Home Buyer Tax Credit - Extend or Not To Extend? Part #1

Home buyer tax credit; extend or not to extend? That is the $6,500/$8,000 question.  What do you think? Should there be another extension of the first and existing home buyer tax credits?

First of all, let me first disclaim that I am not a big believer in government intervention into free markets. Secondly, I have been affected by the policies of the last two administrations, so I am not sure I can be completely objective, but with that in mind here goes.

Ask anyone in the real estate business about how severe the real estate down turn was and is. A debtor attorney friend of mine refers to it as a "real estate depression". As one who has lived through the last three years of real estate hell, I have seen real estate values plummet and lots of real estate friends of mine loose everything. Thousands of builders, realtors, mortgage brokers, title companies, material suppliers, hard goods suppliers and sub-contractors have either been wiped out or are barely hanging on, and this is just in the Twin Cities area. Multiply this scenerio across the country and you start to get the picture of the severity of what happened.

I was told recently by a farily reliable source that a certain major bank is sitting on nearly a thousand of foreclosures in the Twin Cities market for fear it will just drive prices down further. I can verify that this is true in my small sampling of lisitngs I have been tracking. I have seen a number of bank foreclosure listings expire that are still sitting vacant for six months or more. During meetings with various local banks I learned many local banks are sitting on a ton of real estate related assets they don't have a clue what to do with. Much of the damage has been done...or has it?