Are you one of the lucky folks who will be taking advantage of the $8,000 tax credit for first time home buyers? Awesome! Just make sure you don’t cut it too close to the November 30th deadline.
October closings are already beginning to stack up and if predictions hold true, November could be one of the busiest months for real estate closings that we’ve had in a long time. The problem is that all the service providers who close loans are not staffing up for this event.
I guess you can’t really blame them. Business has been relatively slow in 2009 and many of the small businesses that provide closing services have had no choice but to scale back. It would be difficult for any company to put skilled people in place for an event that should only last 60 days or so.
There is likely to be some midnight oil burning in many real estate attorney and mortgage lender offices in the next couple of months. Same goes for home inspectors, appraisers and survey companies. There is simply going to be a surge of business that will be a challenge for everyone to handle.
If you are in the process of buying a home in time for the first time buyer tax credit, do yourself a big favor and schedule your closing no later than mid November. Closing on your home during those last few weeks of November could be asking for trouble. If something goes wrong and a delay is encountered, you could end up missing the deadline altogether.
