Existing home sales in March jumped almost 7 percent over February, according to the National Association of Realtors, and were up 16 percent over the same month a year earlier. Diana Olick of MSNBC said some experts are attributing the uptick in activity to the soon-to-expire homebuyer tax credit, with 44 percent of the sales being attributed to first-time buyers.

With the first-time homebuyer tax credit expiration impending, many in the industry are trying to determine how the program’s departure will affect the market. Jonathan Litt, a Real Estate Investment Trust analyst and founder of securities management team Land and Buildings, told MSNBC in this video that the market right now has a “false sense” of what the real buyer demand is because of the tax credit. “You can’t really take the current housing statistics too seriously,” Litt said.

With the $8,000 first-time homebuyer tax credit expiring at the end of the month, a new real estate contest is hoping to fill the void — this time targeting sellers. The national “$8,000 List Your Home Sweepstakes” will reward a lucky few sellers with the eponymous prize, in exchange for listing their home with Century 21 Real Estate. Meanwhile, a pop-up art gallery is opening in the Times Building, a condominium development located in Ridgewood, Queens on the border of Bushwick, Brooklyn, this Saturday. Also, a new 84-unit low-income housing development is set to be constructed in the Bronx at 1468 Hoe Avenue near Crotona Park, according to the New York City Department of Housing Preservation and Development and the city’s Housing Development Corporation. Click here for more. TRD
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Could Congress’ ambitious second round of home purchase tax credits — especially the $6,500 repeat buyer credit — turn out to be a wimp in terms of economic stimulus clout?
With the April 30 deadline to sign home purchase contracts for both the $8,000 first-time buyer credit and the $6,500 version looming, some real estate and building experts are concerned that fewer consumers may be motivated by the credits this spring than last fall.
The $6,500 credit, in particular, appears to be generating relatively little buzz among shoppers. As Gloria Ruesch, a broker with N.P. Dodge Real Estate in Omaha, Neb., put it, “I don’t think most people have any idea about it, or just don’t understand it. No one’s talking about it.” [more]

Hall Willkie, president of Brown Harris Stevens, said he’s seeing an increase in activity in the $2 to $10 million market

The Manhattan residential real estate market continued its slow
improvement in the first quarter of 2010, according to market reports
released today by the city’s major real estate brokerages. While prices were still far below last year’s levels, they were up from
the previous quarter and the number of closed sales nearly doubled from
the first quarter of 2009. “It’s not the market it was, but relative to last year, it’s improved,”
said appraiser Jonathan Miller, president and CEO of Miller Samuel and
the preparer of Prudential Douglas Elliman’s report (see some of thel market reports after the jump). [more]

After a flurry of activity to beat the original November first-time homebuyer tax credit deadline, fewer home sale contract signings were seen in November, according to the National Association of Realtors’ Pending Home Sales Index, which charts the number of pending home sales nationwide each month. Although November 2009’s index rating of 96 is still 15.5 percent higher than November 2008’s 83.1 rank, the score marks a 16 percent drop month-over-month. But while this drop in pending home sales activity is noteworthy, this drop was expected, according to Lawrence Yun, chief economist with NAR, due to the first-time homebuyer tax credit. Market-watchers can expect the same surge and decline pattern when the new first-time homebuyer tax credit deadline — April 30 — approaches, Yun said, adding that the index’s strength in year-over-year figures is a more accurate indicator of where the market is headed. “The fact that pending home sales are comfortably above [last year’s] levels shows the market has gained sufficient momentum on its own.” TRD

Click map for larger version (Source: PropertyShark)

An uptick in sales activity has slowed the once-rapid decline in the Manhattan real estate market, according to fourth-quarter 2009 market reports released by the city’s major brokerages today (see reports after the jump), though experts still fear a double-dip in prices. Sales activity jumped and inventory shrank in the fourth quarter, the reports show, though prices were still far below 2008 levels. Experts attributed the positive signs to low interest rates, pent-up demand from a slow winter, and falling prices. “This surge in activity and sharp drop in inventory has stopped prices from essentially hemorrhaging,” said appraiser Jonathan Miller, president and CEO of Miller Samuel and the preparer of Prudential Douglas Elliman’s fourth-quarter report. “We’re looking at a much more modest decline.”  More

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The recently extended homebuyer tax credit could heat up a typically chilly fourth-quarter housing market. Real estate search engine Trulia.com saw traffic swell the day Congress approved the law, which allows first-time homebuyers to take advantage of up to $8,000 in tax credits until April 30, and increases the income limits for eligibility. Some repeat buyers can also qualify for up to $6,500, which means that homeowners who have been putting off listing their houses on the market because of the downturn might soon try to move on to something better. Experts recommend against procrastinating, especially given what hopefully first-time buyers learned as they scrambled to find suitable inventory before the original Nov. 30 tax credit deadline. While those who didn’t find homes by Nov. 30 got lucky, buyers shouldn’t expect another extension beyond April 30, and interest rates are expected to rise next year as well. [WSJ]

Home builders stand to gain hundreds of millions of dollars in refunds on taxes from up to five years ago as a result of the new tax break for businesses that President Barack Obama signed into law Friday. The tax break, part of the package that included an extension of the first-time homebuyer tax credit and unemployment benefits, could grant big builders like Michigan-based Pulte Homes up to $450 million in tax refunds. Miami-based Lennar Corp. expects to receive between $200 million and $300 million. While such companies lobbied extensively for the refunds, many of those large builders have, in the meantime, built up large cash reserves by selling assets and hoarding cash in the immediate wake of the housing crash. Now, the top 10 builders have an average of $1.2 billion cash, up from the $616 million they had in 2007, according to JPMorgan. The tax break is like “giving them free money” at this point, said Rob Stevenson, a real estate analyst with investment bank Fox-Pitt Kelton. The larger impact of the law will be felt amongst smaller, private builders who might otherwise have shuttered, said Bill Killmer, vice president of advocacy at the National Association of Home Builders.

[WSJ]

The Nov. 30 expiration of the $8,000 first-time homebuyer federal tax credit has buyers trying to close deals as quickly as possible, a task made even more difficult by a calendar quirk. Nov. 30 is a Monday, meaning paperwork would mostly have to be completed the previous week, which includes the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, Thanksgiving Day, and the unofficial shopping holiday of Black Friday. The Senate has reached a tentative deal on an extension of the deadline and is slated to vote on the proposal this week. [Palm Beach Post] [more]