1st Time Home Buyer Tax Credit Extended View All Posts

June 17, 2010 :: RSS

CLARIFICATION: While the Senate voted to accept the amendment that would extend the closing deadline for the tax credit, the Senate has not yet voted on the amended bill itself, which deals with a range of issues from extending unemployment benefits to Medicare funding. According to Politico, Democrats have trimmed $60 billion in spending from the bill in the hopes of passing it this week.

The Senate has amended a bill to give homebuyers who were under contract on a home purchase by April 30 an additional three months to close the deal and claim the federal homebuyer tax credit.

Extending the deadline for closing from June 30 to Sept. 30 would allow lenders more time to clear a backlog of 180,000 homebuyers nationwide, said amendment sponsor Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev.

The amendment to HR 4213, the "American Jobs and Closing Tax Loopholes Act of 2010" -- which primarily extends unemployment insurance benefits -- was approved in a 60-37 vote Wednesday. The vote on the amendment was mostly along party lines, with only four Republicans in favor and one Democrat opposed. The Senate has not yet voted on the amended bill itself.

"While I am disappointed that more Republicans did not support this common-sense measure to strengthen the economy and reduce the deficit, I am committed to ensuring that more Nevadans and Americans can become homeowners and that this amendment becomes law," Reid said in a statement.

The House passed an earlier version of the bill in December, and the Senate approved its own version in March. The Senate is currently working on resolving differences between the two bills.

The National Association of Realtors supports the amendment, saying Realtors have reported that as many as one-third of qualified applicants have been told by lenders that their loans will not close before June 30 because of the sheer volume of loan applications in the pipeline.

The amendment does not extend the deadline for homebuyers to qualify for the tax credit, NAR said in urging lawmakers to approve it, but simply extends the deadline for closing transactions already in contract.

"Since these applications were already in the pipeline and figured into the program's cost, the extension of the closing deadline should not incur any further government costs," NAR President Vicki Cox Golder said in a statement.

There has been some speculation that some homebuyers will attempt to submit fraudulent claims for the tax credit by backdating documents showing they were under contract by April 30, and that extending the deadline for closing would expose the government to more fraudulent claims.

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