For a limited time, Los Alamos National Bank is offering special financing terms for select properties in Northern New Mexico. There will be no better time to buy with low, low interest rates, no or low down payments, no LANB closing costs, no private mortgage insurance. Click Herefor these great opportunities.
Home Buyer Credit Gets New Life
By COREY BOLES and JOHN D. MCKINNON
WASHINGTON — Senate negotiators reached a tentative deal to extend a tax credit for first-time home buyers, but its passage remains uncertain.
The agreement would extend the existing credit for first-time home buyers, worth up to $8,000, while offering a new credit of up to $6,500 for some existing homeowners, Senate aides said. The reduced credit would be available to all home buyers who have been in their current residence for a consecutive five-year period in the past eight years.
The new provisions are aimed at broadening availability of the credit beyond first-time buyers and giving the weakened real-estate market a bigger boost while preventing real-estate investors from benefiting.
Many property experts have cited the credit as a reason for signs of recovery in the housing market in recent months. But that recovery was somewhat undercut by the September drop in new-home sales reported Wednesday.
The credit would be extended from its current expiration date of Dec. 1 to all contracts entered into by April 30, and closed before July 1. It is expected that income limits on people claiming the credit would be increased to $125,000 for singles and $250,000 for couples, from the current $75,000 and $150,000, aides said. The credit phases out for people making more than those amounts.
While Senate lawmakers appear to have reached a deal on the substance of the tax credit, they are still at odds over how it would be brought to the Senate floor. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D., Nev.) hopes to add it to a bill currently on the Senate floor to extend federal unemployment insurance benefits. But agreement on that hasn’t been finalized.
While Senate Republicans are likely to support the measure, House Democrats have raised concerns that it carries a high cost to the government. The Internal Revenue Service is examining the program for alleged abuse.
Write to Corey Boles at corey.boles@dowjones.com and John D. McKinnon at john.mckinnon@wsj.com
The Railyard is truly the new gathering place for all of Santa Fe’s citizens and its visitors. Come meet friends and family. Have a great meal and view great contemporary art. See exciting performances. Choose from the best of locally grown produce. Ride your bike or take a train. Find a gift for a friend. Relax or play in the Park.
At an annual Albuquerque festival, balloon pilots go head to head in aerial matchups of strategy and skilll. Stephanie Simon reports on the sport of competitive balllooning.
Played all the golf courses the Santa Fe area has to offer? Ever played the Codorniz de Diablo? Didn’t think so. Few have heard of the elusive “Quail Devil”. But for the seven Santa Fe pro’s who turned out last Monday for this “fiendish” 9-hole round, this was no Sunday school practice.
Even under the best conditions, Quail Run’s immaculately groomed fairways are narrow, with out-of-bounds lurking ever so close and glistening condominium windows just daring the swinger to slice.
The devil must have been at work in the wee hours Monday morning, as the players found the blue boxes as far back as possible in their respective tee boxes. In several cases, the fairway distance was increased by 20 – 30 yards. On the par three’s, pins were hidden behind copses of trees, invisible from the tee box.
And if there was a slope to be found on the manicured greens, the pin proudly stood at the severest of angles.
Hole #2 and Hole #8 particularly bedeviled the players: Hole #2’s pin was inches off the rear collar on a 15 degree backward slope. Hole #8’s length was increased to nearly 360 yards from the typical 340 and the pin placement was also adjacent to the rear collar sloping severely down and left; A close miss ended in a ball rolling unhindered 10 or more feet away.
Described as one of New Mexico’s most difficult holes period, Hole #7’s par 5 distance was increased to over 540 yards – the tee box offering the narrowest of windows through the trees to the fairway beyond. A beguiling hole on a typical day, most players over play this hole, refusing to lay up and tending to try for 150 – 175 yard green shots. Dense trees on the left and an arroyo on the right foul 80% of these tried and true players. On this day, two of our seven pro’s birdied this hole – both taking a calculated second swing to lie 100 yards out and wedging their ball to the green on their third. Arguably, two risky putts awarded the players with the lead – but this was only the 7th.
By the end of the ninth hole, four of our seven pro’s tied for a one-under par, or 31. When asked, the five visiting pro’s all commented that the course pleasantly surprised them on this day and that they would never underestimate the Quail’s prowess again.
Quail Run offers a great but often overlooked golf course and other amenities. Its located in Southeast Santa Fe and is a community worth exploring if golf is important to your lifestyle.
Barker Realty is proud to announce it launched a website for the Hwy 285 and Eldorado areas just south of Santa Fe, NM. The website is intended to be the first one stop shop for potential buyers looking for properties, and information on Eldorado and the surrounding communities. The site also has information on the retail and business’s in the area, the amenities and the statistics on the housing market in Eldorado and the Hwy 285 area. The site also helps sellers market their properties to buyers in this area. Eldorado is a great community with amenities, events, and organizations and this site is intended to help promote them to public and those potentially interested in buying in the area.
For information on the surrounding communities like Galisteo, Lamy, Spirit Wind, East Ranch and more click here.
For information on the history of Eldorado and its demographics click here.
For information on the retail and business’s in the area click here.
For information on the amenities (dog park, the clubhouse, the library, the hiking and biking trails and more click here.
For information on the local housing statistics for Eldorado and the Hwy 285 area click here.
We hope you’re as excited as we are and look forward to helping educate the public on these communities and the wonderful, unique, qualities they offer.
Falling real estate prices are becoming as much a feature of high-end neighborhoods as ocean views, infinity pools and four-car garages.
While the latest data suggests prices for mainstream homes may be stabilizing after several years of pain, the news for luxury homes isn’t looking as good.
That’s bad news for sellers, naturally, but anyone in the market for a home listed for $2 million or more will find deeply discounted asking prices—and may be able to command even lower prices.
On Tuesday, data from the Federal Housing Finance Agency showed that average home prices ticked up 0.3% nationwide between June and July, including a 1.6% bounce on the west coast. The gains are modest, and they are partly influenced by the season—higher-end homes tend to sell better in late spring and early summer, as families try to move before the school year. Analysts are disappointed the rise was not higher.
Nonetheless, prices have now risen three months in a row. And compared with the disastrous events of the past few years, anything other than Armageddon is apt to raise spirits.
But these numbers only relate to homes purchased with conforming loans backed by the FHFA—in most areas, that describes mortgages of up to $417,000, or up to $713,000 in the country’s most expensive regions.
By MATT GROSS
Published: December 23, 2007
FOR almost 200 years, Santa Fe has been a site of pilgrimage. Every Good Friday since the early 18th century, believers have marched by foot, away from the center of town, with its Romanesque cathedral and rounded stucco buildings the color of roasted corn, toward El Santuario de Chimayo, the Lourdes of the Southwest, in the high-desert hills some 28 miles north. It’s a marathon of the devout, who reach the holy finish line wearing anything from hiking gear to their Sunday best.
SANTA FE, N.M. — Happily remarried, in a new city, with a new job, Carolyn Bourassa felt the time was finally right to get rid of her 10-year-old divorce papers. Somehow, though, the recycling bin didn’t seem appropriate.
She wanted the papers burned — flamboyantly, in-your-face torched — in a symbolic act of closure and renewal.
Zozobra was just what she needed.
Every summer for 85 years, Santa Fe artisans have built a giant effigy of wood and chicken wire, then stuffed it with woes. They named the thing Zozobra, but many here just call him Old Man Gloom.
Falling real estate prices are becoming as much a feature of high-end neighborhoods as ocean views, infinity pools and four-car garages.
