Senate votes to extend tax credit to homebuyers caught in backlog...

Senate votes to extend tax credit to homebuyers caught in backlog...

http://news.yahoo.com/s/mcclatchy/20100616/pl_mcclatchy/3538526

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSN1618072020100616

http://weblogs.sun-sentinel.com/news/politics/dcblog/2010/06/senate_votes_to_extend_homebuy_1.html

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 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.  By Inman News, Wednesday, June 16, 2010. Inman News