What We're Hearing

Time is running out on the $8,000 first time home buyer tax credit and lenders and Realtors are letting their clients know this ASAP. In a recent advertisement in The Washington Post, Navy Federal Credit Union shopped a 4.625% 30-year fixed rate loan, telling the reader that "time is running out" on the tax credit. The FTHB expires November 30 and lobbyists from the housing and mortgage industries are camped out in Gucci Gulch (the halls of Congress) this week and next, pleading with their elected officials to extend this "benny" at least for six more months. Some groups want the credit to be offered to all home buyers -- first timers or not. (We'll see about that.) To date, the FTHB has cost the U.S. Treasuryabout $15 billion. As the old saying goes: It's only money...