TALLAHASSEE — The Florida Senate early Thursday approved its version of a property tax relief package that rolls back city and county taxes while providing extra tax breaks for first time homebuyers and business owners.

The vote sets the stage for the House and Senate to immediately begin working out their differences over how to address a brewing property tax crisis that led hundreds of homeowners from across the state to protest outside the Capitol earlier this week.

“This plan benefits every single property owner in the state,” said Senate Majority Leader Dan Webster, R-Winter Garden. “I think it’s pretty awesome.”

The House plan, passed Wednesday, calls for a major cut in local government property taxes and would let voters decide if they want to eliminate property taxes in exchange for an increase in the state’s 6 percent sales tax. The House plan could ultimately lead to a 2.5-cent increase in the sales tax, making it the highest state-mandated sales tax in the country. But House leaders are predicting homeowners could ultimately save $35 billion over the next five years. Read more

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A survey of the wealthiest 10 percent of Americans shows that they are less inclined to buy a second home now than they were when the stock market was cooler and real estate was hotter.

In the spring of 2005, when the real estate market was at its most torrid, 6.3 percent of people with an average net worth of $3.1 million said they intended to buy a second home, according to a report from the American Affluence Research Center.
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Osaka, Japan, New York City, and Washington, D.C., rank as top markets for real estate investment in 2007, according to an analysis by Urban Land Institute and PricewatearahouseCoopers.

The report took into account market expectations of top industry professionals. The top markets shared some key qualities:

• Located along global pathways with major international airports and ports
• 24/7 living and working environments
• Attractive settings in comfortable climates
• Geographic barriers limiting sprawl
• Brainpower jobs attracting an affluent, highly educated workforce

“Clearly, location is becoming ever more important in real estate investment,” says ULI President Richard Rose.  Read more

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Massachusetts’ home prices increased in March for the first time in a year, the Massachusetts Association of REALTORS® reported yesterday in its monthly report on the real estate market.

The median price for a single-family house was $344,000 in March – 0.1 percent more than a year ago. Condominium prices increased by 3 percent to $279,000.

“They’re hovering where they were a year ago, which shows the market has stabilized,” said Doug Azarian, president of the Massachusetts Association of REALTORS®. Read more

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The heads of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac told a House Financial Services committee Tuesday that they are devising new types of loans to help distressed borrowers.

Richard Syron, Freddie Mac’s chairman and CEO, says the company is developing more consumer-friendly subprime products that will provide stable financing alternatives. He expects them to be available by mid-summer. He says the new products will include 30-year and possibly 40-year fixed-rate mortgages as well as adjustable-rate mortgages with longer fixed-rate periods.
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A coalition of housing activists and civil rights groups has called for a six month moratorium on foreclosures to provide time for financially troubled homeowners with time to solve their problems.

The Leadership Council on Civil Rights, The Center for Responsible Lending, The National Council of LaRaza, and the NAACP called on lenders to voluntarily adopt such a moratorium in the wake of reports of increasing mortgage delinquencies and the bankruptcies and/or failure of some 30 subprime lenders.

At a Washington, DC news conference on April 4, spokespersons for several of the organizations predicted a wave of foreclosures would soon result from what they called “reckless and unaffordable loans.” They laid the blame for the current situation at the feet of lenders, real estate agents, and the investors who purchased the subprime loans. Read more

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TALLAHASSEE — Republican and Democratic leaders in the state Senate united Thursday behind what could become the core of a deal to reduce Floridians’ property taxes, proposing $11 billion in cuts spread over the next five years.

The plan borrows heavily from strategies suggested by South Florida’s Senate Democrats, and whittles down the tax burden on homeowners and businesses through a variety of rate cuts and policy changes.

Among its provisions are a rollback of local government spending and a ceiling on future growth of city and county budgets that is pegged to inflation and population.

The plan would allow Florida residents to take their Save Our Homes tax cap benefit with them when they move. It also includes tax breaks for people purchasing their first home.

“This is across the board,'’ said Sen. Mike Haridopolos, R-Melbourne, chairman of the Senate’s Finance and Tax Committee. “First-time homebuyers. Persons trapped in their home. Or an empty nester. That’s what we tried to do: Help all Floridians.'’ Read more

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Faced with the prospect of property tax cuts barreling down from the Legislature, Palm Beach County and its cities are bracing for a wallop that could cost them, under the state’s harshest plan, more than $367 million.

Although passage appears unlikely in its current form, a plan backed by House Republicans has local officials predicting doomsday, warning that cutbacks could force them to dramatically scale back services, abolish entire departments or implement layoffs.

“I have not seen anything like this before,” said Anne Costello, finance director for Lake Worth, who told state representatives in an April 3 letter that if the plan were approved, her city’s library and recreation services would be eliminated and there would be layoffs of “monumental proportions.”

“It would be fairly devastating,” she said.

The plan by House Republicans, one of several being floated, takes direct aim at the tax jackpot local governments reaped during the hot real estate market. Backers of the plan say that it would bring much needed property tax relief for homeowners statewide, as well as put a plug in the cornucopia of local government spending that took place during the five-year boom. Read more

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While some U.S. markets are seeing slow sales and price erosion, international real estate is kicking into high gear.

Clark Winter, global chief strategist of Citigroup Global Wealth Management, thinks the outlook for global real estate makes it the best investment opportunity among 32 domestic and international asset classes. “What’s happening around the world is like the U.S. REIT market in the early 1990s, heading into a period of rapid growth,” he says.
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Here we are looking at mortgage rates for the first week of the year’s second quarter and we might as well be looking at the rates for the beginning of the year. For fourteen week rates have moved up and down within a narrow range of 14 to 20 basis points, ending up, in the case of the 30-year fixed-rate mortgage (FRM) almost exactly where it began the year.

In a statement accompanying the release of Freddie Mac’s Primary Mortgage Market Survey for the week ended April 5, Frank Nothaft, Freddie Mac vice president and chief economist remarked, “Mortgage rates have remained within a narrow band of 0.1 percentage points over every week in March. This relative stability is due to mixed economic data releases as to how strong the economy is and whether future inflation will recede. One bright spot this week came from an unexpected increase in pending home sales for February, which suggests the housing market is still healthy.” Read more

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