Realtors Urge Congress To Support Home Ownership

 

Recently, the National Association of Realtors told the U.S. Senate Banking Subcommittee on Housing that Congress and the administration must address key issues in order to create a healthy real estate market that helps current and future homeowners as that will drive the national economy forward. 

“The housing market hasn’t been this unwelcoming to first-time buyers since 1987,” said 2014 NAR Conventional Finance and Lending Committee Chair Mabel Guzman, broker for AT-Properties in Chicago. “Tight credit, high fees and low inventory have combined to make it prohibitively expensive for millions of responsible, creditworthy prospective buyers to own a home. If this is the direction that the housing market is taking, we’re headed down the wrong path.”

Realtors report that home prices and sales, as well as household wealth, are all up from a year ago, but  constrained access to mortgage credit for minorities, young buyers, and low-and moderate-income earners remains a serious problem.

NAR says that restrictive pricing policies at the Federal Housing Administration and the Federal Housing Finance Agency continue to disparately impact individuals with shorter credit histories and lower down payments, making it harder for them to buy a home.

One significant issue is that according to NAR estimates, nearly 400,000 creditworthy borrowers were priced out of the housing market because of high FHA insurance premiums in 2013.

NAR supports developing policies that will provide potential buyers with access to more flexible and affordable financing opportunities and a wider choice of approved condo developments.  Currently the majority of condo financing is hard to get for any buyer which makes no sense to me at all.

While in Washington, NAR also called on Congress to offer permanent help for those who short sold in 2014 so that these same homeowners can re-enter the market now and continue to have taxation relief. With the current policies, a vast majority of homeowners are being hit hard.  First with a staggering loss of equity and forced to short sell and then again, not being allowed to re-enter the housing market for an unreasonably long period of time.

“Most urgently, Congress should take action to help all of the distressed homeowners who completed short sales in 2014 by passing the Mortgage Forgiveness Tax Relief Act. This bipartisan legislation will extend an expired provision that has helped millions of distressed American families by allowing tax relief for homeowners when lenders forgive some portion of the mortgage debt they owe,” said Guzman. “If this provision is not extended, hundreds of thousands of American families who did the right thing by short selling their home will have to pay income tax on ‘phantom income.’”

Nancy Puder is a Real Estate Broker in Arroyo Grande CA with Nancy Puder & Associates. If you have questions or concerns regarding your property, call or text Nancy at (805)710-2415 or email Nancy@NancyPuder.com.  You may also go to Facebook.com/Nancy Puder Realtor and "like" her page to access other real estate related articles.