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American Clean Energy and Security Act will make selling your home more expensive

What I haven’t heard discussed anywhere regarding the American Clean Energy and Security Act (otherwise known as Cap & Trade) is the profound effects it will have on residential real estate. http://www.opencongress.org/bill/111-h2454/text?version=rh&nid=t0:rh:2259 As I read this bill, I discovered that the federal government will create a labeling and energy audit program to improve the efficiency of residential real estate. While that may sound great, the standards for the bill were not included in this act. However, once a standard is set, all residential real estate will undergo an energy audit to discover if that home meets the minimum standards set by the federal government. What the act does do is to say that they will force compliance through the transfer of ownership (i.e. sale). Therefore, home sellers may face having to replace windows, doors, appliances, add insulation, replace a/c units, etc just to convey the property to another buyer or face penalties.

In addition, with the popularity of FHA and VA loans, I can forsee a lender requiring an energy audit and making a satisfactory audit apart of the loan approval.

So with foreclosures increasing and the housing market on the ropes as it is already, your member of Congress believes you have the money to upgrade your home. I sure hope you tell them thanks. Read the full bill here and why not call your member of Congress and Senate to let them know what you think of them.

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Posted by Jonathan Osman - Charlotte / Matthews NC on 06/29/2009 04:38 PM

Comments (6)

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6 Comments on American Clean Energy and Security Act will make selling your home more expensive

JUN

That is just not what we needed. Our area is older homes that barely meet the requirements now, and I can tell you those homeowners DO NOT have the funds to upgrade before a sale. We have just been hit with an utility increase on our water to 130.00 a month and this is forcing them out of their homes. The bill goes up with water usage from April to October so lawns are not being cared for and etc. NOT good news for the housing market.

The sky is falling , the sky is falling!

JUN

The Heritage Foundation has done a great job of fear mongering on this topic. Do you really think, if any of that is true, it will all happen overnight? And what about the tax credits the government is giving to people to retrofit their homes and make them more energy efficient. Do you think people are not going to take advantage of those? These conversations are getting tedious. Any improvement in our energy production and usage will save our future generations from incurring even more expensive solutions to an every growing problem.

Jonathan, It is going to be impossible for futere generations to own homes or anything else for that matter anyway. The govt is going to own everything, and we all know how well they follow their own laws.

Terry, if you read this section of the bill (the link to it is posted up in the blog), you'll see that there is a timeframe for enactment is 5 years. Also, where do you think tax credits come from? Not to be mean, not my intention, but if you were to come to me and say that I need to replace all the windows in my house, my a/c unit, or other appliance, it wouldn't get done...there's just no money for those things. All those things are great and wonderful but with the economy in the mess that it's in, does the public need another burden? I say not.

Terry,

You said: "Do you really think, if any of that is true, it will all happen overnight?"

Well yes indeed it is true, and some of it will happen immediatley, some of it over several years. Of course we are going to reform the health care system at the same time, extend unemployment benefits to 79 weeks, offer mortgage assistance, cash for clunkers (cars), increase funding to Americorp (youth service), pump more money into GM & Chrysler. We put bonds up to finance the government debt, and when they're aren't enough 'takers', the treasury prints money and the US lends its own money to itself.

We are living in the most undisciplined, fiscally irresponsible, reckless time in American history, and it will destroy America. It actually is already too late according to some economists.. we can't reverse the decline now.

This is not alarmism. It is the facts - the Democrats have succeeded in destroying America.. the other shoe just hasn't dropped yet. Stay tuned.. you will witness it.

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