About Adams County, PA

The tax credit will be slightly expanded for its original format to include buyers who have owned their current residence for at least 5 years. These buyers would be given a reduced amount of $6500.00.

The First time home buyer portion of the credit has been extended. The Buyer must be under contract to purchase by the end of April 2010. The home must settle by July 1st, 2010. This gives a few of your who just missed about a few months to get off the fence and make a purchase. The amount remains the same at $8000.00.

Eligibility remains the same for First time buyers.

TAX CREDIT ELIGIBILITY

1.) Amount of Credit - You will be credited the lesser of 10% of the cost of the home or $8000.00 dollars. If you buy a house that costs 70,000 your credit will be 7000 for example.

2.) Eligible Property - Any single family residence (including condos, co-ops, townhouses) that will be used as a principal residence

3.) Refundable -Yes. Reduces or can Eliminate income tax liability for the year of the purchase. Any unused amount of tax credit is refunded to the purchaser.

4.) Income Limit - Income limit has increased to 125,000 for a single return and 225,000 for a joint return.

5.) First time Home-buyer Only - Yes. Purchaser (and purchasers spouse) may not have owned a principal residence in 3 years previous to purchase.

6.) Repayment - No repayment for purchases on or after January 1, 2009 and before December 1st, 2009.

7.) Recapture - If home is sold within three years of purchase, entire amount of credit is recaptured on sale. Applies only to homes purchased in 2009.

8.) Termination - End of April 2010 to be under contract, must settle by July 1st, 2010.

Some officials are saying this is the last time they are going to extend the credit. I think that might be up for debate depending on the condition of the housing market come next summer, but at this point It would be fairly safe to figure this as your last opportunity at the 8000.00 or 6500.00.

We all know that Google is very innovative.  They are the webs biggest powerhouse, and they are into everything.  Recently Google maps added a function for Real Estate.  I personally think this is going to revolutionize the way we search for homes.  If you type in a zip code and bring up their basic map and click the more tab, which is located within the map, it will show all the listings in the screen shot. 

I searched for one of my listings to confirm that it was showing up in the google search. Below is an example of a typical google map. 

On the sidebar to the left you can see the list of home search criteria as well as a list of homes that are already showing up on the screen.  I really think google has done a great job with this.  If you find a home in Gettysburg using a google search and you need a buyer agent representative I'd love to help you out.

David.Monsour@gmail.com or call 717 319 3408.

A lot of my young, first time clients ask my advice on whether to get a home warranty policy on their new purchase. Obviously, if they are buying a just built home, they are covered for defects through the builders warranty so no policy is needed. However if they are purchasing a "used" home, that's a different story and a home warranty policy might be a good choice. Home warranties cover different parts of the home, as well as some appliances. It is important to know what is covered, so read the contract when you do decide on a certain company. While investigating home warranty companies, take the time to call the company, and ask specific questions, this will give you some insight into how that particular company deals with its clients. If they don't have much time to answer your questions, you can be sure they aren't going to have time to respond to a claim in a timely manner. It's important to know what is covered, such as pre-existing conditions, defects not found in the home inspection. What appliances and systems are covered, most companies will cover just about anything, for additional costs. Also, know your deductable, a policy with a smaller upfront purchase price may have a much higher deductable. It may be better in the long run to spend the extra money up front and pay a smaller more manageable deductable should you need to file a claim. With today's internet it is no problem to find a good company, with a solid reputation that you can depend on.

According the Gettysburg times the borough residents will receive a 1 mill tax hike for 2010. This will result in 117,000 in increased tax revenue.

Click Here for the Complete Article

The idea behind the tax increase is to cover the debt on a 3 million dollar loan that is needed to rehab the Gettysburg Borough Offices. It's estimated that this project will cost about 2 million dollars. Some motivation for doing this now instead of later is the favorable interest rates that are currently available. The other one million will go toward infrastructure of the borough.

The mileage rate will increase from 14.38 to 15.38. The current rate is already the highest in the area. This is partially due to Gettysburg College operating as a not for profit, thus not paying borough property taxes. While Gettysburg College does bring a lot of money into the area is creates some issues with the tax base. The borough footprint is relatively small to begin with so subtracting anything in terms of property taxes creates some budget issues.

For those of you who want to know how this will effect your personal taxes you'll need to find your assessed value (this is available at the courthouse, it is not the price you paid for your house) and multiply that by 0.01538. Then take your assessed value and multiply by .01438. Take the first number and subtract the second and you'll have your change in taxes. This doesn't include any changes with school tax however.

(assessed value x .01538) - (assessed value x .01438) = Change in taxes for 2010.

If you're a borough resident I'll happily provide assessed values just send an email to david.monsour@gmail.com

The Realtor Association of York and Adams Counties (RAYAC) just recently released the sales statistics for September of 2009. Before I analyze anything you see here I want to make sure that the difference between Mean (Average) and Median is Understood.

Mean or what is commonly know as Average is the Sum (add up all the values) of a group of numbers, divided by the total number of values. Example (2,7,9,4,5 add them up = 27 divided by the number of numbers which is 5 = 5.4. We round down to an average of 5) I'm sure everyone knows how to average numbers, but few know what the median is.

The Median (courtesy of www.Investorwords.com) One type of average, found by arranging the values in order and then selecting the one in the middle. If the total number of values in the sample is even, then the median is the mean of the two middle numbers. The median is a useful number in cases where the distribution has very large extreme values which would otherwise skew the data. The reason we are using the median is because there are homes that sell for 10,000 and homes that sell for 1,000,000 or more which would classify as large extreme values as stated above (see median)

Because my primary market is Gettysburg I'm going to cover that area. If you have questions about other areas I can certainly answer any questions you might have. Feel free to email me at David.Monsour@gmail.com with specific questions.

Gettysburg, Pa showed an increase in both median sales price and number of homes sold, which is great news. However before you start jumping for joy and calling your Realtor to increase your price you have to realize that even though we used the median of 130 homes sold in September, statistically speaking, that sample is relatively small.

This number may be caused by a large number of homes selling in a higher price bracket thus shifting the number high enough to show an increase, but this does not necessarily mean that home values on the aggregate have increased. When we price homes we have to find other comparable homes that have sold. We cannot simply translate this to mean that all homes have increased in value 3%.

What we can take away from this is a sign of improvement in the market. We can evaluate again next month to see if this trend continues and possible formulate a better conjecture as to what the future of the Gettysburg market might look like come spring. Look on the bright side, Gettysburg is the only place in Adams county that is showing a potential increase in value. Let's the hope the trend continues and brings the rest of the county along with it. Biglerville's median price is up but the number of homes sold is down significantly.

Interest rates and the potential expansion/extension of the tax credit could really play a roll in home values. Higher interest rates decrease buying power, and the tax credit is propping values somewhat artificially. We should have a better idea of the trends in the next few months.

My contact information is below if you are considering buying or selling in my local market.