College Graduates

Tips for Parents Buying Homes for Children

With home prices low, now could be a good time for parents to give their children a home or even an investment property.

Here are some suggestions for managing the tax consequences from Mark Luscombe, tax analyst with Wolters Kluwer.

* Give a cash gift. Individuals are allowed to gift up to $13,000 per person in a given year without incurring gift tax. That means a couple could give their offspring and spouse $52,000 in a single year to go toward a down payment.

* Lend money. The government requires that family members meet or exceed minimum loan rates to avoid having the loan be considered a gift. The rates are currently low. One way to handle this is for parent to use the $52,000 gift exclusion to forgive both interest and principal.

* Use a trust. Set up a qualified personal residence trust, or QPRT. You’ll need an attorney to handle this transaction, but in a nutshell, parents put the home they want to give their children into a trust. At the end of a pre-set term, the home passes to the children with no taxes due.

Source: The Wall Street Journal, Shelly Banjo (06/25/2009)

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Elliott Robinson, JD – Associate Broker
Adams Realtors
458 Cherokee Ave. SE
Atlanta, GA 30312
(o) 404-688-1222

College Graduates

Top 10 Cities for Young College Graduates

When new college grads set out to find their first real job, they might check out the following list of best cities for new college grads compiled by Apartments.com and CBcampus.com, CareerBuilder.com’s college job search site.

The list ranks cities with the highest concentration of adults aged 20 to 24, the inventory of jobs requiring less than one year of experience, and the average cost of rent for a one-bedroom apartment.

Based on this criteria, the top 10 best cities for recent college grads are:

1. Indianapolis, $625 average rent for a one-bedroom apartment
2. Philadelphia, $1,034
3. Baltimore, $1,130
4. Cincinnati, $691
5. Cleveland, $686
6. New York, $1,548
7. Phoenix, $747
8. Denver, $877
9. Chicago, $1,133
10. San Antonio, $696

Source: Apartments.com (05/06/2009)

—
Elliott Robinson, JD – Associate Broker
Adams Realtors
458 Cherokee Ave. SE
Atlanta, GA 30312
(o) 404-688-1222