Federal Housing Tax Credit

If you know somebody who has purchased their first home as their primary residence since April 1, 2008 or is going to purchase the same by June 30, 2009 pay very close attention to the following. You can qualify for the Federal Housing Tax Credit.

Basically it's an interest free loan given by the Fed in the amount of 10% of the purchase price of your home, up to $7,500. The loan is paid back through a income tax increase of 1/15 of the loan's value each year for a 15 year period starting two years from the time you receive the money. You receive the money with your Federal income tax return.

You have to have purchased your first home as a primary residence within the time specified. You must make less than $75,000 a year. You must be a US citizen.

My real estate agent didn't even know about this. Be sure to get the word out! What do you know, my bailout did come after all.

The Church of Climate Change

Or "The Church of Man-Made Global Warming (Reformed)"

I was reading an article this morning and it reminded me of how much I've been wanting to put up a post that looked at the global warming hype from an critical perspective. Liberals have been falling over themselves in the last couple years to get in your face with their MMGW opinions. I refer to it as a religion for 3 reasons. Firstly, it's not unusual for a global warming believer to turn directly to vicious personal attacks on anybody who dare take a skeptical look at their conclusions. This is a well developed tactic used by fundamentalists and zealots of all stripes, with the most high profile examples being large religions. It's easier to discredit somebody who questions your assumptions than it is to debate in the arena of ideas. Secondly, MMGW zealots are basing their drastic predictions on computer models, which even at their most complicated, are many times simpler than the actual complexities that exist in Earth's atmosphere. Anybody who's had computer training in their lives probably recognizes the term Garbage in, Garbage out. This term applies here because the folks who come up with these models are assuming that they know all of the variables and complexities that would go into such a prediction. Scientists can't even predict weather more than a few hours out, what makes them think they can predict global temperatures several years from now? We're supposed to take their conclusions on faith, a very religious assertion. My last argument for equating MMGW zealots to religious fundamentalists is that they're don't betray their real objectives until they are tricked. Just as Islamic fundamentalists support the Palestinian argument that the holy land is Muslim territory because of their occupation of the land prior to 1948 their argument hides the fact that want Judaism wiped from the face of the earth. The MMGW zealots want us to accept this 'crisis' as fact and give them money and support, not mentioning that their ultimate goal is the seizing of wealth/power and the destruction of the capitalist/free market economy. They do all this under the guise of saving cute little polar bears and the like.

I implore all readers to step back and carefully look at all sides in this debate. Remember, radicals need a 'crisis', self-made or otherwise, to get their agenda passed, otherwise their agenda wouldn't be radical.

Recommended read:
Christopher Booker
Roy Spencer
Lawrence Solomon
GlobalWarmingHype.com

Below is a comment on a thread that appears under the first article cited above. I thought it was appropriate.

The Sun is a 386 billion MegaWatt nuclear fusion reactor making life possible on Earth 93 million miles away. Changes in the Sun's radiation dwarfs any other source of warming/cooling, which includes variations in Earth's orbit and atmospheric gases. Each day, more energy reaches the Earth from the Sun than is consumed by all mankind in 27 years. A single solar flare can produce energy equivalent to 100 million 10 Megaton nuclear fusion warheads. The estimated average solar energy received at Earth's outer atmosphere is called TSI or Total Solar Irradiance. TSI is estimated on average to be 1,368 Watts per square meter, but varies based on cyclical Sun spot activity/radiation, among other variables. Only 70% of the Sun's energy received by Earth's atmosphere (TSI) is absorbed. TSI has increased 0.1% during the mere 25 years NASA has been measuring it, which explains warming. A TSI shift of 0.2% is equivalent to all energy consumed by all humans in one year.

Solar variation explains the warming and cooling cycles long before fossil fuel consumption, i.e., the "Little Ice Age" where Earth's temperature was estimated to be down 2 degrees F. However, knowing that non-human activity can swing temperature far more, Marxists blame only the tiny annual 3% human-generated portion of atmospheric CO2 emissions for an alleged 1.33 degree F temperature rise in the past 150 years in response to an alleged 150% increase in CO2. They predict a 2 to 11.5 degree F rise in the next 100 years in response to an alleged estimated 50% to 250% increase in CO2. The amount of gas in Earth's atmosphere is approximately 51 trillion cubic meters weighing 5,000 trillion metric tons. Of this, Nitrogen and Oxygen are approximately 99%, water vapor is approximately 1%, and CO2 is a mere trace gas at 0.038% or a mere 2 trillion metric tons. Plants absorb CO2 and release oxygen in the carbon cycle. Natural processes involving oceans, soil, plants, etc. emit (and absorb) 33 times more CO2 per year than do all human emissions. Humans contribute a mere 3% (6 billion metric tons) of the 186 billion metric tons of CO2 emitted annually. The other 97% of annual CO2 is naturally occurring, mostly from the oceans that cover 71% of the planet. The amount of CO2 consumed is approximately the same as that emitted, including by humans. Even the annual variations in emission/absorption of CO2 exceeds annual emissions by humans.

Humans can't even accurately predict short or long term local weather or mood swings of a solitary person, let alone 100+ years of global temperatures of an astronomically complex system with only a handful of years of accurate empirical measurements. Global warming lunatics consist only of socialists and communists seeking greater control of people and their property. Global warming is asserted as a crisis to try to force quick, uneducated decisions, as all salesmen do to consumers. When government and privateers like Al Gore propose regulation, rest assured there is at least one self-serving scam behind it. Redistribution of American wealth to non-productive Americans and foreigners, with people like Al Gore positioned as an Enron-type "carbon credit" trade middleman skimming money for nothing useful, obviously cannot control Earth's temperatures. It is not a "solution" to "man made" "global warming," but that's not what they are after. It is truly us against them and they already declared war on us.

PS Please direct global warming to me because I'm freezing my a$$ off.

--Sean from Mount Rushmore (USA)

Here's another one I liked. This guy agrees with me and makes some valid points:

It's way to early to claim victory in the great climate battle (debate it certainly is not). If experts, commentators and politicians can deny there was a credit bubble for as long as they did, then it will be years before the climate juggernaut grinds to a halt. Watch CNN tell us how the Artic sea ice has receded as never before in thousands of years all due to human activity or The Independent predict doom upon doom month after month, and you know this ain't over 'til it's over.
As I understand it the controversy comes down to the computer models used. They were constructed to explain warming and none could do so using naturally occuring data. So scientists decided to add in human factors and hey presto the models conformed to the currently known data.
This is the crux of the problem. Did they know and understand enough about natural causes before making the leap to human factors?
I suspect not. But the human guilt bandwagon was rolling, politicians were jumping on board, funding increased, so there was no going back and saying hey, maybe we ought to do some more research into how the climate functions.
Scientists became politicised defending their 'tithes' and turning their principles into beliefs and their judgments into prophecies.
It has become a religion in the same manner all religions are born, the attempt to answer the question 'is nature enough to explain the wonders of the Earth and all the creature upon it?'
In the absence of sufficient data the answer was no. The gap was filled by God and hey presto everything was explained and fitted the known facts.

--john walter

My Contract is Accepted!

After the most time consuming and complicated process I've ever endured in making a purchase, I am happy to announce that my offer on my gem house has finally been accepted!

What a ride. The whole thing has left me feeling a bit shagged and fagged and fashed, it being an ordeal of no small expenditure. Since your humble narrator spoke with you last, many folds in the story have played out. Firstly, we decided that we had to get the house inspected. My agent was of the opinion that the $200 inspection was worth doing based on his assessment of the situation at the time, I agreed. As it turns out the condition of the gem house was as good as could be expected from a 50-75 year old house. By the way, it's weird that nobody knows exactly when houses were built, I digress. Problems were not critical, one hurdle overcome.

After the inspection I was excited, thinking I'm about to be a homeowner. Everything seemed like it was going to work out. That feeling was encouraged by word from the sellers lender that there were 'no red flags' in her short sell application. All I could do at this point was wait for her application to be approved.

Two long weeks later I get a call from my agent. He starts the conversation by saying 'I didn't want to call you until I fully understood what was going on' not 'your offer is approved'. Anyway, he goes on to explain that the sellers lender had come up with extra stipulations at the last freaking gasp. All of a sudden the lender required the seller to either come up with $5,700 cash or sign a $10,000 promissory note to recoup the losses from the short sell, or they would allow the property to go into foreclosure and my offer would be lost. The sellers agent came to my agent and asked if we could bear the extra cost. After laughing in the sellers agent's face, my agent sent a lengthy email to the sellers lender and agent explaining how strange and frustrating the process has been and how it would be in everybody's interest not to let this offer fall apart. As he spoke to me my mind raced all the way back to looking at houses again and I nearly threw the phone through the window.

Surprisingly, after apparently 'seeing the light,' the seller agreed to sign the $10,000 note. I was pretty surprised by that but my agent had the inside scoop. He explained to me that a foreclosure looks much worse on a credit report than a bankruptcy. He thinks that the seller is going to get rid of the house and then declare bankruptcy to try to get out of paying the note. Also, he said that they were going to go ahead and cash my earnest money check. Cash my earnest money check? Doesn't that mean that they accepted my offer? I wrote back. 'That's my understanding', he said.

...should I uncork the champagne?

It wasn't quite what I was expecting, but good news none the less. At this point all that's left is to hurry up and get the appraisal field work done and turned in, get the mortgage underwriting submitted and approved, get the appraisal approved, buy homeowners insurance, make sure there aren't any loose ends on the sellers side, and try to schedule a closing with the title company. Easy...right? Oh yeah, and get all that done by the end of next week.

Complications...

Limbo.

That's where I find myself at the moment. Although it doesn't sound like a good place to be, it's an improvement over my former status of worrying about whether or not I would make it to limbo. Now I'll try to outline the most complicated part about buying my house.

The house was listed on the MLS like a normal real estate listing. The only thing unusual about the listing was that in the description it read 'short sell - sellers lender must approve offer'. I didn't think much of it until I talked to my agent about what it meant. My agent did some digging and found that it was indeed a short sale - which means that they were asking less than what the borrower owed on the house. Also, he talked to the sellers agent about the process that they used for short sales.

This was the most convoluted process I'd ever heard of.

According to the sellers agent, they first had to submit their application to the bank to get the short sell approved - which takes 4-6 weeks. Only then would they start accumulating bids. After they arbitrarily decided it was time to stop taking bids, they would just pick the best one and proceed with the sale. These steps would've added an unknown amount of time to the process.

I was very discouraged after hearing about this and continued to look at other houses. However, the more houses I looked at, the more I wanted my gem house. I expressed to my agent that I really wanted this house. He explained to me that his broker handles short sales much differently. First they entertain legitimate offers and then accept one contingent on bank approval of short sale. Then they submit the accepted offer with the short sale application to the bank for approval. This cuts out an unknown amount of waiting time on the back end of the process and gets me a yes or no answer much sooner. I asked my agent to do what we needed to do to get the house.

He suggested that we offer $3000 more than the asking price and ask them to put that towards closing - so they'd end up with their full asking price. Also, my agent said he'd put pressure on the sellers agent to do the process our way so I wasn't left hanging in an even worse limbo - not even knowing if my offer was going to be accepted. I went with it.

The sellers agent did end up seeing the light. They agreed to our process and accepted our offer contingent on bank approval of short sale. So, I now have a contract on the house contingent on bank approval. My financials have been run, but we haven't yet submitted for final underwriting because we don't yet have bank approval. Once we get approval we can set a closing date, lock in a rate and submit every little detail about my financial situation to my lender for final underwriting. My agent is confident that I'll get the house.

The main thing that I don't understand is how the house could even be listed if they were using the sellers process. In their method, the house wasn't even on the market until the bank approved the short sale because they weren't even entertaining offers until that point. I'm pretty sure that the sellers agent is a rookie.

I'm very excited! I can't wait to move! I'll definitely let everybody know when I get the final decision and then the remaining schedule before the big housewarming party!