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Apparently, Aumsville Oregon missed the real estate memo letting them know that the market stinks everywhere.  Really it is supposed to be horrible everywhere per the media.  This small town seems confused because their current inventory is a mere 3.8 months.  Apparently no one sent, or those Aumsvillians?  Aumsvillites?  didn’t read it because 3.85 months of inventory is considered a seller’s market (4-6 months inventory is neutral).   What’s up with that?

Their 2nd quarter sales volume has remained fairly steady through this recession.  If you look at the 2nd quarter data for the decade you can see the nice bump during the bubble time.  Now it looks deceptive, but Aumsville is so small that when a subdivision like Highberger Meadows goes in, it makes a huge difference in the real estate market.  The new construction homes sold fairly well in this quarter.  The prices are great for the size and amenities AND Aumsville qualifies for the USDA loans which is one of the very few 100% financing programs.  Close to Salem, qualifies for 100% financing, has a nice new subdivision…what’s not to like and buyers seems to think so as well.

Unlike the Salem Oregon real estate market, the Aumsville market has been hovering around 6 months of inventory for a while.  This plunge in inventory is a little bit of a surprise, but not totally unexpected.   Not sure it will stay in a seller’s market for the whole year, but probably a neutral market.   If you want to see homes that are currently on the Aumsville real estate market, you can search for homes here.

You may remember I wrote a post about how you could use the $8,000 tax credit as a down payment for a Salem Oregon home with a “new plan” that was announced, only to retract it 24 hours later.

So…in order to make things “easy”…cough, cough… for first-time home buyers the government had an announcement about this subject.  So what’s the deal?

The tax credit has been approved on FHA loans, but wait…you can’t use it towards the 3.5% down payment part when you actually purchase a house.  So essentially you can use it for closing costs, BUT you can’t get the credit early and do that because that would be fraud.

Jeff Belonger wrote a really good post on this, so I’m just sending you to his post to explain it all.  In true government fashion, it is so convoluted and difficult, that well bottom line…you should just take the tax credit when you file your taxes.

The other day, I wrote a post about how HUD was going to allow first time home buyers with FHA loans to get a “bridge type” loan on their tax credit so they can use it as a down payment.

That has since been retracted.  Personally, I am not surprised.  It would take a while to get a program like that in place and the tax credit is only good through the end of this year.

So…never mind.

Go back to your regularly scheduled Salem Oregon house hunting program and forget that they ever said that.