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If swing state voters make housing issues their only priority, Gov. Mitt Romney will pick up the majority of Electoral College votes in those states – but President Barack Obama will still have enough votes nationwide to win the election, according to an analysis from RealtyTrac.

RealtyTrac, a distressed listings data provider, crunched the numbers to see which candidate would prevail among real estate voters living in eight toss-up states: Iowa, Ohio, Florida, Wisconsin, Colorado, Virginia, Nevada and New Hampshire. The firm compared the performance of five housing metrics – average home prices, unemployment rates, foreclosure inventory, foreclosure starts and share of distressed sales – between September 2008 and September 2012. [more]

Limiting the homeowner mortgage interest deduction came up in two of the presidential debates, but specifics about who would be affected and how much they might lose in tax benefits were minimal. To put some rough numbers on the issue, here’s a quick primer on the mortgage interest deduction and related housing write-offs.

How big are they? Very big, which is why they have become such a tempting revenue-raising target for candidates seeking to reduce the massive federal deficit.  According to estimates from the congressional Joint Committee on Taxation, the mortgage interest deduction alone will “cost” the federal government $484.1 billion between fiscal 2010 and 2014 — $98.5 billion in 2013 and $106.8 billion in 2014. Write-offs by homeowners of local and state property taxes account for another $120.9 billion during the same five-year period. [more]

The mortgage interest deduction has become a political hot potato this election season, but perhaps under a number of wrong assumptions. As the New York Times reports, the deductions actually benefits few middle-class Americans.

While Romney has said he would limit itemized deductions, what many critics have missed is that only 30 percent of Americans even itemize their taxes, the Times said. Beyond that, however, those that benefit most from the mortgage interest deduction are upper and upper-middle class earners — people making between $100,000 and $500,000 a year. [more]

From left: Governor Mitt Romney, a house and President Barack Obama

While the second presidential debate did not touch specifically on housing, former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney did mention capping itemized tax deductions — of which the mortgage deduction is one of the most significant — at $25,000 per household, in his outline of his tax policy. But Jed Kolko, Trulia’s chief economist, writes, in a recent column for Forbes, that this policy would disproportionately hurt the middle class. [more]

The candidates at the Denver debate

Last night, as the candidates faced off in the first presidential debate, The Real Deal was taking notes on candidates’ positions on mortgages, the housing industry, taxes, and whether Donald Trump qualifies as a small business.

President Barack Obama said raising taxes on the top 3 percent of businesses would spur growth, without hurting education funding. Meanwhile, the former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney said raising taxes on that group would kill job growth. The candidates also sparred on the merits of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, a law enacted by the Obama administration in response to the collapse of Lehman Brothers and the country’s ensuing financial troubles.  [more]

Gov. Mitt Romney

Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney suggested cutting the mortgage interest tax deductions yesterday, on the eve of the first debate between Romney and President Barack Obama.

The suggested cut is part of his plan to cut taxes across the board by 20 percent, but Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts, and running mate Paul Ryan have shied away from giving details on which deductions they would eliminate in order to cut taxes so significantly. [more]

President Barack Obama and Mitt Romney

President Barack Obama has pulled ahead of his rival, former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, in the quest for direct campaign donations from residents of New York state who work in the real estate industry, an analysis of campaign finance data from the U.S. Federal Elections Commission shows.

In the first seven months of the year, Obama’s campaign took in 610 contributions worth a total of $202,620 from real estate industry professionals; during the same period, Romney’s campaign took in 214 contributions worth $182,554. [more]

View of the San Remo from Central Park

One Upper West Side co-op is defying stereotypes. The residents of one building on this decidedly blue side of Central Park donated nearly four times more to the Romney campaign and to a pro-Romney super PAC than to Obama’s reelection efforts, the New York Times reported. [more]

Mitt Romney

Governor Mitt Romney yesterday outlined his plan to end the housing crisis. The Republican presidential nominee, on a new page of his campaign website, called for a four-step approach: selling government-owned foreclosed vacant homes, introducing foreclosure alternatives for distressed borrowers, reforming Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and doing away with complex rules in order to hold banks more accountable and stimulate lending to credit-worthy borrowers.

The plan, in the form of a bullet-pointed list, was short on specifics about how a Romney administration would go about putting these proposed policies in place. It does not, for example, detail what foreclosure alternatives Romney proposes or how he plans to hold banks more accountable. [more]

The swing states most crucial to the outcome of the presidential election are also among the states most affected by the foreclosure crisis. But CNBC reported today on “Power Lunch” that the issue has largely been ignored by the candidates (see video after the jump).

Mitt Romney hasn’t discussed the issue extensively since visiting Florida in January and backtracking on his initial statements that the best cure for widespread foreclosures is to let them run their course. Still, Barack Obama’s campaign is using that quote in spanish language ads in several of the hardest-hit swing states…. [more]