BiggerPockets

My realtor calls me today on 3 bd. 2 ba. brick repo in my home town for 30k. Market rent would be around 800.00. I was excited and dropped what I was doing to go look at the property, and it was great deal for my area. I make a full offer for the listing price and we get an email back stating the property was no longer available. Here is the good part....Bank of America donated it Habitat for Humanity. First let me say I have no problem with Habitat. My main business is construction and I have donated the sitework on all the builds in our town. What I like about Habitat is the owner has to WORK and make affordable payments = GREAT PROGRAM. How do we compete with a Government Owned Bank that is now giving away houses? Has anyone else heard of this? Why would they do that instead of selling and taking loss?

i thought the same thing, but cant they also write off the loss?

Unless my definition of "government owned" is different than most people's, I'm fairly positive that BoA is *not* government owned...

Not quite sure how they are subsidized? When has the government granted them money?

The government *loaned* them $45B in TARP money, and BoA repaid the whole thing, with interest. That's certainly not a subsidy.

How exactly is the government subsidizing them?

I think you just made my point for me. Had the money been for a specific purpose (and had it not needed to be repaid with interest), it may have been considered a subsidy.

But the fact that there were few restrictions and repayment with interest was expected, it was clearly a loan, and not a subsidy.

Btw, as someone who owes taxes every April 15, the government loans me money as well every year.

Eric,
If you would read my post, you would see I fully support the Habitat program. The reason I support it is because it is a "hand up, not a hand out" program. Maybe, I should do alittle research on how they wil handle a house we are not building. If they still make them work (i.e. paint,clean, ect.) and pay and affordable mortgage, then I take back my negative comments. I guess my real problem is a gov. that loans money (they printed and devalued mine) to private entity and does not use said money to help people, but instead found another ave. to profit off tax payers. Yes, I know they paid the money back, but if I run my business poorly, do you think they will give me a loan......nope.....what I do get to do is pay an effective tax rate of about 50%-60%. But, Thanks...because of you I will contact the man that runs our local Habitat program and see how they are going to handle it.

Businesses don't pay taxes J...the consumers of their products or services do. So I would make the claim that all businesses pay zero tax.

My point was that your numbers are adjusted to account for the taxes Jon. If you paid no taxes then all prices would be lower. Pricing for your products and services is adjusted to account for the tax whether or not it is done intentionally.

I have been reading all the comments to Jon's raving of paying taxes. Almost everyone here is RE Investors, which we can get a lot of tax brakes and save us a lot of money. It looks like Jon has a lot of trucks. Many years I have used my tax breaks in RE to help cover all the taxing that is done on trucking. I don't think anyone that is not in trucking has any idea how much taxes the trucking industry pays. They even charge us highway use tax that goes to build airports. And now with the fuel going up, I don't know how anyone makes a penny in trucking right now. Although trucking affects just about everything in the economy, they are one of the highest taxed groups in the US.

Rose...I totally agree with you, and appreciate your input. It seems others have a different view about business and tax than I do. Maybe, they are like Warren Buffett and want to pay more, who knows. congrats on your new business. BTW what type of trucking did you do?