April tax credit deadline spurs LI home buyers

It was another busy day for real estate agent Bob Meade.

Up early, he photographed a new client's home because he was convinced he could sell it quickly. He fielded calls from desperate house hunters, took a client's offer in her office parking lot, wrote up a couple's offer to a seller who wants to buy another house and also to get a tax credit; set up almost "simultaneous" contract signings for two homes, and did so much more that he looked bedraggled enough to worry co-workers.

"I haven't had breakfast - I've had a glass of water today," Meade, of Century 21 AA Realty in Lindenhurst, said shortly before 9 p.m. on Thursday. He told his boss, "It's an April 30 madhouse."

He was talking about Friday's deadline for signing contracts to get up to an $8,000 federal tax credit, which everyone in the housing market seems hustling to beat. Closings have to be done by June 30, so buyers and sellers are being told by agents not to drag out negotiations.

April for some brokers has been the best month in more than two years. That's because of people like Adam and Mary Berk of Massapequa, who started house hunting in February. "It was the tax credit, and it was just time," Mary Berk said.

A few nights ago, they made an offer on a North Babylon Cape to a seller who wants to get her tax credit, too. Current homeowners can get up to a $6,500 credit with a new home if they've lived in their current home for at least five straight years out of the last eight.

Snap deals have helped make April busier than the weeks before Nov. 30, the original deadline, several real estate firms reported. For one thing, November and holiday seasons are not prime time for house buying. Also, many had expected an extension then because the market was still stalled.

This time, the consensus is the deadline is real. Not even the National Association of Realtors is lobbying to extend it again.

"Christmas came in November last year when they extended it," said L.P. Finn III, director of corporate services at Northport-based Coach Realtors. "Christmas is not going to come this April."

That's why several real estate firms this year trained agents on getting sales and held several buyer-info sessions.

Finn thinks training helped nab 113 contracts this month, as of Thursday - more than the 109 for the same period in November. "We gave them the dialogue, the information, the scripts needed to speak to the public. . . . One of the basic questions was: How does the tax credit work?"

At another time, Collins Bhola of Copiague would have tried harder to negotiate down the $427,000 price on the Lindenhurst home that his wife loves. But they signed the contract last week for the $8,000 carrot.

"That is what induced us to get this house even more," Bhola said. "We didn't want to mess with the deadline."