I guess with all the "Calls to Action" initiated by the National Association of Realtors, National Association of Home Builders and everyone else interested in selling real estate and all the peripheral products and service really worked.  Today, President Obama is expected to sign the extension and expansion of the tax credit into law.

Is this a good thing?

Maybe.

My take on this is that humans work toward a deadline.  It's in their nature.  That's why we've seen the uptick in pending home sales and existing homes sales (as opposed to new home sales) in recent months.  First time home buyers who have been "on the fence" -- really just procrastinating -- got real busy to meet the deadline to grab that $8,000 Uncle Sam is giving away.  Every title person or loan person I talked to says that November is "crazy busy" because of all the home sales in the pipeline to settle by November 30th.

Why is this important to know?  Well, winter is the normal slow period for real estate.  People are hunkered down for the holidays -- Thanksgiving and all the stuff that happens in December.  It's cold (at least in the MD Suburbs of DC). It gets dark earlier. The money they would normally use for a down payment is now going to holiday gifts.  Well, maybe not this year.  Still.

So my guess is that come February we'll start to see a flurry of activity centered around the next deadline.  This one, though, is a "soft" one.  Under contract by April 30th and settled by July 1st. 

Now people have some breathing room. All the people who stopped looking in mid-October will wait until after the first of the year and then maybe -- maybe -- get back on the Internet to look for a house.  Maybe some of the current home owners that have been thinking about moving up will get going.  My guess with the current home owners, though, are that the people moving for job relocation, divorces, deaths, and the like (i.e., people who would be moving anyway) are the ones who are going to benefit from the $6,500 credit.