In case you missed it over the weekend: A Brooklyn Park resident trying to purchase a home before the first-time home buyer tax credit expired let me tag along with her on Friday as she looked at her final choices.
You can read the story -- with all the deadline drama -- right here. Above is videographer extraordinaire Christopher Assaf's take on part of the day.
On the flip side of the Friday rush were potential buyers who decided to wait until after the credit expired to seriously look. Mike Fowler, 26, is in that group. I chatted with him in the credit's waning days.
"My main reason for waiting is that I need to save more," said Fowler, who works at Baltimore-based T. Rowe Price. "I've got money saved, but not enough to put a sizable down payment down."
His secondary reason: He suspects the tax credit "is delaying the inevitable decline in prices," and he'll get a better deal later.
"I do think the credit was a good thing initially because at that time, our whole economy was collapsing," Fowler said. But the extension? Not so much. He figures the pool of buyers will shrink now, "and then sellers are going to be sitting with these inflated listing prices."
That's his best guess, anyway -- he hastens to point out that he's not a housing professional. But all of us, pros and amateurs alike, will find out soon enough what a post-credit market looks like.