should be an intresting April for 1st time home buyer.

As most of you know about the The $8,000 tax credit is for first-time home buyers only. For the tax credit program, the IRS defines a first-time home buyer as someone who has not owned a principal residence during the three-year period prior to the purchase. The deadline is April 30, 2010. However, in cases where a binding sales contract is signed by April 30, 2010, a home purchase completed by June 30, 2010 will qualify.

I do see more people starts to bid up the price (good area not a bad investment), kinda remind me of 2004-2005. Which is kind of crazy because some of them will probably later realize it's not their "dream home". Picture is worth a 1000 word so here goes one of my favorite site http://www.visualeconomics.com



Other articles on cost of home ownership:
MSN

Get Rich Slowly (from 2007) the data is little dated but great reference.

Q4: Homeownership Rate Declines to Early 2000 Level homeownership and rental vacancy rate graph

Is it better to buy or rent NYTimes

Equifax's reported more than 8 percent of homeowners were behind 30 days or more on their mortgage loans, up 4.4 percent from December 2009 and 21 percent from last January. Let's hope the dip is due to xmas shopping.