New bill would help first-time buyers amid pandemic

July 23,2020 | By Erickson Ocasio

A new bill introduced to Congress this week aims to help first-time home buyers purchase a home during and after the recovery from the COVID-19 crisis. The First Time Homebuyer Pandemic Savings Act, introduced by Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney (D-N.Y.), would allow first-time home buyers to withdraw funds from their retirement accounts under the umbrella of COVID-19-related distributions to help with the purchase of a home. Under the bill, up to $25,000 of the coronavirus-related distributions would be tax-exempt and penalty-free if put toward a down payment for a home. ?“Making sure the next generation of homeowners have the resources they need to buy their first home is going to play a big role in our economic recovery,” Maloney said. “This bill is a smart, innovative way to bring new opportunity to new home buyers and help young families get one step closer to realizing the American dream.” The bill has gotten the th

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New Tools for Home Buyers as the Pandemic Upends Real Estate

July 19,2020 | By Erickson Ocasio

As homeowners rethink their surroundings and rush to relocate, companies are offering creative ways to help ease a fraught process. Working from home during the pandemic prompted Dan Feder to consider moving his family to another Los Angeles neighborhood to be closer to his son’s school. Dan Feder, a graphic designer, and his husband, Don Bacigalupi, a museum director, have lived in the Hancock Park neighborhood of Los Angeles for two years. But they started looking to move closer to their teenage son’s school when pandemic lockdowns showed they could avoid a commute across town by working from home. Yet having moved from Chicago two years ago, they still felt that they had an outsider’s view of Southern California real estate. They worried, too, about making a mistake in an uncertain economy. “With so many unknown variables in the world, we wanted as much information as we could get before moving fo

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