We know, we know. You raced to the post office just in time to meet the deadline to send your tax forms to the IRS, bemoaning those receipts you just couldn’t find anywhere and cursing your procrastination which led to the last-minute crush again. So while you still have taxes on your mind, why not prepare ahead so you’re sitting pretty by the time you file in 2018? Here’s a roundup of homeowner tax breaks you should prep now, so you can take full advantage of them next year and avoid the last-minute scramble.

1. Set up your home office

If you’re working on a La-Z-Boy in the living room, it might be time to clear out the guest room and assemble that Ikea desk. That way, you can take the home office tax deduction in 2017. The “simple method” allows you to take $5 per square foot for a total of $1,500. You could also go for a more complicated deduction: a percentage of your home’s electric bills and other expenses.

Keep in mind that you have to use the room “regularly and exclusively” for business, says Dave Du Val, a tax expert and chief customer advocacy officer at TaxAudit.com. If you’re an employee, the office must be for the convenience of the employer (e.g., you’re a salesperson in New York for a company whose only office is in California). Last but not least, you’ll need to tabulate your expenses as you make them in 2017, so keep a logbook and save those receipts.

2. Consider a HELOC for home improvements

Is 2017 the year you want to finally do that kitchen remodel or bathroom addition, but money still feels too tight? Then you might want to consider taking out a home equity line of credit, or HELOC. The interest on a loan up to $100,000 is tax-deductible, says Du Val. That means those upgrades just got a whole lot cheaper.

3. Install solar panels

 

READ MORE

Both buyers and sellers alike are feeling very good about the housing market this spring, even as home values hit new highs and mortgage rates move up.

A monthly sentiment index from Fannie Mae rose to the highest level since 2011, when the survey began, thanks to a surprising surge from millennials.

“Millennials showed especially strong increases in job confidence and income gains, a necessary precursor for increased housing demand from first-time homebuyers,” said Doug Duncan, senior vice president and chief economist at Fannie Mae.

Millennials are moving out of their parents’ basements and forming new households at a faster rate, according to Fannie Mae research, but they are still overwhelmingly forced to rent.

“Continued slow supply growth implies continued strong price appreciation and affordability constraints facing millennials and first-time buyers in many markets,” Duncan added.

The leading edge of the millennial generation is, however, entering the housing market in larger numbers today, with some venturing out of their desired urban cores to more affordable suburbs. Millennials delayed both marriage and parenthood, but that is now changing.

READ MORE

Palm Springs is a haven of midcentury-modern architecture, but that doesn’t mean the city is stuck in a time capsule.

The style — which became popular in the U.S. in the 1940s — still commands a hefty price. And aesthetics are only part of the appeal.

“It fits the California lifestyle,” said Paul Kaplan, director of an eponymous real estate group in Palm Springs. “There’s an endless demand from people who want something different than the Mediterranean tract home they’re used to in Orange County or San Diego.”

Midcentury-modern homes tend to be simple, informal and infused with light. Interior spaces blend with outside nature via wide swaths of glass and a post-and-beam construction technique that eliminates heavy support walls. Hollow cement breeze blocks, wood, steel and raked concrete are popular materials.

The properties typically sell for 25% more than a standard home. Kaplan said it’s common for a three-bedroom midcentury-modern home to cost around $600,000.

READ MORE

They’re paid to keep an eye on valuations so buyers, lenders — and even sellers — know a home price is within logical boundaries. If appraisers get skittish about the housing market, deals and loans get harder to complete.

I watch a curious regional home-price index from the Real Estate Research Council of Southern California, a group of property industries analysts and insiders operating out of Cal Poly Pomona.

The group produces a unique housing benchmark by having volunteer appraisers go out every six months to value the same 308 homes in the seven-county area to gauge pricing patterns. The group’s been doing this since 1943, with a major revision in 1990.

To me, when you compare the appraiser indexes to traditional benchmarks — say, CoreLogic’s widely quoted median selling price — you get a sense of whether broad valuation trends are consistent with the logic appraisers use. Look, appraisers are human and have their own faults. But computer-created valuations missed badly in the last housing boom-to-bust, too.

I tossed the appraisers’ indexes and CoreLogic data into my trusty spreadsheet, with the caveat that the council tracks one extra county — seven, including Santa Barbara — in their regional math vs. the six counties followed by the Southern California area median. Here are five things I learned:

1. VALUES ARE UP

Appraisers are by nature stingy and often slow to change their math.

But the index shows regionwide values are up 7 percent in the year ended in October. That’s the biggest gain since October 2014.

By county, October’s annualized gains were, high to low: Riverside 8.4 percent; San Diego 8.0 percent; Orange County 7.2 percent; Los Angeles 6.5 percent; San Bernardino and Santa Barbara, both at 6.4 percent; and Ventura the low at 6.2 percent.

All October county gains were above previous results for October 2016 and April 2016.

 

READ MORE

Just one day after Mayor Robert Garcia updated the city on the state of Long Beach, a picture of how the state of the city’s finances was revealed in a report from Truth in Accounting (TIA). The report put out by the non-profit group Wednesday lists Long Beach as one of just seven cities nationally that has a surplus leftover after its bills are paid.

The group’s figures are based off the 2015 fiscal year and show that after paying all bills—state bonds, liabilities, unfunded pension and retiree healthcare benefits—Long Beach would be left with a surplus of $600 per taxpayer. The city was joined by Fresno as the only other city west of Texas shown to carry a surplus in the report’s findings in a review of the 50 most populated cities in the United States.

This is the second year the group has compiled this city-centric report. Long Beach was not included in last year’s list which only included the 20 most populous cities.

READ MORE

WalletHub, a personal finance social network site, examined the demographic profiles of the 230 most populated U.S. cities, analyzing four major categories: economic class diversity, ethno-racial and linguistic diversity, economic diversity and household diversity.

The top 10 cities in the study are:

1. Los Angeles

2. Long Beach

3. (tied) San Diego and Anaheim

5. Sacramento

6. Renton, Washington

7. (tied) Houston, Texas and Kent, Washington

9. Bakersfield

10. Federal Way, Washington

(Jay LaPrete/AFP/Getty Images)

In July the U.S. Census Bureau announced that the homeownership rate in this country had hit its lowest level since the government began measuring the stat in 1965. Then candidate Donald Trump jumped on the news with a tweet suggesting the figure proved his most consistent message: the economy is failing you.

In a nation in which homeownership is largely seen as synonymous with the American dream, it’s easy to see why a change candidate would highlight the record low rate. But at the time economists urged Americans–and candidates–to look beyond the eye-popping headline number. It turned out the decline in the rate had not been due to fewer people owning homes, but to more people forming households in rental properties. In other words, the dip may actually be a (good) sign that more young people are striking out on their own. Trump, a billionaire by way of real estate development, should understand this.

READ MORE

Long Beach area voters consistently supported new taxes this year, with Measure E’s landslide victory signaling the third time in 2016 they have given consent to a property or sales tax increase.

Measure E is a $1.5 billion bond measure for the Long Beach Unified School District and, taken in isolation, it will add roughly $200 to the property tax bills of Long Beach homeowners whose residences have an assessed value at about the city’s average of $336,000.

School district leaders have proposed to spend Measure E revenues on air-conditioning systems for the 2,400-plus classrooms where students and teachers have to endure the heat, among other planned improvements.

For homeowner and parent Charles Russell, the costs of helping to pay off those bonds are a fair deal. He said he expects Long Beach Unified’s leadership will use that money to help students and teachers, and he said the additional taxes are about the same as the cost of a couple cups of coffee per month.

“School bonds are low-hanging fruit,” said Russell, an attorney and human resources consultant. “They’re fairly easy for taxpayers to get behind.”

That statement accurately describes many local voters’ sentiments regarding Measure E, which captured about 73 percent of the “yes” vote, according to unofficial election results.

Among those who opposed Measure E, Long Beach Taxpayers Association co-founder Tom Stout said he doubts many voters realize the costs of bond measures while casting ‘yes” votes. A retired teacher, he contended that school bonds allow district administrators to use existing funds to raise employee salaries instead of saving money for building needs.

“All these bonds do is free up money that should be spend on infrastructure,” Stout said.

Voters also this year have granted approval to Measure LB, a bond measure for the Long Beach Community College District, and Measure A, a sales and use tax increase for the city of Long Beach.

READ MORE

Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump. Whichever candidate wins the White House will have the power to shape the nation’s housing market and overall economy for years to come.

What you may not know is that presidential elections themselves can affect everything from mortgage rates and housing prices to stock market values and corporate investment.

A range of studies show that — during a typical election year — the uncertainty produced by the race can have more impact on housing and the economy than the actual outcome in November.

Of course, the 2016 election is anything but “typical.”

Voters: “Two Flawed Candidates”

To start, both Clinton and Trump are viewed negatively by large swaths of Americans, according to numerous polls. This may prompt large numbers of voters to choose between “the lesser of two evils” instead of backing the candidate who most closely matches their views.

As The New York Times said of Clinton, “You can fairly say … that no presidential candidate has secured a major party nomination after an F.B.I. investigation into her use of a private email server for, in some cases, top-secret national security information.”

And though Trump’s anti-trade, anti-immigrant and inflammatory remarks about women, minorities and Muslims has won considerable support among white working-class voters, it has fractured the Republican Party.

Nobody “has ever seen a major party nominee put financial conditions on the United States defense of NATO allies, openly fight with the family of a fallen American soldier, or entice Russia to meddle in a United States presidential election by hacking his opponent” said the Times. “And while coded appeals to racism or nationalism aren’t new … overt calls to temporarily bar Muslims from entry to the United States or questioning a federal judge’s impartiality based on his Mexican heritage are new.”

Thanks to statements like these, a number of Republicans officials have denounced Trump. Some have even pledged to vote for Clinton.

The result of both candidacies is that the two major parties have essentially switched places, with Republicans now polling better among blue-collar voters (once reliable Democrats), and Democrats doing better with college-educated professionals and many entrepreneurs.

Housing Market is Stronger than in 2012

Fortunately, the U.S. housing market is stronger than it was during the 2012 election, and so is the overall economy.

In November 2012, home sales were rising, but the market was still recovering from the economic downturn of 2008. By comparison, home sales through May 2016 have seen the biggest increase since 2007.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the median value for new homes sold in June 2012 was $232,600. By June 2016, that figure had soared to $306,700.

In late 2012, 30-year mortgage rates were 3.34 percent and 15-year rates averaged 2.75 percent. Today, lenders are quoting 30-year rates near 3.25 percent and 15-year rates in the mid-2s.

Unemployment has plummeted from an average of 8.1 percent in 2012 to less than four percent today. In addition, consumer spending in the second quarter of 2016 rose by a whopping 4.2 percent, and retail sales jumped by 3.1 percent over the same period in 2015.

 

READ MORE