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Tax income losses from foreclosed homes affect Californians in unexpected ways ? ForeclosureConnections

Tax income losses from foreclosed homes affect Californians in unexpected ways ? ForeclosureConnections

Thirty thousand Californian homes are moving through the foreclosure pipeline.

Property taxes plummet in the process.

City officials and schools are the latest victims of the blight.

Beyond the shame of tens of thousands of foreclosed, abandoned, shuttered homes in East Bay, and elsewhere in the State of California, lies a second blight – year upon year of property tax income that is supposed to be funding the cities, schools and other infrastructure on which Californians depend is vanishing in the shifting sands of economic drought.
For individuals, the end of the beginning of the foreclosure road is when the sheriff put them on the street – the work of government officials begins then, as they make difficult budget cuts, lay off staff and otherwise bite the bullet until the foreclosed properties are back in private hands again. Some of them may find themselves personally affected by the cuts they have to recommend.
In the East Bay area alone, banks and other lenders own over 10,000 foreclosed homes, with just a pittance up for sale in these price-depressing times – and a further 20,000 in the pipeline heading the same way.
“There is no question government services at all levels are going to suffer because of this,” said Contra Costa County Assessor Gus Kramer. “It’s just one of the trappings of the economy we’re in.”
You can almost feel the pain. Concord City has put off a quarter of its workforce. Antioch has shelved a quarter of its annual budget. Hayward has levied further taxes to avert redundancies. The effect will be more dispersed in schools – they depend on a combination of state income sources, and this will take a while to filter through.
A representative of the California Department of Finance admits that they failed to account for the foreclosure trend when they prepared their current budget, because nobody thought about it at the time. Current thinking is that State property taxes will fall 4.1% in the current period, and another 3.1% in the following year, both up on previous estimates. The biggest driver is the fall in property prices. This April the median buyer in Bay Area paid just 0,000 compared to the 2007 peak when 5,000 was the number that applied. Elsewhere, in areas like East Contra Costa County the drop is worse and approaching 65% in some places.
Many analysts are predicting a fresh tsunami as interest rates start rising. The situation a year ago could be repeated, affecting both economy and housing market, and stretching recovery further out. Most cities will be affected to some extent meaning that the losses will be spread throughout California.

August 22, 2010   No Comments

Personal Loans with Easy and Fast Processing

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Personal Loans with Easy and Fast Processing

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August 22, 2010   1 Comment

The Painless Guide to Switching Checking Accounts

The Painless Guide to Switching Checking Accounts

The thought of trying to move your money and automatically scheduled bill payments from one checking account to another is often enough to prevent people from changing checking accounts. It may be easier to just stick with what you’ve got, but if you want to maximize your earnings or benefit from features offered through another banking institution, you’ll have to be willing to do a little legwork to switch your money and any automatically scheduled payments from one checking account to another. While it may seem overwhelming at first, you can just follow this guide for virtually painless switching of checking accounts – and you’ll be set up in no time!

Step 1: Review The Previous Month’s Statement for Automatic Payments

If you have online banking with your current checking account, log in and view last months transactions. If you don’t have online banking set up, get out your paper statement for the last month. Make a list of any payments that are automatically deducted from your checking account (meaning you do not physically write and send a check or initiate the online payment yourself).

Make another list of any items that you regularly initiate an online payment for – these are transactions that don’t occur automatically, but you don’t write checks for them either. You’ll need to update your payment information in the online accounts of these creditors in order to continue making your payments through this method.

Step 2: Direct Deposits and Automatic Savings Transfers

Make another list of all income sources that are directly deposited into your checking account. Typically this would be your payroll direct deposit from your employer; but may also include child support or other direct deposit transactions.

If you have set up an automatic savings plan through your checking account, you will want to write down the details as well, so you remember to cancel the automatic transfer from checking to savings and to set it up again with your new checking account.

Step 3: Open the New Checking Account

Open your new checking account with a small deposit to get it set up if your funds are limited; if you have access to a sizable amount of money you can make a larger deposit and immediately start setting up your automatic bill payments again through this new account.

Order your checks if you use physical checks, and take note of the routing and account numbers for your new account. You will need this information to start transferring your automatic payments, direct deposits and automatic savings transfers.

Step 4: Cancel Automatic Payments and Savings Transfers

From the lists you’ve created, contact each of the creditors who receive their payment automatically through your old checking account. If you don’t have a lot of money in the newly opened account, simply cancel the automatic payment and inform them you will be mailing your next payment manually. If you were able to open your checking account with a good amount of money, you can just switch the payment details from your old checking account to your new checking account without interrupting the automatic payment plan service, and avoid having to mail a check manually.

If you have an automatic savings transfer, you can choose to temporarily stop it while you are setting up the new checking account or again, if you have enough money in the new account already simply switch the details to the new account and resume making your automatic savings transfers through the new account immediately.

Step 5: Change Payroll Direct Deposit

Once you are sure there are no more automatic payments and savings transfers coming out of your old checking account, you can switch the payroll direct deposit (and any other sources of income that gets directly deposited) into your new checking account. Sometimes this takes one to two weeks to make the change, depending on the employer and the payroll department.

Step 6: Set Up Automatic Bill Payments and Savings Transfers

As soon as you see your first payroll direct deposit going into the new checking account, you can refer back to your list and re-set up the automatic bill payments again if you weren’t able to do that at the same time as opening the checking account.

You will also be able to automatically transfer your money into your savings account once you set it up to withdraw from the new checking account.

If you had creditors and expenses that you would log into the website and initiate a payment, now is a good time to log into each of your accounts and update the payment method section of your profile. This will tell the account where to pull the money from – and you’ll be able to specify your new checking account details for making payments here on out.

Step 7: Close the Old Checking Account, Enjoy the New One

After you’ve changed any automatically made transactions through the old checking account, verify that any outstanding checks or payments you’ve initiated have all cleared. As long as all transactions have posted to the account, at this time you should be able to safely close your old checking account and begin using your new checking account exclusively.

Debra Dragon is a freelance writer for DepositAccounts.com. She writes about how to make your money work better for you through various deposit accounts, including savings accounts, interest checking accounts, IRAs, and money market funds.

Ken Boyd, owner of St. Louis Test Preparation (www.stltest.net) presents part one of his course on Understanding Cost Accounting. Boyd points out that students can have success with Cost Accounting concepts by making connections to actual examples from business. As a former CPA, College Accounting professor and auditor, Ken has a wealth of experience to bring to the subject.
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August 5, 2010   No Comments