A bipartisan budget deal signed into law Friday morning following a six-hour government shutdown will briefly extend the National Flood Insurance Program for a few weeks, while lawmakers race to reform the ailing, 49-year-old insurance plan through legislation currently stalled in the Senate. The extension until March 23 was among a half-dozen small victories for the real estate industry buried inside the 600-page budget bill, and the National Association of Realtors (NAR), the industry’s largest trade group and its most powerful lobbying body, is taking credit. Besides infrastructure and disaster relief funding–which are expected to spur new development — the bill will now extend a series of mortgage- and energy-related tax credits thought to be in jeopardy after their exclusion from last year’s tax overhaul. “The National Association of Realtors is glad Congress came together to extend funding for the federal government, as well as extend retroactively for 2017 tax relie…
Source: click here