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This beautiful, well maintained newer construction is located in the desirable Avensong neighborhood. This 3 bedroom, 2.5 bath house boasts fresh paint, designer fixtures, and tons of storage! The fabulous open floor plan is ideal for entertaining, and soaring cathedral ceilings with tons of natural light make this an airy, open home. With the two car attached garage and beautiful fenced backyard complete this wonderful home!

A great location within the Avensong neighborhod at the end of a dead-end street makes this home very quiet with tons of privacy. The neighborhood offers a beautiful pool, clubhouse, playground, and tennis, basketball, & sand volleyball courts. Located within great Alpharetta school districts and minutes from GA400, this house has it all!

For lots more pictures & information, please CLICK HERE!

First-time buyers can earn up to $7500!

The recently passed Housing and Economic Recovery Act of 2008 provides a $7,500 tax credit for qualified first-time home buyers. Here is some helpful information on the tax credit:

First-Time Home Buyer Tax Credit at a Glance:

• The tax credit is available for first-time home buyers only.
• The maximum credit amount is $7,500.
• The credit is available for homes purchased on or after April 9, 2008 and beforeJuly 1, 2009.
• Single taxpayers with incomes up to $75,000 and married couples with incomes up to $150,000 qualify for the full tax credit.
• The tax credit works like an interest-free loan and must be repaid over a 15-year period.

Frequently Asked Questions About the First-Time Home Buyer Tax Credit:

1. Who is eligible to claim the $7,500 tax credit? First time home buyers purchasing any kind of home—new or resale—are eligible for the tax credit. To qualify for the tax credit, a home purchase must occur on or after April 9, 2008 and before July 1, 2009. For the purposes of the tax credit, the purchase date is the date when closing occurs.
2. What is the definition of a first-time home buyer? The law defines "first-time home buyer" as a buyer who has not owned a principal residence during the three-year period prior to the purchase. For married taxpayers, the law tests homeownership history of both the home buyer and his/her spouse. For example, if you have not owned a home in the past three years but your spouse has owned a principal residence, neither you nor your spouse qualifies for the first-time home buyer tax credit.
3. What types of homes will qualify for the tax credit? Any home purchased by an eligible first-time home buyer will qualify for the credit, provided that the home will be used as a principal residence and the buyer has not owned a home in the previous three years. This includes single-family detached homes, attached homes like townhouses, and condominiums.
4. Instead of buying a new home from a home builder, I have hired a contractor to construct a home on a lot that I already own. Do I still qualify for the tax credit? Yes. For the purposes of the home buyer tax credit, a principal residence that is constructed by the home owner is treated by the tax code as having been "purchased" on the date the owner first occupies the house. In this situation, the date of first occupancy must be on or after April 9, 2008 and before July 1, 2009. In contrast, for newly-constructed homes bought from a home builder, eligibility for the tax credit is determined by the settlement date.
5. What is "modified adjusted gross income"? Modified adjusted gross income or MAGI is defined by the IRS. To find it, a taxpayer must first determine "adjusted gross income" or AGI. AGI is total income for a year minus certain deductions (known as "adjustments" or "above-the-line deductions"), but before itemized deductions from Schedule A or personal exemptions are subtracted. On Forms 1040 and 1040A, AGI is the last number on page 1 and first number on page 2 of the form. For Form 1040-EZ, AGI appears on line 4 (as of 2007). Note that AGI includes all forms of income including wages, salaries, interest income, dividends and capital gains.To determine modified adjusted gross income (MAGI), add to AGI certain amounts such as foreign income, foreign-housing deductions, student-loan deductions, IRA-contribution deductions and deductions for higher-education costs.
6. If my modified adjusted gross income (MAGI) is above the limit, do I qualify for any tax credit? Possibly. It depends on your income. Partial credits of less than $7,500 are available for some taxpayers whose MAGI exceeds the phaseout limits. The credit becomes totally unavailable for individual taxpayers with a modified adjusted gross income of more than $95,000 and for married taxpayers filing joint returns with an AGI of more than $170,000.
7. Can you give me an example of how the partial tax credit is determined? Just as an example, assume that a married couple has a modified adjusted gross income of $160,000. The applicable phaseout to qualify for the tax credit is $150,000, and the couple is $10,000 over this amount. Dividing $10,000 by $20,000 yields 0.5. When you subtract 0.5 from 1.0, the result is 0.5. To determine the amount of the partial first-time home buyer tax credit that is available to this couple, multiply $7,500 by 0.5. The result is $3,750.Here’s another example: assume that an individual home buyer has a modified adjusted gross income of $88,000. The buyer’s income exceeds $75,000 by $13,000. Dividing $13,000 by $20,000 yields 0.65. When you subtract 0.65 from 1.0, the result is 0.35. Multiplying $7,500 by 0.35 shows that the buyer is eligible for a partial tax credit of $2,625. Please remember that these examples are intended to provide a general idea of how the tax credit might be applied in different circumstances. You should always consult your tax advisor for information relating to your specific circumstances.
8. Does the credit amount differ based on tax filing status? No. The credit is in general equal to $7,500 for a qualified home purchase, whether the home buyer files taxes as a single or married taxpayer. However, if a household files their taxes as "married filing separately" (in effect, filing two returns), then the credit of $7,500 is claimed as a $3,750 credit on each of the two returns.
9. Are there any circumstances for which buyers whose incomes are at or below the $75,000 limit for singles or the $150,000 limit for married taxpayers might not be able to claim the full $7,500 tax credit? In general, the tax credit is equal to 10% of the qualified home purchase price, but the credit amount is capped or limited at $7,500. For most first-time home buyers, this means the credit will equal $7,500. For home buyers purchasing a home priced less than $75,000, the credit will equal 10% of the purchase price.
10. I heard that the tax credit is refundable. What does that mean? The fact that the credit is refundable means that the home buyer credit can be claimed even if the taxpayer has little or no federal income tax liability to offset. Typically this involves the government sending the taxpayer a check for a portion or even all of the amount of the refundable tax credit.For example, if a qualified home buyer expected, notwithstanding the tax credit, federal income tax liability of $5,000 and had tax withholding of $4,000 for the year, then without the tax credit the taxpayer would owe the IRS $1,000 on April 15th. Suppose now that taxpayer qualified for the $7,500 home buyer tax credit. As a result, the taxpayer would receive a check for $6,500 ($7,500 minus the $1,000 owed).
11. What is the difference between a tax credit and a tax deduction? A tax credit is a dollar-for-dollar reduction in what the taxpayer owes. That means that a taxpayer who owes $7,500 in income taxes and who receives a $7,500 tax credit would owe nothing to the IRS.A tax deduction is subtracted from the amount of income that is taxed. Using the same example, assume the taxpayer is in the 15 percent tax bracket and owes $7,500 in income taxes. If the taxpayer receives a $7,500 deduction, the taxpayer’s tax liability would be reduced by $1,125 (15 percent of $7,500), or lowered from $7,500 to $6,375.
12. Can I claim the tax credit if I finance the purchase of my home under a mortgage revenue bond (MRB) program? No. The tax credit cannot be combined with the MRB home buyer program.
13. I am not a U.S. citizen. Can I claim the tax credit? Maybe. Anyone who is not a nonresident alien (as defined by the IRS), who has not owned a principal residence in the previous three years and who meets the income limits test may claim the tax credit for a qualified home purchase. The IRS provides a definition of "nonresident alien" in IRS Publication 519.
14. Does the credit have to be paid back to the government? If so, what are the payback provisions? Yes, the tax credit must be repaid. Home buyers will be required to repay the credit to the government, without interest, over 15 years or when they sell the house, if there is sufficient capital gain from the sale. For example, a home buyer claiming a $7,500 credit would repay the credit at $500 per year. The home owner does not have to begin making repayments on the credit until two years after the credit is claimed. So if the tax credit is claimed on the 2008 tax return, a $500 payment is not due until the 2010 tax return is filed. If the home owner sold the home, then the remaining credit amount would be due from the profit on the home sale. If there was insufficient profit, then the remaining credit payback would be forgiven.
15. Why must the money be repaid? Congress’s intent was to provide as large a financial resource as possible for home buyers in the year that they purchase a home. In addition to helping first-time home buyers, this will maximize the stimulus for the housing market and the economy, will help stabilize home prices, and will increase home sales. The repayment requirement reduces the effect on the Federal Treasury and assumes that home buyers will benefit from stabilized and, eventually, increasing future housing prices.
16. Because the money must be repaid, isn’t the first-time home buyer program really a zero-interest loan rather than a traditional tax credit? Yes. Because the tax credit must be repaid, it operates like a zero-interest loan. Assuming an interest rate of 7%, that means the home owner saves up to $4,200 in interest payments over the 15-year repayment period. Compared to $7,500 financed through a 30-year mortgage with a 7% interest rate, the home buyer tax credit saves home buyers over $8,100 in interest payments. The program is called a tax credit because it operates through the tax code and is administered by the IRS. Also like a tax credit, it provides a reduction in tax liability in the year it is claimed.
17. If I’m qualified for the tax credit and buy a home in 2009, can I apply the tax credit against my 2008 tax return? Yes. The law allows taxpayers to choose ("elect") to treat qualified home purchases in 2009 as if the purchase occurred on December 31, 2008. This means that the 2008 income limit (MAGI) applies and the election accelerates when the credit can be claimed (tax filing for 2008 returns instead of for 2009 returns). A benefit of this election is that a home buyer in 2009 will know their 2008 MAGI with certainty, thereby helping the buyer know whether the income limit will reduce their credit amount.
18. For a home purchase in 2009, can I choose whether to treat the purchase as occurring in 2008 or 2009, depending on in which year my credit amount is the largest? Yes. If the applicable income phaseout would reduce your home buyer tax credit amount in 2009 and a larger credit would be available using the 2008 MAGI amounts, then you can choose the year that yields the largest credit amount.
    

The above information was posted on and obtained from the National Association of Homebuilders website: http://www.federalhousingtaxcredit.com/index.html

SELLERS: Here are some things you can do to make your house stand out

By John Adams, AJC Contributor
Published on: 07/27/08

This summer is a tough time to sell your home. But it's important to recognize that some homes are, in fact, selling. The National Association of Realtors is estimating that more than 5 million homes will change hands this year, and yours can be one of them.

One of the ways to make your home more appealing is to dress it up a little bit. Last week we talked about the importance of your home's condition in the selling process. This week I want to give you some quick and easy ways to make your home stand out from the rest:

• Buy a couple of pots of blooming yellow daisies and place a pot on each side of your front door.
• Paint your handrails and entire front door area to give your entry a fresh, clean look.
• Install a bright brass kick plate at the base of your front door, and attach large brass house numbers to the door or entry area. Also, clean and polish door hardware, or replace, if needed.
• Trim back shrubbery to well below the base of your window frames. It looks better from the street and lets more light into the house.
• Clean out gutters. Make sure gutters drain away from the house by installing splash blocks if needed
• Edge your lawn deeply all the way around. That includes the driveway, street curb, sidewalk and walkway to your front door. It gives your yard a manicured look.
• Seal or repair any cracks in your drive or walkways. If your drive is concrete, have it pressure-washed. If it is asphalt, apply a "black top" preservative coating.
• Upgrade your mailbox and post. Replace what you've got with a 6-inch-by-6-inch cross-post and an oversize new shiny black mailbox. Add shiny brass numbers to the post.
• Make sure the front yard is free of old newspapers and debris, and keep kids' Big Wheels and bicycles out of view of visitors.

Here are some quick improvements for inside your home:

• Walk through every room in your house and see what furniture you can do away with to make that room feel less crowded.
• Store furniture and belongings that you can live without in a storage facility. Empty your closets of everything except the bare essentials for you to live there. Closet floors and shelves should be visible and largely empty.
• Avoid the trap of moving your excess and oversize furniture from your house into your garage. Your garage should be clear of storage items and should not have cars parked in it. An occupied garage looks and feels much smaller than it really is.
• Consider painting the garage floor with floor enamel. Also, look at the new two-step garage flooring kits that create a durable and attractive epoxy finish with a minimum of cost and effort. They are available at home improvement stores.
• If you have any sort of basement, it should be very well lit and smell fresh and dry. Again, remove unnecessary boxes and stored items so the area appears as large as possible. Install plastic sheeting over any exposed dirt to minimize moisture gain, and add a timed exhaust fan.
• De-personalize your house by removing any decorations or items that might generate a negative response from a visitor. I once showed a house where the owner had taken part in the liberation of a town during WWII. Appropriately proud of his service, this owner had the captured Nazi flag displayed on his den wall. Unfortunately, my buyers were put off, and chose to look elsewhere.
• Make sure every light bulb in your house is the maximum safe wattage for that fixture. It is important that your home appear bright and well illuminated.
• In the bath, buy a new shower curtain. And if you have a small mirror over a medicine chest, replace it with a large wall mirror, maybe 36 by 48 inches. It will make the bath look and feel much larger.

These are some of the least expensive ideas that have worked for me over the years. You probably won't want to implement every one of these tips, but just a few can make a positive impact on your potential buyer's experience.

Congress is Set to Limit Down-Payment Assistance

-- Washington Post Washington Post, By Dina El Boghdady
July 22, 2008

Mortgage programs that helped nearly 79,000 people buy homes using government-insured loans last year would be eliminated as part of a broader housing package that Congress expects to pass this week, key lawmakers said. Under these programs, nonprofit groups provide buyers with money for down payments. Home sellers then reimburse the organizations and pay an administrative fee. More than half a million people -- including many first-time home buyers, minorities and single mothers -- have bought homes this way in the past decade using loans insured by the Federal Housing Administration.

But the FHA said seller-funded down payments present the single biggest challenge to its solvency. Borrowers who take part in these arrangements go to foreclosure at nearly three times the rate of borrowers who put their own money down, according to the agency. The fate of these seller-funded down-payment-assistance programs has been in limbo for weeks. The Senate version of the housing bill would have banned them. The House version would not.

Negotiators crafting a compromise bill have agreed to the Senate's position, which also is supported by the Bush administration. "We're going to yield to the Senate on that," said Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.), chairman of the House Financial Services Committee and a supporter of the programs. "There are a lot of trade-offs in the bill."

The administration is not getting all it wants on the FHA front. While the compromise bill would get rid of seller assistance, Frank said, it also would wipe out a new FHA initiative under which the agency charges borrowers insurance premiums based on credit risk, instead of one flat rate.
It's unclear how quickly the new policy would kick in if it's enacted. Supporters of seller financing, including members of the Congressional Black Caucus and the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, said they will push to revive it, perhaps under another administration. "The Bush administration does not have a lock on history," said Rep. Al Green (D-Tex.), a member of the black caucus. "They only have a lock on the moment."

The administration has tried for years to end the programs but failed to overcome legal challenges. "No insurance company can sustain that amount of additional costs year after year and still survive," Brian D. Montgomery, the FHA commissioner, said in a recent speech. But supporters of this kind of assistance said it meshes with the FHA's mission to serve low- to moderate-income people.

While the system may have its problems, they say, it should be fixed, not abandoned, so that people like Tanika Warrior are not shut out of the market. Warrior and her husband, Jimmy Hicks, suffered housing sticker shock when they moved to the Washington area from Arkansas a few years ago. The couple, recent college graduates, had depleted their savings on tuition and care for their newborn son. But they had steady jobs and did not want to keep sinking money into rent, Warrior said. They also did not want to put off buying a home because they were not convinced that their finances would be stronger in a few years. "We don't want to throw money in a hole," said Warrior, 24, a federal patent examiner. "My thing is, we pay our rent every month and we've never been late, not once in five years. If we can pay our rent every month, we can pay our mortgage every month."

The couple worked with Nehemiah, the nation's largest down-payment-assistance charity. Nehemiah provided the 3 percent down payment the FHA requires. The couple secured a 30-year, fixed-rate loan for a townhouse in Herndon through First Savings Mortgage. Their monthly mortgage payment is now about $400 more than what they paid in rent, with taxes and insurance included, Warrior said.

Scott Syphax, president and chief executive of Nehemiah, which is based in California, has been in Washington pushing to save the programs. After he got word yesterday of the agreement to ban seller-funded down payments, he said he was "angry and saddened" about the fallout for "families and communities who obviously did not get a seat the table as these harmful policies were conceived."

Syphax and the FHA disagree about the most basic statistics on these loans. Syphax maintains that the agency's assessment is skewed. He said it has undercounted the number of loans made while properly capturing the number of foreclosures it has had to pay for -- thus inflating the percentage of bad loans.

The FHA strongly denies that. It also maintains that programs backed by Nehemiah and other nonprofit groups aim to skirt its policies that prohibit a seller from directly financing a buyer's down payment. Seller assistance distorts "the fundamental economics of a mortgage agreement," Steven Preston, secretary of housing and urban development, said in a letter to Congress.

Sellers who reimburse the cost of a down payment and shell out related fees of $400 or more try to recoup that money by raising prices on the homes they're selling, government officials said. Those higher prices result in larger mortgage loans, making it more difficult for buyers to keep up with their payments, they said. The inflated prices also make it tough for buyers to refinance or sell if they lose their jobs, get ill or face some other financial setback -- hence the high foreclosure rates. "While the seller and lender are able to close a transaction, it is the home buyer and general taxpayer who ultimately bear the long-term risk," Preston said in his letter.

House in so-so condition unlikely to attract big-money offers

By John Adams,

Published on: 07/20/08

Last week we talked about the three reasons a house won't sell. They are condition, marketing and pricing. This week we look more closely at the importance of your home's condition.

Begin by looking at things from the buyer's perspective. Many buyers today believe that prices are falling and that interest rates are likely to decline. And because they are in no hurry, buyers won't even consider making an offer on your house unless it is in excellent condition.

The reality is this: If your home is on the market and needs maintenance or even updates to modern standards, it will likely draw only low-ball offers.

So if you hope to get near maximum market value for your home, it needs to be in excellent condition.

How do I define excellent condition? Yours needs to be a house ready to move into with no upgrades needed, no repairs to be done and no home improvement projects looming.

For example, all the systems of your house need to be brought up to modern standards. The wiring needs to be safe and adequate. The plumbing needs to work properly and with good pressure. The heating and air-conditioning system needs to be in good operating condition and at least have a few years of life remaining. Your roof needs to be relatively new and look good from the street.

The best way to make sure these systems are in sellable condition is to have a comprehensive home inspection performed by a professional home inspector. Remember that your purchaser, if you are lucky enough to attract one, is going to have their own inspector come through later, so you might as well face the music now.

And don't try to justify failure to offer good condition by saying, "Instead of replacing the plumbing now, I'll just lower the asking price by the amount it will cost." Because there are so many homes on the market that are already in great shape, your break-even offer of a slightly lowered price doesn't make sense.

Next, your home must feature a modern kitchen and bath. But there is a trap here that you need to avoid. First, you should know that improvements in these areas tend to be quite expensive. In an older home, a comprehensive kitchen makeover could involve not only new countertops and cabinets, but also flooring, electrical, plumbing, ceramic tiling, lighting and appliances.

My advice is to make sure before you start that you will be able to finish the job. A partially completed renovation looks worse than no renovation at all. Second, it is really easy to overspend in these areas. Why install a new kitchen faucet with only hot and cold water when you can buy one with six different spray heads and a built in cellphone with GPS? It's only money, and the salesman will assure you that buyers will love it.

The cure to this temptation is to know the competition. Know what price range your house will likely bring once it is in good condition, then see what other homes in that same price range have to offer.

Your job is not to offer perfection, but simply to beat the competition in your neighborhood and price bracket.

Finally, a word about getting your home ready to show. Today, the buzzword in the real estate industry is "staging," or the art of decorating and presenting a home to its best visual advantage. While rookie agents think that proper staging is a new science, the successful real estate veteran has been "staging" houses since we all lived in caves. Staging is nothing more than removing the clutter of everyday living and painting a vision of blissful homeownership — whatever that means.

Ask some agents to tour your home and make recommendations. Rank their suggestions based on your own experience looking at homes already on the market. Remember the ideas that offer big bang for the buck. For example, for a relatively small investment, you can often get a big return with newer and brighter light fixtures.

One final consideration is market timing. You may be better off waiting to sell until the market improves. If you are simply unable or unwilling to put your home into excellent condition prior to selling, you might be better off postponing your sale or leasing your home until the buyer's advantage diminishes over time.