For most people, the first time and repeat home buyer tax credits ended after April 30. The government has made an exception for certain military personnel and other people stationed away from home. Those individuals have an extra year to file for and receive a first time or repeat home buyer tax credit. The people [...]

There have been a good number of people in Arkansas worried about the Rural Development program running out of money. Rural Development – a program of the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) – guarantees 100 percent financing for homes in, yes, rural areas. Eligibility for through the program turns on location. If a home [...]

The National Association of Realtors (NAR) – and, of course, the Arkansas Realtors Association – recognizes April as Fair Housing Month. This year marks the 42nd anniversary of the 1968 Fair Housing Act. That act, which was amended by Congress in 1988, prohibits housing discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, disability, familial [...]

If you don’t make it over to state Attorney General Dustin McDaniel’s Internet site at www.ag.state.ar.us from time to time, you might want to make a point of doing that. Why? The Arkansas Attorney General’s office has a long history of looking out for consumers. As such, the office routinely posts news about the latest [...]

The February housing market report is done and both homes sales and average prices are down when compared with totals from the first two months of 2009. In the first two months of the year, 2,494 homes were sold – down 5.71 percent from 2,645 sales through February 2009. The average sales price of $137,184 [...]

Over the past few years, a lot of real estate insiders have been worried about high inventory levels. An excess of inventory – the number of homes for sale – in any market is generally regarded as bad. The time tested rules of economics come into play here – if the supply of widgets, houses [...]

As the director of media relations for the Arkansas Realtors Association I talk to a lot of our members. Over the past couple of years, a common theme has emerged from a good number of conversations. In a nutshell, it seems like customer service matters a lot in today’s market. In fact, it appears that [...]

Bill Williamson – after spending 32 years at the Arkansas Real Estate Commission (AREC) – retired from his position as executive director at the end of February. He was succeeded by Gary Isom, who started at the AREC as an investigator in 1987 and became deputy executive director in 1996 after Williamson recruited him for [...]

A string of letters behind a Realtor’s name might resemble alphabet soup, but it actually shows that agent has decided to specialize. Let’s say, for example, a Realtor hands you a business card identifying him as “Skipper Benton, ABR, CRS, GRI.” What Skipper is trying to tell you is that he has earned the Accredited [...]

I keep hearing about a “move up tax credit” for repeat home buyers. The odd thing about that is such a thing doesn’t exist. Apparently, there’s a misconception suggesting that the IRS tax credit for repeat buyers only applies if we’re talking about a situation where a homeowner sells his house and purchases one that [...]

We get a number of calls at the Arkansas Realtors Association (ARA) from people wanting us to predict the future performance of housing markets in Arkansas. We don’t make predictions at the ARA about the future performance of those markets. There are a couple of reasons for that. For one thing, we’re not in the [...]

Generally, this space is set aside to talk about consumer issues – housing market conditions, how to attract buyers and that kind of thing. However, we’ve not addressed foreclosures much in this column over the past couple of years. That’s unfortunate because high foreclosure rates have become major problems for Arkansas consumers.

There have been a lot of questions about the tax credit for repeat home buyers since it was signed into law on Nov. 6, but the IRS had released no clear guidance for it. Until just recently, that is. To take advantage of either the $6,500 tax credit for existing home owners or the $8,000 [...]

We’ve heard it time and time again over the past couple of years – if you want to take out a mortgage, you’d better be ready to come up with a down payment. To an extent, that’s certainly true. Conventional lenders generally want a down payment as do banks writing mortgages insured by the Federal [...]

Every now and again, I realize just how much real estate news is out there. That’s really no surprise – the economy doesn’t do well if real estate markets are struggling. Still, there have been some stories lately that are worth mentioning and here are but a few of them: