Real Estate, Tax Credits in the works
In the ongoing debate over local impact fees I thought I would share one of my daily information deliveries on what is going on at the Federal level to jump start the housing market. The link on the story is below for you to read in it's entirety, I'm just going to cover the highlights. I'm sure many of you have heard or read about the "Foreclosure Prevention Act" that is making its way through the Goverment in Washington. What many are not hearing about is all the little things that are getting attached to it. The National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) has been pushing since November for a tax credit for homebuyers in order to get the housing market back on track. Both the House and Senate have their own versions they're supporting. The House Bill offers buyers who have not owned a home in at least three years up to $7,500 in refundable credits if they buy a home in the next year. The Senate Bill gives buyers up to 7K if they purchase a foreclosed home. The Senate is also providing relief for builders allowing them to charge current losses against the large gains they posted during the boom. Robert Toll of Toll Brothers is campaigning for a 15K tax credit with of course no strings attached. There are of course many elements that contributed to the current Housing Market, but one of the contributors were speculators, investors. Nothing wrong with that at all they are a important part of the big picture except that many speculators and investors took advantage of loan programs that were intended for homeowners and not investors. They represented they would be living in the home when they had no intention to do so. What the NAHB is proposing would allow those speculators and investors to get back in the game and do the same thing all over again. No one is giving statistics on foreclosed investor properties, with good reason, it would really tee people off. On the local level we need to pay attention to see what, if any of these Bills pass. If potential buyers are given tax credits to purchase a home then we don't need to be giving benefits at both ends by doing away with impact fees. We need to keep in mind just how many people CANNOT AFFORD a home at the prices the bubble inflated them to, and we don't need to "reinflate the bubble" Tax Credits for homebuying is not a new idea, it was done in the mid 70's and was a 2k tax credit. I realize impact fees are for new construction, I am merely pointing out that with the Lobbyists for the building industry in Washington doing what they can for their own welfare we don't know what we will end up with on a national level. With inventories so high the market cannot truly bottom out, and until it does there can be no climb up. Sometimes money just can't fix things, and this is one of them. FAR - News & Events - Builders: Give home buyers a tax credit Related: Marsha's blog | login or register to post comments | printer friendly version | Tags: housing market | impact fees | tax credits
Submitted by Marsha on Mon, 06/09/2008 - 5:07pm.
Hey Sailor! I think you've got a pretty good handle on it, or as much as one can have because we don't know yet what is actually going to happen. Regardless of what they do to help the average citizen own a home the investors and speculators will find a way, some loophole to profit from it, that is a big factor in what caused the whole thing to begin with so far as I am concerned. Whatever happened to people not only reaping the fruits of their labor but taking responsibility when you speculate wrong. Within the same subject of taxes I read an interesting article today which is linked below. Local goverments aren't going to be able to raise tax rates and call them something else to make it easier to swallow, it's also going to take a super majority vote of the Commissioners to raise taxes if the Governor signs it. FAR - News & Events - Florida’s local governments face new requirements if they want to raise taxes People are talking about ...Here are the recent blog postings with the most comments. |
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Hi, Marsha!
This old sailor interprets your very helpful blog to mean the following: the taxpayers are being asked to subsidize and increase the production of a product that there's too much of already. In other words, there are more houses in inventory than there are buyers to buy them. And the taxpayer is being asked to subsidize the sale of either the excess inventory or production of more inventory?
And that same industry locally wants to do away with impact fees? It'll be interesting to see which candidate in district one they throw all the money behind. When I was here four years ago, I believe they bankrolled somebody who got in trouble, at least according to the county audit and grand jury reports I read about in the newspapers. Doesn't say much about their collective judgement, or their ability to judge the character of candidates, does it?
We all gotta have housing and shopping and places to worship and doctors offices to go to, and the builders do a pretty good job of providing that to us. But the tax policies they advocate and the candidates they support seem a bit contrary to a sense of fairness, and to the laws of supply and demand.
Maybe I got too much salt water in my ears, but that's how I see it!