Tax Credit for home purchase

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The following information from NAR may be of interest to you regarding the latest on the Tax Credit Update.



The shape of a final tax credit package has remained in flux since our first notification on Tuesday. As the media has reported this morning, however, there is an agreement on the details of an expanded and extended credit, but NO VOTE has yet occurred.

We cannot predict at this time when a vote will occur, but continue to press that it be as soon as possible.

The Extended and Expanded Tax Credit agreement includes the following provisions:

Amount: $8,000
Who: First-time homebuyers -- same definition as current law

Amount: $6500
Who: Repeat purchasers. Must have used previous home as a principal residence for 5 of the 8 previous years.
Income Limits: $125,000 for single filers/$225,000 for joint filers. Same for both first-time and repeat/move-up buyers

Limitation on cost
purchased home: $800,000

Time Frame: December 1, 2009 to April 30, 2010 plus 60 Day extension if binding contract is in place by April 30, 2010

Anti-fraud measures have been added.

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I'm a realtor so this helps me out in the short term, but generally speaking these types of government bribes just weakens our country imo. It just adds more to our debt and in the market place, it pushes more activity now, but after the incentives expire, the market will drop back down.

To me, the government should stop with all the incentives and let the market naturally take its course. They should also stop insuring so many loans. If banks are forced to carry the risk, there would've been less defaulted loans because they would've been more picky on who gets to borrow money.