Waiting for your $15,000 (instead of $7,500), PLEASE READ!

by Joshua Jarvis on February 12, 2009

There’s a new tax credit that’s waiting for House approval that raises the tax credit from $7,500 to $15,000.  However you may not know the whole story!

  • It’s a TRUE tax credit – meaning if you don’t owe up to $15,000 in taxes in at least 2 successive years, you miss out on it.  Lower income individuals would actually benefit more from the $7,500.
  • It’s for every OWNER OCCUPIER of the home.  No investors – opened up to all buyers
  • 10% of the value of the home is what it is based on, whichever is lower – value or credit
  • The new bill leaves the $7,500 as REPAYABLE! – Because it’s different, it’s essentially an interest free loan not a tax credit

Stephen Fuller, a housing economist at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia, said the credit is similar to a $5,000 break enacted in 1975 for buyers of newly constructed, never-occupied homes that reduced backlogged housing inventories to the point where demand for new construction was stimulated.

“The logjam right now is in the trade-up market,” Fuller said. “There’s a lot of pent-up demand. They’re ready and able once they get the go-ahead signal; this may be that kind of signal.”

You can read more at bloomberg .

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