Senate extends homebuyer credit, benefits

Well there are some of us who get help now!

NOW IS THE TIME TO BUY BUY BUY. PRICES ARE STILL LOW BUT THEY ARE TICKING UP. MORTGAGE RATES ARE STILL LOW BUT THEY ARE GOING UP! GET IN NOW OR CRY 5 YEARS FROM NOW!

Or you can continue paying rent like a chump. START BUILDING YOUR FUTURE NOW!

[QUOTE who=" Whittier City Councilman Owen Newcomer."] Anything that helps residents buy products...[/QUOTE]

People's spending above their means is a major factor in why we are in this mess to begin with.

How about encouraging people to save. How about reminding people that we should have a minimum of six months of living expenses socked away for the bad times.. and we should have a year's worth of living expenses socked away in a bad economy.

Instead, we are repeatedly bailing out people, auto makers, wall street, banks, etc. Yes, it will help in the short term, but long term we will be crushed by the debt we are racking up.

China virtually owns us now.

I think it would be better to sack up, take the short term pain, have people learn their lessons, but be stronger in the future for it... America and it's citizens need to learn to stand on our own two feet again.

Live within or below your means, absolutely.
Just like the clunkers program it's just a temporary infusion at taxpayers' expense.

I don't think a 8k tax credit will allow anyone to live beyond their means.

Credit restrictions are so tight right now that you have to have gold nuts credit and I don't think the 8k credit will kick anyone who can't afford a house over the threshold.

Th reason we are in this mess is because all parties didn't do their due diligence during the bubble. I especially blame bankers who have a fiduciary responsibility to their share holders to perform due diligence whether or not regulations demand it.

their cousins, identical cousins...................

Radical Raul wrote:

NOW IS THE TIME TO BUY BUY BUY. PRICES ARE STILL LOW BUT THEY ARE TICKING UP. MORTGAGE RATES ARE STILL LOW BUT THEY ARE GOING UP! GET IN NOW OR CRY 5 YEARS FROM NOW!
Or you can continue paying rent like a chump. START BUILDING YOUR FUTURE NOW!

Home prices will drop, not go up. The homes in California are still over inflated.

Higher interest rates in the future will cause prices to plummet.

In five years, interest rates will be in the 6 - 7% range.

So go ahead and buy and when your in debt and the Obama economy hemmorhages your job,
you'll be asking yourself what an idiot I was to go for the Obama tax credit.

Econ 101 wrote:

I don't think a 8k tax credit will allow anyone to live beyond their means.
.

My comments were more focused on the increased Unemployment Benefits described in the article, and Whittier dude's comment about enabling people to spend more money.

Fair enough.

Although I don't think losing one's job counts as living beyond one's means.(Not that you suggested that)

As for buying a house now, it is the best market in a generation to buy. IF you buy for the correct reason, domicile rather than investment.

I have sold at a small loss before because it allowed me to get into a much better opportunity.

A 6% drop in home prices (highly doubtful in my neighborhood) is worth risking to get a 30 year loan an less than 5%. To put some perspective on it my parents had a %7.5 loan in '72.

MSLSD wrote:

<quoted text>
Home prices will drop, not go up. The homes in California are still over inflated........

Maybe in Duarte.

definitely in the central valley and Riverside.

Econ 101 wrote:

Fair enough.
Although I don't think losing one's job counts as living beyond one's means.(Not that you suggested that)

Unemployment is not as scary if you've lived the previous years below your means and squirreled away savings for the rainy day.

I always live below my means.

Many folks save for a rainy day, but realistically it is almost impossible to save for a rainy year if one is a wage earner.

One may do everything right and still fall on hard times.

We may want to help them for the same reason we bailed out the banks, we have made a decision to avoid anarchy. Even I was to take a harder approach I might still be for helping the unemployed to keep them out of the street with torches.