Just four more weeks!

Some big news came out yesterday that should affect many people in the St. Louis area, especially in the mid-county area. The New highway I-64 is going to open up almost a month early on Dec 7, 2009. Being a Richmond Heights resident that lives very close to the highway and is affected quite a bit by the traffic flow in the area, I will be interested to see if the area roads do in fact get less congested. Just last weekend they opened up the infamous new "jug handle" intersection at Hanley and Eager/Dale which supposedly should ease congestion there. I have actually not driven over there yet to check it out, but that should make it easier now to exit left out of the Meridian Metrolink garage to go westbound to Eager again. I know that when they closed off the Eager to Hanley intersection and forced all the Eager to Dale traffic on the little road in front of the garage it was quite a pain to turn westbound there. Since I park there for work whenever the weather is too bad to walk to the bus, that is of some concern to me!

And now shifting gears from local to national news, it sounds like the first time homebuyer credit is being extended out to April of 2010. That is five more months for first time buyers to buy a home and receive an $8,000 tax credit. I am curious how many people left there are who can take advantage of it who have not already used the credit through 2009. The other new addition to it is a $6,500 tax credit for current homeowners who purchase a home before April 2010. I am curious why they made that a lower number, when an existing homeowner would probably need a larger credit to make it more worth their while to purchase another home. I suppose it is an expensive program and they wanted to limit the costs. Whereas a first time buyer of a $160,000 would receive 5% back with the $8,000 credit, if a current homeowner bought a $320,000 with a $6,500 credit, that only amounts to a 2% discount off the home price. Is that really enough of an incentive to persuade someone to sell their existing home and buy a new one? Of course we cannot take advantage of the credit since we bought our house in Spring 2008. That is still better than those who just bought (say in summer 2009) and now realized they missed out on a free $6,500 for not waiting just another month or two. They could have made that law retroactive for home sales at least for some larger portion of 2009. And if they made it retroactive to cover all of 2008 I would not complain either!