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San Diego County’s real estate market got off to a mixed start for 2015, with the pace of annual home price appreciation increasing in January, but sales falling.

Last month, the median price for a home sold in the county was $435,000, up 7.4 percent from January 2014, real-estate tracker CoreLogic DataQuick reported Tuesday. The annual pace was up from 4.8 percent in December, and 3.6 percent in November, but is a far cry from the 24.1 percent peak in June 2013, led by foreclosure resales and investors.

In January, the housing market recorded the fewest transactions since March 2008, the middle of the Great Recession. Last month, 2,233 properties changed hands.

January is generally a slow month, as it reflects deals that were originated during the holiday season, an overall lackluster time in the housing market, said Andrew LePage, a CoreLogic DataQuick analyst. The number of January transactions fell 32 percent from the 3,290 recorded in December, a month in which there could have been a rush to record titles before the end of the tax year.

read more at: http://www.utsandiego.com/news/2015/feb/17/dataquick-january-realestate-home-sales-mortgage/

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WASHINGTON — Tax reform is revving up again on Capitol Hill, with the heads of key committees pledging to work toward a simpler and fairer tax code, possibly one with lower tax rates. Sounds intriguing.

But what might that mean for homeowners — many of whom benefit from tax breaks such as mortgage interest and property-tax deductions, plus tax-free write-offs of up to $250,000 or $500,000 of home-sale capital gains, depending on whether they file returns as singles or married couples? Renters get none of these.

Homeowner write-offs become targets for cutbacks or elimination whenever tax-code reforms get serious attention because of their costs in uncollected federal revenues.

read more at:  http://seattletimes.com/html/homesrealestate/2025678135_realestatekenharneycolumn15xml.html

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Things to consider:

1. The lease is considered a lien so when you sell your home your buyer’s credit must qualify for the lease and the buyer must be willing to take over the lease.

2.  If the buyer does not want the lease you may have to buy the system outright from the leasing company or pay the penalties to have the system removed.

Taking out a loan to buy rooftop solar can save as much as 29 percent over lease arrangements, according to a new analysis from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory.

Of homeowners who go solar, about two-thirds nationwide opt for a lease or similar power-purchase agreement. Under lease financing, the solar provider both installs and owns the rooftop solar panels and related wiring. Customers pay a monthly bill for solar energy, which is cheaper than what they would otherwise pay the utility.

That carefree arrangement, with maintenance costs included, offers immediate savings with no money down and has helped democratize solar among cash-strapped households in the wake of the U.S. financial crisis.

But homeowners can now do better by borrowing money to buy a solar energy system, the Golden, Colo.-based federal energy lab found.

Today’s low-interest solar loans are offering substantially better savings on energy over the same 20-year period as a lease. Longer-term loans, of 10 or 20 years, offer immediate savings.

read more at: http://www.utsandiego.com/news/2015/feb/12/sun-shines-on-loans/

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