As we rapidly progress toward tax time, April 15, in an atmosphere of economic doom and gloom, there are still some positive situations from which a homeowner can benefit in dealing with homeownership. This article offers a variety of suggestions on tax deductions for homeowners over the 2008 and 2009 tax seasons that you may want to pass along to your clients.

Due to the current economy, homeowners will want to be aware of these important tips, and know whether they qualify for specific deductions, when it is time to submit their tax return.

These tips will provide a focus for current year taxes as well as years going forward.

1. New Home Due to Relocation Tax Deductions

If you purchased a home due to a transfer or new job, you may also have some deductions based on the following requirements: the new location must be 50 miles (one way) or further from your new job than if you had not moved. So, you cannot take this deduction if you are moving within the same city or neighborhood.

The move has to have occurred within a year of starting the new job. You must have worked full time (for any employer) for 39 weeks during the year following the move as long as the location of your new employer is in the general neighborhood of your new home. Continue reading this post

HomeGain hosted its third “Ask The Experts” live real estate forum last week. With a new format that allowed more question time for participants, HomeGain.com received dozens of questions directed at the experts before the session began, and many more during the call.

The panel of experts were:

• Barry Karch of Prudential BKB Realtors in El Paso, Texas, who answered questions about ”Generating New Business From The Internet”
• Mitch Ribakof eHomes Realty Network in Melbourne, Florida, who covered “Converting Leads Into Clients”
• Carl Medford of Windermere Properties of the East Bay, in San Francisco Bay Area in California, who spoke about the ”Essentials of Being A Virtual Agent”

Listen to this valuable 40-minute real estate call:

Continue reading this post

I get a lot of homebuyer inquiries from my website and one common theme from all of them is their desire to ‘find a great deal.’ Regardless of price range, virtually every potential buyer that I communicate with mentions either ‘foreclosure’, ‘short sale’, or ‘deal’.

I am sure most of you know what a foreclosure is but sometimes I run into people who don’t know what short sale means. Essentially, a short sale occurs when the proceeds of a real estate sale are insufficient to cover the liens or financial obligations owed on the property.

For example, if a home is worth $500,000 and the homeowner has a $600,000 mortgage on the property and the owner cannot make up the difference then a short sale is required. For a sale to take place the mortgage holder would have to agree to take less than what is owed to them due to an economic or financial hardship on the part of the borrower.

This process can take months to accomplish. If you are looking to purchase a property in short sale make sure you have plenty of time and patience. If you need to move into a home quickly it might be best to exclude short sales from your list.

Below are some Sarasota foreclosures and short sale statistics: Continue reading this post

Here’s a unique co-marketing business model that combines RateWindow, the wholesale mortgage rate engine and HomeGain’s AgentView to give teams of mortgage brokers and Realtors an innovative online marketing presence. Using RateWindow and AgentView together will help position the Realtor and mortgage broker as a team solution for their local client base.

Please let me know what you think about the new marketing model.

According to reports in the Wall Street Journal and the Miami Herald first time home buyers are accounting for a large portion of the recent boost in existing home sales. The reports cite lower home prices and the provision in the Obama stimulus plan that gives first time home buyers an $8,000 credit.

Indeed, on a conference call following HomeGain’s release of its survey of Realtors on Home Values, HomeGain member Jeffrey Bastress of Starpoint Realty in Massachusettes cited that he had recently received numerous offers from first time home buyers citing the $8,000 credit as a reason for their interest in purchasing a home.

Andrew Duncan of Keller Williams of Tampa also cited the new tax incentives, lower home prices and great interest rates as driving new home buyers to make their first purchases.

Could it be however, the reason that first time home buyers are making up a good portion of existing home sales is that they haven’t been burned yet?

Continue reading this post

Consider this:

Mitch Ribak will sell more than 340 homes this year using HomeGain.

Others will make hundreds of thousands of dollars with HomGain.

- See Top Performers of 2007

- See Top Performers of 2008

One agent has crosssed the one million dollar commission mark using HomeGain and is closing in on two million dollars.

Another HomeGain agent has reached the $1 million commission mark and will be annonced next month.

Using HomeGain and Social Media tools like Twitter are not mutually exclusive.

Indeed they compliment each other well.

More on that in a future post.

Louis Cammarosano

homegain.com