Real estate plans differ among presidential candidates
Q. I have watched all of the Democratic debates on TV, but none of the candidates have laid out any big plans that deal with housing. Do you know where they stand?
A. To be sure, housing issues have taken a backseat to many other topics in the televised debates, as well as on the campaign trail.
With the much-vaunted Super Tuesday elections over, I’ll limit my response to the plans that the two front-runners — Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and former Vice President Joe Biden — are proposing.
Sanders’ housing agenda is the most ambitious and most expensive, with a cost of more than $2 trillion over 10 years.
Sanders said that he would pump $1.5 trillion into the little-known National Housing Trust Fund, which builds and renovates housing for the poor. He would add $400 billion more to build 2 million units of housing for Americans of various incomes and $50 billion to enable 1 million families to purchase property that they may co-own with other homebuyers.
He would also spend $410 billion on new rent subsidies for low-income families; $70 billion to renovate public-housing developments; $2 billion to provide counsel for people facing foreclosure or eviction; and $500 million on social services for the homeless.
Critics have said that Sanders’ proposal could never be approved by a divided Congress and would only worsen the nation’s mushrooming federal deficit, even if it did.
Lobbyists for real estate trade groups and realty investors, among the most powerful on Capitol Hill, would staunchly oppose the part of Sanders’ plan that would cap annual rent hikes at 3 percent or 1.5 times the consumer price index, whichever is higher.
Former Vice President Joe Biden’s housing plan isn’t as progressive, but it’s also far less expensive and more politically viable. Like Sanders, Biden would boost spending for the federal Section 8 rent-subsidy that helps to house low-income individuals and families but would also allocate $5 billion for a tax credit to ensure that no family who’s eligible for the subsidies would have to spend more than 30 percent of its income on rent.
In addition, Biden would create a $100-billion affordable-housing fund to finance the renovation of housing for lowincome Americans and provide $10 billion in tax incentives to encourage developers to build affordable housing in communities that need it the most. However, most types of federal-housing aid would only go to cities and counties that eliminate zoning restrictions that limit new development near public-transit centers or that encourage suburban sprawl.
The former vice president would also spend $13 billion to combat homelessness. But some congressional members and local community groups aren’t happy with his proposal to ensure housing for all exconvicts upon their release from prison.
REAL ESTATE TRIVIA
Although women make up nearly half of the nation’s overall workforce, the National Association of Homebuilders reports that only 9 percent of construction jobs are held by women.
Q. Are the $375 monthly payments I make to my condo’s homeowners’ association tax-deductible?
A. No, not if the home is your principle residence. I get this type of question often, usually around the April 15 tax deadline.
You can’t take a deduction for your HOA dues if you live in the home, just as someone in a single-family house cannot take a deduction for the cost of a gardener who cuts the grass or someone who cleans a backyard pool.
Q. What do you know about TV Shark Tank judge Barbara Corcoran getting ripped off in some sort of real estate scam?
A. Corcoran, who founded one of New York’s most highly successful real estate firms before selling it for $66 million in 2001, recently lost nearly $400,000 in a computer phishing scheme that is starting to victimize a growing number of real estate professionals and their clients across the nation.
In a typical phishing scam, the scamster obtains personal information about the targeted victim and then uses it — often through deceptive emails or websites — to steal the victim’s money.
Corcoran, now a TV personality but still an active real estate investor, suffered her loss when a person falsely posing as her assistant sent an invoice to her bookkeeper for a renovation payment. Corcoran assumed that the invoice was accurate, and her bookkeeper soon wired $388,700 to the email address.
The email address was bogus, and Corcoran had apparently resigned herself to the loss, but it looks like now she will get the cash back.
Though the multimillionaire TV personality and real estate mogul is the most high-profile victim of the recent phishing scam to date, the swindling is spreading to people of far more modest means.
Many are preying on homebuyers’ down payments.
“Scammers will imitate or hijack emails of real estate professionals, lenders, attorneys or others involved in a real estate transaction and send buyers fraudulent wiring instructions to send down payments,” reports the National Association of Realtors.” Buyers who transfer the money are often out their entire payment.”
About 30,000 Americans reported falling victim to a phishing scam last year, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission states, losing a combined $50 million or more. The FTC’s website also provides a number of tips to help you or a friend from becoming the next victim.
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