I’ve been hearing some misinformation about the extension of the Homebuyer Tax Credit closing deadline. Numerous headlines reported that the Senate approved the bill to extend the deadline from June 30th to September 30th. I’ve even heard that some lenders believe that the extension has already been approved. Neither of these reports are exactly true. Here’s what really happened.

Wednesday, the Senate approved adding the bill to extend the deadline to another piece of legislation winding through Congress, namely a bill to extend unemployment benefits among other things. The Senate must still approve this entire bill which isn’t certain, then the bill must be approved by the House of Representatives and then signed by the President.

Assuming that all of this happens on or before June 30th, we’ll be OK. If it doesn’t - well I don’t want to even think about that. We’ll just keep managing our business assuming that deals have to close by June 30th.

It’s always good to remember that whoever writes the headlines, usually isn’t the reporter and probably hasn’t read the entire article.