The First-Time and Repeat Home Buyer Tax Credit deadline is quickly approaching for homebuyers to have a valid signed contract by April 30, 2010. But for one group of taxpayers the deadline has been extended one full year to April 30, 2011.

Members of the armed forces, military intelligence officers and Foreign Service personnel who have been deployed overseas a minimum of 90 days in 2008 or 2009 get a break with an extended deadline.

Just about a month before president Obama signed the Worker, Homeownership, and Business Assistance Act (WHBA) of 2009 extending and expanding the tax credit on November 7, Congress passed a deadline extension for the military under the Service Members Home Ownership Tax Act of 2009.

The military had until November 30, 2010 to purchase their first homeunder the old guidelines. 

Once the WHBA Act was passed and signed into law, the Service Members' deadline was also extended and expanded.

An estimated 350,000 military personnel and an unknown number of federal employees are affected byt he extension.

Once their overseas duty cycle ends, this group of home buyers will enter back into the real estate market capable of taking full advantage of the tax credits available to them.

Consumers are paying more attention to their credit card payments and making sure they are current according to a newly released report from TransUnion. 

The credit information management company analyzed 27 million anonymous consumer records randomly sampled during the six quarters from 2008 to 2009. Their selection criteria included consumers with at leastone credit card and a current mortgage.

Consumers who are delinquent on their credit cards and current on their mortgages decreased to 3.6% from 4.1% in the time period of the study.

However, during the first quarter of 2008 a "flip" occurred where the percentage of consumers with current credit card balances and delinquent mortgages rose. This trend continued during the study time period logging an increase to 6.6% from 4.3%.

"Conventional wisdom has always been that, when faced with a financial crises, consumers will pay their secured obligations first,specifically mortgages," stated Sean Reardon, author of the study in the company's analytics and decisioning business unit.

This flip was more pronounced in the Florida and California markets and also for the lowest-scoring segment of the consumer market.

Analysts predicted that the flip would revert since the worst of the recession has passed, but that has not been the case, TransUnion says.