That's the amount the National Association of Home Builders thinks it will cost for each additional new sale generated by extending the Home Buyer's Tax credit. They want to make it available to everybody except investors and vacation home buyers. They're lobbying feverishly to do it!

According to this post in the Wall Street Journal, it will cost $30 billion to extend the credit the way they want for one year and spark an additional 383,000 home sales. Over $78,000 per sale! That sounds like such a good deal for taxpayers, I can't imagine they will have any trouble selling it. The president of the NAHB feels more optimistic about this credit than he has about "any tax provision I've ever done."

So, how do you feel about it?  In the order of outrages, it comes below socialized medicine and cap & tax.  But, it is much more expensive than cash for clunkers.  It is criminal that the NAHB and National Association of Realtors think it is a good deal to burden themselves and their children with a $78,000+ bill for each $3,000 commission check they might receive.

These are the most exciting listings I have seen in Lake Chelan this year!  The Flying W Ranch is offering presales on homes on acreage and two of the homes are priced below $200k.  Plus, the Flying W Ranch includes 600 acres of conservation property that has been put under the care of the Land Trust that owners have access to for hiking, biking, horseback riding, snowshoeing and cross country skiing.

These aren't just any homes, they are certified 4 Star Built Green homes designed to capture the dramatic views available at the Flying W Ranch known as Starlight Cabins.  These are attractive homes and well built.  They include GE energy star appliances, Hardie siding and 50 year Snap Loc roofs.  They are available for pre-sale now.

Virgo Home for $179,500

The Virgo on Lot 2 comes complete with 1.7 acres and a beautiful view of the valley and mountains for only $179,500.   There is absolutely nothing on the market it like it.  I can be in downtown Chelan in fifteen minutes from this location.

Orion Home for $199,500

Lot 4 has the Orion plan with 975 square feet of space and a 9 acre lot!  Two floors of fun and an incredible location surrounded by nature.  It has a fun, open floor plan that makes the most of the space.

There are additional plans with more bedrooms, bathrooms and space that range up to only $249,500!  Check them all out at www.homeattheranch.com

The local association of Realtors sent out a link to an analysis from the Cato Institute titled How Urban Planners Caused the Housing Bubble.  Randall O'Toole does a thorough analysis of the data and provides a pretty severe indictment of Growth Managment as a driver of volatile housing prices.

He uses economic theory, looking at elasticity of supply and demand, to explain how price volatility is achieved by growth management and then he looks at data of urban areas across the country to confirm the relationship between planning approaches and housing volatility in the latest housing bubble.

The correlation between planning practices and pricing volatility is uncanny!  Fed policy, the Community Reinvestment Act and other hair brained political practices can't explain the phenomenon without the inclusion of growth managment into the equation.  The costs for growth managment are also staggering!  For real estate nerds, it is required reading!

The latest Building Industry Association of Washington newsletter has statistics of building permit activity in 2009.  Brett Lamar, of Lake Chelan Building Supply, pointed out some of the information you might find most interesting:

I got my latest copy of the BIAW news letter today.  In the very back they have the updated residential building permits for the year compared to last year....it's required reading for me as a lumber dealer.  It's a lagging indicator, but interesting none the least.  YTD through July the state has 54% less permits issued then 2008, which was quite a bit lower then 2007.  Chelan and Douglas county held up better then the state did, we're only off 43% from 2008.  Here's the kicker....by far the most permits are issued in King county.....they are 7X what any other county issues, they are off 75%!  7002 permits in 2008 vs.  1816 in 2009.  WOW!  Those are BIG numbers. 

Thanks Brett!

For the third quarter, 52 homes were sold in the Lake Chelan area as compared with 35 in 2008.  That is still well below the levels of 2005 to 2007 which were all around 75 transactions for the third quarter.  But, things really ground to a halt in the fall of 2008 so I will go out on a limb and say I expect the fourth quarter this year will be stronger than last year's. 

Have a look at the Lake Chelan Real Estate Residential Sales Summary.  In it you can see that the 4th quarter of last year was the worst quarter since we have been able to get data with only 12 sales total.  So, I would take the bet that home sales in Lake Chelan for the rest of the year should be above last year's levels.

Both July and September also exceeded last year in sales.  September saw 15 sales close, as compared to 9 in 2008.  Average sale price was up in September, probably due to some waterfront closings, to $548,460.  For the year, the average sale price is so far is $437,918 and is below 2008.  The third quarter still shows pricing below last year's, but with improved volume of sales.  Inventory is still high and prices should not increase until much of that inventory is worked off.

Lake Chelan waterfront homes continue outselling last year's pace with 13 sales compared to 8 last year.  The average sale price on waterfront homes is now $1,102,730 as compared with $1,862,056 through September last year.

From a real estate sales perspective, things are looking up at Lake Chelan!

The IRS will no longer allow a property owner to deduct the value of a building donated to the fire department for training.  Such donations have been a common way for the fire districts in the Lake Chelan area to train their firefighters.  This removes any financial incentive for those donations.

For the full story, go to the Lake Chelan Real Estate Blog

I spent some time on spreadsheets today looking at waterfront home sales.  If you are a buyer of waterfront property at Lake Chelan, you could make it easier to tell what is going on.  Buy MORE waterfront property and buy things similar to what was bought last year 

The low number of sales and variety of properties on Lake Chelan make any sort of comparable analysis difficult.  Not only can't I find a statistically significant number of similar properties to compare, I can't find a single sale of very similar homes or land from 2008 to 2009.  Going back any further really doesn't make any sense in this market.   There are some properties for sale that are similar to properties that sold last year.  But, unless someone buys them, they won't help us compare sales.  If you're a buyer, I can direct you to those properties if you want, or to the waterfront property you actually like!

Accurate valuation is pretty much not mathematically possible with the limited amount of current data that is available in this report.  It would be required to go back further in history to come up with enough comparables for most properties, or the properties used might not be what you and I would call very similar.   Having said that, by breaking things down further and estimating a value for homes versus land, making corrections for age, for floorplans and other adjustments might provide a bit more consistency and you might be able to compare 3 or more properties to the property in question.  I am pleased to leave that dance for your appraisor or the assessor's office.

These sales are water frontage, on Lake Chelan only, excluding things like Harris Marina boat slips and things that are not typical residential properties.

If you are a waterfront property owner, you might like to look at the Lake Chelan Waterfront sales analysis and see how the value of your property  might compare by the latest, if imprecise, market data.  The statistical summaries don't have enough samples to be signficant, so just consider them fun numbers and draw your own conclusions.   Let me know if you have questions.

In a post in Newgeography, the racial aspect of urban planning was examined.  The standard examples of urban areas that top the progressive  lists of media, academia and planning circles are Portland, Seattle, Austin, Minneapolis, and Denver.

If you take away the dominant Tier One cities like New York, Chicago and Los Angeles you will find that the "progressive" cities aren't red or blue, but another color entirely: white.

In fact, not one of these "progressive" cities even reaches the national average for African American percentage population in its core county. Perhaps not progressiveness but whiteness is the defining characteristic of the group. - The White City | Newgeography.com

Portland, often held as the ultimate example of New Urbanism, has less than half the national average of African American citizens.  It is really the ultimate White City.

We've already seen how planning and growth management contribute to high costs of housing and price volatility.  Read this whole article and decide for yourself if local land use policies decrease diversity.  Then, for kicks, look at the Manson Subarea Plan and see if you think it encourages, or discourages, population diversity.

It looks like we haven't heard the whole story on the Home Buyer's Tax credit yet.  The IRS is examining more than 100,000 suspicious returns that claimed the credit.    So, buyers who claim the credit need to beware for the possibility of an IRS audit!

It appears that others are questioning the cost of this poorly targeted benefit as well.

Ted Gayer, an economist at the Brookings Institution, a liberal think tank based in Washington, estimated that the current credit costs the government about $43,000 for each additional home sale it generates, because most of the two million or so home buyers expected to claim the credit would have bought a house anyway. Expanding the credit to all home buyers would raise the government's cost per additional home sale to more than $250,000, he said. - WSJ

It hardly makes news anymore that another government plan is rife with fraud:

Bonnie Speedy, national director of AARP Tax-Aide, a volunteer service for low-income people, suggested that abuse of the home-purchase credit appeared to be widespread, in part because of relatively loose standards for claiming the credit.

The credit "has some fraud issues because it's not being done at the time of the sale," said Ms. Speedy. "People are filing for the home credit who don't have a right to file for it." Taxpayers don't have to file their claims as part of a real-estate transaction and instead can file or amend their income-tax returns to claim the credit. -ToughMoneyLove.com

Now we have even more reasons NOT to extend the credit like the National Association of Realtors is lobbying furiously to do. Aren't you just excited to have these folks in charge of your health care options?

Here's the new Pacific Appraisal Wenatchee Snapshot Report.  Things are holding fairly steady in Wenatchee, below last year but not bad compared to most of the world.

Check it out!