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Below you will very good information on the Home Buyer Tax Credit and how to claim it per the IRS’s  new guidelines on obtaining home buyer tax credits. The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) recently issued new guidelines and clarified documentation that taxpayers must submit to successfully obtain the federal tax credit for home buyers.The federal tax credit for home buyers was extended and expanded late last year. Qualified first-time buyers may be eligible to receive a tax credit of up to $8,000 on homes purchased before April 30, 2010. Repeat buyers may be eligible for a tax credit of up to $6,500. Visit http://www.irs.gov/newsroom/article/0,,id=187935,00.html for more information about the federal tax credit for home buyers, including eligibility requirements.• To receive the tax credit, home buyers must comply with the IRS’s documentation requirements, including a fully executed IRS Form 5405. On the form, which is available on the IRS’s Web site, taxpayers provide information supporting their claim of eligibility, such as income and home purchase date.• The IRS also requires home buyers to submit a copy of the closing or settlement statement that proves the transaction took place. The IRS previously said that the statement should show “all parties’ names and signatures, property address, sales price, and date of purchase.” However, since closing or settlement statements vary by state, and in some cases the form does not include both the seller’s and buyer’s signatures, the IRS has revised this requirement. As long as the closing or settlement statement conforms to prevailing local practices, the IRS will accept it.• One stipulation for repeat buyers is they must provide documentation they lived in their former property for a consecutive five years out of the previous eight years. Accepted documentation may include property tax records, hazard insurance records, or copies of annual mortgage interest statements filed with their federal taxes.To read the full story, please click here:

http://www.latimes.com/classified/realestate/news/la-fi-harney21-2010feb21,0,1254506.storyFeb. 25,

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• IRS issues new guidelines on obtaining home buyer tax credits #realty (visionaryrealtynews.com)

The California Association of Realtors reports that the entry-level housing affordability remained at 64 percent in the fourth quarter of 2009. Below are the quick facts as reported:
.  C.A.R. First-time Buyer Housing Affordability Index stood at 64 percent in the fourth quarter of 2009
compared with 61 percent (revised) in the fourth quarter of 2008
.  The median price of an entry-level home in California was $257,940 in the fourth quarter of 2009
.  The estimated monthly payment including taxes and insurance was $1,470 in the fourth quarter of
2009
.  The minimum household income needed to purchase an entry-level home in California in the fourth
quarter of 2009 was $44,100.

This is report measures the percentage of households that can afford to purchase an entry-level home in California. This info can vary by area and you will see the affordability index for all areas on the charts below. At 84 percent, the High Desert region was the most affordable area in the state. The San Luis Obispo County region was the least affordable in the state at 48 percent, followed by the San Francisco Bay region and Santa Barbara area both at 50 percent.

C.A.R. First-time Buyer Housing Affordability Index

Source:  CALIFORNIA ASSOCIATION OF REALTORS^®

The California Association of Realtors reported on Tuesday that California’s unsold inventory index of homes, the number of months necessary to deplete the supply of homes on the market, has fallen to 5.8 months in January. This number is down from 7.3 months in January 2009. Also reported was that home sales decreased 10.6 percent in January in California compared with the same period a year ago and that the median price of an existing home rose 15 percent. It was also reported that the year-to-year decline in sales remained above the 500,000 unit threshold for the 17th consecutive month. The median price of an existing single family detached home in California during January 2010 was $287,440, which is a 15 percent increase from the reported $249,960 median for January 2009 although this was a decrease from December 2009′s $306,820 median price. It took an average of 33.8 days to sell a home on the state wide level which is down from the same period a year ago which stood at 50 Days. All in all I would say this is good news for California and the Real Estate Market and hopefully a sign the economy is starting to recover