St. Louis Real Estate-Market Watch September 12th, 2009

Real Estate-Market Watch by Art Wagner @ Keller Williams Realty Southwest Saint Louis , Sunset Hills, Mo.
September 12th, 2009
The Anatomy of St. Louis Real Estate

The St. Louis Home for Sale Team provides a weekly St. Louis County and Bi-weekly St. Charles County Market and Jefferson County Market Watch Report to review and plug into your home buying or selling scenario. Your questions and comments are welcome!

The St. Louis Real Estate Market this week shows a slight increase in active listings and and increase in homes accepting contracts and sold. This activity has pushed the pending ratio up three quarters of a point to 15.27 percent.

Activity in the lower price ranges still accounts for the majority of our sales, as first time homebuyers scramble to beat the deadline of November 30th. November 30th is the last day a buyer will be able to close on a home and still qualify for the $8000.00 tax credit.

If you are keeping up with the news, nationally and locally, you have undoubtedly heard that there is plenty of lobbying at all levels for the government to extend the First Time Homebuyers Tax Credit into next year. Some proponents are lobbying to increase the amount to $15,000 and include any homebuyer, not just the first time buyers.

When Congress come back to work they will have plenty on their plate to deal with; remember Health Care?; so it’s uncertain if the homebuyers tax credit will receive the attention it certainly is due.

While extending the tax credit would be beneficial for buyers, sellers and all of the Realtors nation-wide, it could present more problems and issues down the road. With the national debt at an historic high, a tax credit extension would certainly affect our debt.

Personally, I’m for extending the tax credit, at the $8000.00 dollar level, and maybe allow any buyer to use it. I would extend it at least until the end of June next year, hoping to help keep the momentum going through the winter months and into the spring. I’m afraid that if the tax credit expires November 30th this year, our activity will plummet back to where it was a year or two ago during our winter months.

All statistics we run show that the great first time homebuyer activity, fueled by the tax credit has helped keep our activity on a par with the past couple years and has not significantly increased it.

Tell us what you think-Should the First Time Homebuyer’s Tax Credit be Extended in it’s same form, or changed to include any buyer and increased to $15,000??

Email us with your opinions and we will give you an over-view of your collective wisdom and insight in the coming weeks.

WHO DO YOU KNOW NOW that is challenged with their mortgage payments OR needs to sell for less than their home is worth?? WE CAN HELP!!

WHO DO YOU KNOW that’s thinking of buying or selling a home?

Contact Doug Aegerter or Art Wagner for more information and a FREE Comparative Market Analysis (CMA) of your home or your neighborhood.

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This entry was posted on Monday, September 14th, 2009 at 9:38 pm and is filed under St. Louis Market Reports. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.