Nearly 200,000 homebuyers could lose out on the $8,000 tax credit because they can’t get deals done by the June 30 deadline.
What did they do wrong? They tried to take advantage of the distressed properties flooding the market.
For example, many are trying to take advantage of short sales, buying from sellers who owe more on their mortgage than the home is worth. In these deals, the lender has to agree to forgive the remaining debt, and that can take time — at least two to three months from the time an offer is made until lender approval. And that assumes a relatively clean deal, in which there’s no second mortgage. If there are any complications, expect six months or more.
"The lenders have improved but they’re still terrible," said Richard Smith, CEO of Realogy, the parent company of several franchise real estate brokers. "We started telling buyers back in January that short sales may not close in time for the credit."
Another factor slowing down closings is what gets found during inspections. The average foreclosed property comes with more maintenance and repair problems than conventional sales. Fixing those can take time, said Rick Davidson, CEO of Century 21.
Meanwhile, all deals these days are at risk because of appraisal issues. With home prices still shaky, mortgage lenders have gotten strict about making sure that the sale price is not inflated.
"New mortgage money is so concerned about pricing, they require another appraisal a couple weeks before closing," said Smith. "They’re consumed with value." Lining up an appraiser and getting a report can add days, even weeks to the time it takes to close.
Congress is mulling an extension that would allow people to finish their transactions as late as Sept. 30 and still claim the credit — as long as they signed sales contracts before the original April 30 deadline.
"Brokers and agents are concerned that if Congress does not pass an extension, many of these homes will end up back on the market, defeating the whole purpose and benefit of the tax credit," said Tara-Nicholle Nelson, a spokeswoman for real estate website Trulia.
But the extension is hardly a sure thing, according to Regan Lachapelle, deputy communications director for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, who introduced the measure. "We are still working to get the votes we need," said Lachapelle.
Buffalo General Hospital has received state approval for an $8.4 million relocation project of its MRI and CT services.
The State Department of Health okayed the project in mid-May, which calls for shifting all of its MRI and CT services to one central site. The hospital plans to move the equipment and services from the second floor of the A and B buildings into the sub-basement of A building.
The plan better realigns imaging services and will allow improved access to the heart-vascular center under construction next door. The project also opens up space that will likely see future use as clinical services.
Completion is slated for this fall.
Energy efficiency group PECI landed a $749,153 sliver of the $76 million in stimulus funding announced Friday by the U.S. Department of Energy for more energy efficient buildings.
Portland-based PECI’s award was one of 13 educational grants under the program. It will pay for a PECI team to revise and develop curriculum to train commercial building auditors and operators, who in turn will make sure that buildings are as energy efficient as possible.
The total cost of the PECI curriculum project is $1.5 million, according to the project outline released by the U.S. Department of Energy.
In all 58 projects received funding in the Friday announcement, all of the money going toward improved efficiency — from the development of better insulation to the testing of advanced building controls.
“Energy-efficient commercial buildings will help our country cut its carbon emissions and energy costs while the training programs will upgrade the skills of the current workforce and attract the next generation to careers in the emerging clean-energy economy,” said U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu in a news release.
PECI, originally Portland Energy Conservation Inc., is a nonprofit that helps businesses with energy efficiency.
The University of Texas said it won’t join the Pacific-10 Conference, dealing a blow to efforts to grow conference influence and revenue.
Texas said Monday it will say in the Big 12 Conference, USA Today reported.
The news appears to dampen expectations of a seismic shift in the college sports landscape. After Nebraska officially left the Big 12 last week, the Texas Longhorns, Oklahoma, Oklahoma State, Texas Tech and Texas A&M were expected to finalize plans to join the Pac-10 and create a 16-team conference.
The University of Colorado last week said it will join the Pac-10, leaving the Big 12 Conference.
The Pacific-10 seeks to grow revenues in an increasingly cutthroat world of big-time college sports bad credit payday advance.
Although a winner with its teams on the field, the conference is a laggard in revenues. The Pac-10 reported $96 million in revenue last year. That trails all but one of the major collegiate conferences, despite having prominent schools like the University of California, Los Angeles; University of Southern California; Cal and Stanford, which have traditions of football and basketball success.
Recently the Pac-10 hired Creative Artists Agency to advise on expansion and on upcoming broadcast negotiations. The conference’s agreements with ESPN and Fox expire after the 2011-12 school year.
CHARGING AHEAD
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FALLING BEHIND
Hewlett-Packard Co. took steps on Monday to allow printing through the Web from any type of device.
The world's biggest printer seller (NYSE:HPQ) said it plans to add an e-mail address for all its printers so users can send files from computers and mobile phones to printers or store them "in the cloud" for later printing.
The Palo Alto company said it plans to sell tens of millions of Web-connected printers by the end of next year.
It introduced four Photosmart all-in-one printers that include new ePrint software and have the new Web storage and printing capabilities. The devices start at $99.
Google Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) also said on Monday that it is working with HP on software that will let users connect to Google Docs, Photos and Calendar directly from their printers.
Others said to be working on ways to connect to their content directly through printers rather than computers are Facebook Inc. and Live Nation Entertainment Inc.
A McLean tech company recently opened a Columbia office — and it needs bodies to fill desks.
Internet telephone company iCore Networks took space last month at 5950 Symphony Woods Road in Columbia and has plans to employ 30 at the office by the end of 2010.
To date, around half of the 30 positions have been filed, meaning they’re still on the hunt for 15. CEO Stephen G. Canton said the Columbia office is searching for network engineers, salespeople and project engineers.
And in the middle half of 2011, Canton expects to hire another 20 employees in Columbia with a long-term goal of expanding that office to 100 workers. The jobs range in pay from $25,000 to $80,000, not including commission, Canton added.
McClean-based iCore was attracted to Columbia because of its proximity to both D.C. and Baltimore, Canton said.
The 9-year-old company has an annual revenue of $25 million, Canton said.
With many of their rivals on the ropes, Canada’s major banks are nicely positioned to catapult into the top tier of U.S. financial institutions — for the first time ever.
The main reason is that the country’s banks famously skated through the subprime and derivatives meltdown of 2008 with no government bailouts and comparatively few writedowns. As a result they replaced their Swiss rivals as the international standard for banking excellence and readied themselves for cherry-picking the best assets in the distressed banking industry south of the border.
On the surface, it looks like they’re on a U.S. buying spree. Since mid-April, three major Canadian banks — TD Bank Financial Group, Bank of Montreal (BMO) and Bank of Nova Scotia — have collectively acquired six failed U.S. institutions. All the acquisitions were cautiously negotiated with the U.S. Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. (FDIC), which is taking on a heavy share of the potential loan losses.
But critics say the Big Five are playing it too safe, content to remain third- and fourth-string players in the U.S. markets where they operate, when they should be aiming for the No. 1 spot. If ever there was a time to do it, it’s now, but Canadian banks don’t seem to have the nerve to bust out and become truly global players.
That kind of reticence from the boardroom could be fatal for the future of Canada’s major banks, who run the risk of growing stagnant behind cushy domestic regulations that make it impossible for foreign rivals to compete on an equal footing. Consider that the six recent acquisitions add up to a mere US$22 billion in new assets for the buyers. That’s about 1% of total assets for these pillars of Toronto’s Bay Street — little more than a token gesture to make it seem Canada’s banks are not entirely asleep at the wheel.
Analyst Michael Goldberg with Toronto-based Desjardins Securities agrees the U.S. market offers a rich opportunity for Canada’s super-capitalized banks. "TD in recent years has been most aggressive in building its U.S. franchise," he says. "But reaction has been mixed payday advance. Some investors are very skeptical anytime Canadian companies buy anything in U.S."
Earlier this month, TD Bank (TD) acquired South Financial Group for US$61 million, adding more than 100 branches to its 1,000-plus locations in the Maine-to-Florida corridor. This follows on the heels of buying three small Florida-based institutions closed by regulators.
BMO (BMO), which bought assets of failed Illinois lender Amcore Bank, adds 52 branches in Illinois and Wisconsin, building on an existing network of 288 branches at its Harris subsidiary. Toronto-based BMO made its big U.S. push with its C$718 million (US$682.1 million) acquisition of Harris in 1984. It has since spent about C$2.5 billion (US$2.4 billion) buying U.S. banks, but only reached the No. 3 spot in Illinois by deposits.
Scotiabank (BNS) is the third Canadian lender to take advantage of U.S. government-assisted acquisitions, snapping up R-G Premier Bank of Puerto Rico, building on the 17 branches it already has on the Caribbean island. However rival Banco Popular de Puerto Rico acquired the deposits of Westernbank at the same time, securing its position as the largest insured bank on the island, despite the fact that Scotiabank has been doing business in tiny Puerto Rico for 100 years.
Canada’s big banks can afford to casually dabble in foreign markets because their domestic operations are reliable money-making machines that deliver billions of dollars in profit quarter after quarter.
But those profits come at the expense of Canadian consumers and small businesses, poorly served by a clubby group of banks whose domestic operations are perhaps the least competitive in the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), an international group of 31 developed countries, including the U.S., Australia and South Korea, with free-market economies.
If Canada’s major banks are not prepared to go big in the U.S., they should just pull stakes and go home
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