bonus graph, showing the discount off the original list price:

Looks like there are definitely still some sellers out there that are overestimating the current moderate strength in the market when they first list their house, especially over in Laguna.

Is the area you’re shopping not on either the top 10 or bottom 10? No problem, just download the full rankings in Excel format and hit the “FullSummary” sheet.

Of the 2,363 sales we tracked in the 1-month period, 498 homes sold for 5% or more off the asking price, while 279 homes sold for 5% or more above the asking price.

Case-Shiller: Simultaneous Summer Surge Stretches On

Let’s check in on the S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Indices (HPI). Here’s a summary of the latest data for the Los Angeles area, which includes LA and Orange Counties:

Since Case-Shiller lumps LA and Orange Counties together, I won’t repeat everything I wrote on the LA Sweet Digs blog. For more analysis and some graphs of the LA Case-Shiller data, check out my post over there: Case-Shiller: Simultaneous Summer Surge Stretches On

September City/Neighborhood Price Reductions

It’s been a while since we had a look at which cities and towns have the most price reductions.

The following charts show the percent of MLS, FSBO or REO listings that were price-reduced at some point before leaving the market (either sold or removed unsold from the market) in the past 90 days. Cities/towns or neighborhoods in which the number of homes taken off the market was too small to provide believable estimates are excluded from ranking.

For those that are interested, I have uploaded the full data set in Excel format here. The downloadable Excel file also includes charts showing the top ten cities/towns/neighborhoods with the least reduced-price listings.

First up are the top ten cities with the most price-reduced listings:

Of the 41 cities/towns we ranked in Orange County this month, just 7 had price-reduced ratios of fifty percent or more. The median price-reduced ratio was 36.1%.

Getting a little more granular, let’s look at the top ten neighborhoods for price reductions:

Of the 47 neighborhoods we ranked this month, only 8 had a price-reduced ratio of fifty percent or more. The median price-reduced ratio was 37.0%.

Download the full spreadsheet to check where your neighborhood came in.

The Market Wrap-Up For August

Let’s take at look at some August numbers for Orange County and see how they compare to a year ago.

Single-Family Homes

• 1,864 re-sale houses sold in August
• The median sales price was $500,000, the same as in August 2008

Condos

• 795 condos sold in August
• The median sales price was $290,500, down 6% from August 2008

We got these numbers from DQNews.

Dig Deeper Into the Trends

These numbers are for Orange County. To see what’s happening in your neighborhood, check out our stats & trends pages.

What trends did you see in August?

Multiple Offer War Story

Angela Creech, one of the most pleasant people I know and one Redfin’s agents in Orange County, called me the other day to say things are still crazy in the local real estate market.

She recently presented an offer for $730,000 on a 4 bed, 3 bath 2,400 square foot home listed just under $755,000. Here’s the reply from the listing agent:

We received an unbelievable amount of offers on this property and we responded to the top 10 or 12 so far. The counter offers that require financing look like this:

• Sales Price – $825,000 with 50% down payment
• Our choice for title and escrow
• 30 day COE
• No Appraisal or Loan contingency
• All other contingencies removed within 7 days
• $100,000 initial deposit, $20,000 non-refundable will be released to seller after 7 days

Angela’s clients decided to talk walk away from this home.

Are you seeing anything like this?

Biggest Discounts (Belated) August Update

I apologize for the tardiness of this post. Unfortunately I did not receive the data until almost the end of the month.

Let’s check in on our stats once again and find out where buyers are currently getting the biggest discounts off asking price. If you are a potential buyer, this will help you to know which neighborhoods may be softer in terms of sale price discounts off list price, and help you know where to look for potential bargains.

In the charts below, we have taken all sales data from last month in Orange County and sorted it by city. We calculated the overall difference between the sale price and the list price. Note that this reflects the final list price, after all price drops in the listing. Any areas with fewer than ten sales are excluded from the top and bottom ten rankings, but interested readers may download the full data summary in Excel format (xls).

Here are the top ten areas with the largest overall discount:

The overall discount rate dropped slightly from June to July, moving from 3.2% to 3.1%.

Here are the ten areas with the smallest discounts:

In the 40 areas we ranked, the median discount was 2.7%.

Here’s the bonus graph, showing the discout off the original list price:

The overall discount off the original list price also decreased, from June’s 8.2% to 7.5% in July.

Is the area you’re shopping not on either the top 10 or bottom 10? No problem, just download the full rankings in Excel format and hit the “FullSummary” sheet.

Of the 2,713 sales we tracked in the 1-month period, 592 homes sold for 5% or more off the asking price, while 335 homes sold for 5% or more above the asking price.