The conventional wisdom is that Canadians can stay about six months; that is generally accepted to be true. I’d never seen anything in writing about it, so I searched the internet and found a couple of official US government sites that explain the law on this subject.

As it turns out, Canadian citizens can indeed “visit” for up to 6 months, as long as they maintain their foreign (Canadian) residence. No visa is required for them as Canadian citizens. Visits can be (and usually are) undocumented. If Canadian citizens spend time in Palm Springs, or really any place in the US, for longer than 6 months, there is a danger for them in being deemed taxable residents of the US, thus they would be out of status and would be considered deportable. If a person is reentering the US after the end of his last stay, and it appears to the Canadian Border Patrol Officer that the person applying for entry is spending more time over-all in the U.S. than in Canada, it will be up to them to prove to the officer that they are not de-facto U.S. residents.  A further danger in overstaying in the US is in potentially losing their health insurance eligibility in Canada. This factor alone takes most Canadian snowbirds home in timely fashion each spring!

For a definitive answer regarding your specific situation, it’s best to seek advice from the US Immigration authorities. For more information, here are a couple of useful US government Web sites – Visiting the US and Six Months Club.

First, plan a stay at the Orbit In (notice that the innkeepers spell the name of their inn with only one I), then grab a cocktail and dinner close by at Melvyn’s, located in the Ingleside Inn, where Frank Sinatra and his “rat pack” often hung out. They made Palm Springs their “getaway from LA” home. Melvyn’s is still very much what it was when Sinatra and his pals celebrated there and continues to offer dancing nightly. If you are planning a visit to Palm Springs soon, check out the whole article at Retro Palm Springs, (click forward to 4th page where Palm Springs is featured). Our great weather and proximity to Los Angeles continue to be a big draw for stars and others alike.

Just picture the approximately 180,000 buyers with a contract in process, patiently watching as our legislators in Washington dithered around without making a decision as to whether or not to come to buyers’ rescue by midnight yesterday (June 30th). Well, our esteemed congress members did come through at the very last minute. And it went remarkably fast when they finally did pay attention to the matter. Had they not, an $8000 bucks worth of tax credits would have flown out the window for many. I just cannot understand how anything gets done in Washington anymore; this deadline had been looming for months, and nothing was done until the very last minute.

Stimulated, as they should have been, by the national homebuyer stimulus package, these latest potential homeowners in Palm Springs dutifully signed purchase offers to buy a house well before the April 30 deadline. They were making the purchase then in order to earn the promised $8000 tax credit, only to find out belatedly that, mostly through no fault of their own, the closing date for their purchase transaction was not going to take place by the June 30 deadline.  Thus they were going to lose the $8000 credit. This was still the case up until last night!

 Well, I guess “what ends well at least ends well.” These new homebuyers can now take a collective sigh of relief because they now have until September 30, 2010 to close their deal with the $8000 tax credit. This should be enough time, even for buyers who are purchasing a “short sale” property. For some of the details of what happened last night, please go to Last Minute Vote.

*Good News for Palm Springs Homebuyers – Federal Homebuyer Credit may be Extended

Well, not necessarily, I just came across this article yesterday in the Wall Street Journal regarding the possibility that the Fed will extend this tax credit for new homebuyers.
Because of the volume of many buyers currently in the buying/lending pipeline, many are at risk of missing the contract-closing deadline on July 10, 2010. If that should happen, they would not be able to claim the tax credit.
 
These hapless buyers who met the April 30, 2010 contract deadline to start the buying process and who are now waiting on the ponderous buying/lending process to conclude may be in luck, as there is a move afoot that may extend the deadline until this fall.

If you are one of these buyers, see Tax Credit Deadline for a lot more detail. And good luck!

Well! Okay, the Loonie has recently retreated somewhat due to falling commodity prices, fears of sovereign debt defaults in the Euro-zone, and other factors having little to do with the Loonie’s inherent strength.

So, watch for the Loonie to begin anew its move towards parity, relative to the U.S. dollar. That may take a few months, but as we take the long view of overall financial health of the Canadian financial system vis-a-vis that of the U.S., the Loonie should recover nicely. One important long-term factor will be the ability of the Bank of Canada to raise interest rates before the U.S. Fed can raise them here, at the moment holding back because of continuing high U.S. unemployment.

In any case, some of my Canadian clients, planning to buy real estate in Palm Springs, have recently opened up a U.S. Dollar account in Canada or a U.S. bank account here in the U.S. They are taking these actions now so that the next time the Loonie is at, or near, parity with the U.S. dollar, they will be positioned and ready to take advantage of the translation gains.

A recent MarketWatch column in the Wall Street Journal offers an interesting perspective on Canadians buying in the U.S. real estate market: go to A Great Time to Buy Palm Springs Properties. 

We love the special system of getting scheduled times at various rides in order to avoid the long lines. All you have to do is register your park admission ticket into a machine located near the entry of your chosen ride, and you’ll get back your admission ticket along with a new ticket for a fixed window of time to return. With this new ticket, you can then walk right in, bypassing the line. This can save you an hour or more and you can do a lot more with your time.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many people of every age wearing mouse ears, Goofy hats, Merlin the Magician tall pointy hats, and princess tiaras. There is a tradition in many families of little girls coming to Disneyland in their princess gowns and tiny tiaras. So cute! (Disney feels a little like Mardi Gras in New Orleans.) Disneyland is a place where it doesn’t matter how old you are, you can still ride the rides and wear a costume and be a kid all over again!

From RE/MAX Headquarters, Elton Ash, Regional Executive Vice President for RE/MAX of Western Canada says,”Our Associates should be proud and honored to receive the confidence of Canadian consumers. It’s an inspiring merit that the best trained and most experienced agents have received for providing valuable assistance to so many families.”  We can be proud that Canadians also look to us at RE/MAX here in the US for their Palm Springs real estate needs.

Joining RE/MAX on the survey list were top brands such as Apple, Holiday Inn, Kellogg’s and Campbell’s. See all 2010 Winning Brands. The results are featured in the May 2010 issues of Reader’s Digest and Sélection du Reader’s Digest, the French edition. To read more, go to Reader’s Digest Survey.

It’s an annual event when each spring a couple returns to a Madagascar palm tree, planted in a large urn just outside our kitchen. Here they refurbish their nest from the previous year and get down to business. Once the mother bird has laid her two eggs, she is not to be budged from her nest. This year they were back again to their same tree, at the beginning of April. This particular tree is only a few feet from our house, and we can easily watch them from both the kitchen side door and from a living room window around the corner. It’s easy to tell when the parent birds come and go as they make a funny series of twittering sounds each time. We’ve been watching the parents come to the nest with food, and then the baby birds take it from the parent’s mouth. It always seems that the larger one gets the most food.

Here are the two baby birds in the nest with their mother on Tuesday night, last week at about 6 o’clock when I came home from work. I stood outside on a kitchen step about four feet from their nest to take their picture and they didn’t move at all, not even to blink an eye. A little later, the mother bird flew out and left them alone for a while. Then Wednesday night, she flew out and left them alone again. I felt sure that it was about time for them to fly and that she was preparing them.

Then Thursday night, at about the same time, 6 PM or so, the mother bird suddenly flew in and shooed the babies out of the nest. They flew a short distance and landed on our raised fire pit not far away. They sat there for a few minutes and then were gone, and I couldn’t find them anymore. The babies still have a mottled coloring in their wings to help camouflage them. Soon they will turn all gray like the mom and dad as they mature.
The next morning they were to be seen on the roof top and chimney with their mom, and they were practicing short flights. It’s such a miracle.

Well, if you are a Canadian sitting on the sidelines waiting to buy a winter home or condo here in sunny Palm Springs, now is a great time to act. Prices on Palm Springs properties, depending on location, are down 30% to 60% from the historical highs reached at the top of the bubble in 2005/2006. At that time, the Loonie was worth somewhere around 80 cents US to the US Dollar.

The strengthening of the Canadian dollar to parity with the US dollar presently gives to Canadian buyers an effective further reduction of 20% on our Palm Springs real estate prices. This is relative to prices that they would have paid in 2005/2006.

So if you are a Canadian, looking south of your border for that place in the sun to escape the winter, now is the time to go for your very own piece of Palm Springs real estate. After all, your winter is only five or six months away.

You’re not getting any younger, so what are you waiting for?

The new guideline states that borrowers may purchase a new property after as little as two (2) years from the time of a short sale or similar non-foreclosure sale process. In short, the new guidelines will allow a borrower to purchase a new home with 20% down after 2 years, or 10% down after four years.

Fannie-Mae evidently is recognizing that many homeowners have been forced to sell their homes due to circumstances out of their control, such as a job loss. As the economy recovers and people go back to work, Fannie-Mae backed home loans will once again be available. 

To review these new guidelines please go to Fannie Mae Backed Home Loans.