A Hudson Florida Realtors take on Florida Homebuyer Opportunity program

 A Hudson Florida Realtors take on Florida Homebuyer Opportunity program

In an effort to jumpstart the lagging home sales in Florida, as well as to reduce inventory, The Florida Legislature has passed a bill that sets aside some $30 million to provide bridge loans to home buyers to be used at closing, in liew of the Federal governments Tax Credit, so the funds are readily available for down payment and closing costs.   There have been issues raised as a result of this.  One of the major hurdles was getting the IRS to allow the State to be assigned the Tax Credit, so instead of collecting it from the buyer they aided, the State of Florida would just collect it directly from the IRS.

This program, obviously follows the same guidelines as the Federal First time home Buyers program.   You must qualify:

• you, or your spouse,have not bought a house in the past 3 years, regardless of how whether your significant other is on the current contract to purcahse
• under $75k/year adjusted gross income ( $150k if filed jointly)
• for use on SFR, condo’s and Townhomes
• and it is also important  to remember that the federal tax credit is actually 10% of the purchase price, with a limit of $8,000.  In a lot of areas in the country, it is a given that you can not buy a house for under $80,000, which is the lowest purchase price with the maximium tax credit.  But here in Florida and other hard hit states
• And lastly, the last day you can use this is Nov 30, 2009.  Come December the Federal program ends, and therefor so does the State program
• you can get the full details of that in my previous blog below, or here: http://activerain.com/blogsview/1161789/i-am-sorry-but-you-do-not-qualify-for-the-1st-time-homebuyer-credit-by-a-realtor-in-hudson-florida

While this sounds great it is estimated that this will only help less than 4000 First time Home Buyers, or the entire state of Florida.  Which is not bad if you are one of the, but  now is not the Time to procrastinate.  Funds availability can be checked, and more detailed information can be found at State Housing Initiatives Partnership (SHIP) will administer the program, under the overall direction of the Florida Housing Finance Corporation.  Additional info can be found at https://www.floridarealtors.org/AboutFar/homebuyercenter/upload/Homebuyeropportunity.pdf

And remember to always use a Professsional Realtor when you decide to enter into a Real Estate Transaction