219756 Resource 199230 219284 219284 1228522481950 1228522481950 Controlled Interest Rate Buy-Down is Major Element of NAR Housing Stimulus Plan Rescue Plan/Bailout and Real Estate News <span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: verdana; "><div class="newspage_headline" style="color: rgb(109, 49, 13); font-size: 15px; font-weight: bold; ">Interest Rate Buy-Down is Major Element of NAR Housing Stimulus Plan</div><div class="ByLine" style="font-style: italic; margin-bottom: 10px; ">by Bob Hunt</div><div class="PageContent" style="font-size: 13px; "><p>At their recent meeting in Orlando, Florida, directors of the National Association of Realtors&reg; (NAR) gave formal approval to NAR's Housing Stimulus Plan. The plan, to be submitted to Congress in its lame-duck session, is designed to end the free-fall of values in the housing market. It aims to do this by providing sufficient incentives to get potential buyers &quot;off the fence.&quot; The plan has four points.</p><div><p>(1) Make the current $7,500 first-time homebuyer tax credit available to all homebuyers and, also, eliminate its repayment provisions.</p><p>(2) Make the 2008 FHA, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac loan limits permanent. Currently, those limits have been raised to $729,750, but those are due to be reduced to $625,000 in 2009.</p><p>(3) Use funds from the $700 billion rescue plan (a.k.a. &quot;the bailout&quot;) to institute a temporary (probably two-year) federal mortgage interest buy-down program to lower rates to 4.5% or lower for a thirty-year fixed rate mortgage. This would apply to homebuyers purchasing new or existing homes up to $1 million in price.</p><p>(4) Permanently ban banks from engaging in real estate brokerage and management.</p><p>For the full article <a href="http://realtytimes.com/rtpages/20081203_buydown.htm">Click Here</a></p><p>For more information on foreclosures or any real estate properties contact Matthew McCarthy at MatthewMcCarthy@remax.net&nbsp;</p></div></div></span> 9 application/xml false bailout foreclosures homebuyer housing Interest rate buy-down mortgage real estate Realty Times - Interest Rate Buy-Down is Major Element of NAR Housing Stimulus Plan Real Estate News And Advice - Interest Rate Buy-Down is Major Element of NAR Housing Stimulus Plan http://realtytimes.com/rtpages/20081203_buydown.htm Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X 10_5_4; en-us) AppleWebKit/525.18 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.1.2 Safari/525.20.1 127.0.0.1 127.0.0.1 kerikirchner 67.175.223.19 false true false false true 199303 false false true false false false true 199230 blog blogsite/RepoHomeTourChicago/web