Almost 74,000 buyers claimed the credit even though they probably owned a house over the past three years (the credit is only available to those who did not own during that period). One dead give-away: More than 12,000 of this bunch claimed the residential energy credit sometime during the past three years. Another 19,000 filed for the homebuyer credit even though they had not actually gotten around to buying a house, a fairly spectacular exhibition of chutzpah. And 580 credits were claimed on behalf of children, including at least one four-year-old—obviously a budding real estate developer …
… There is a lot more we need to learn about this mess. But it is easy to imagine the recipe. Take a commssion-starved real estate agent, add a buyer looking for a deal, and throw in a huge cash payment from the government. Is it any surprise that 10 percent of those claiming the credit either bungled the transaction or were engaged in a flat-out scam.
Add to all of this the estimate by Ted Gayer at Brookings that more than 85 percent of the projected 2 million people expected to claim the credit would have bought a house anyway. Like the late, unlamented cash for clunkers program, the homebuyer subsidy is very likely doing little more than further running up the national debt to accelerate some home purchases.
Congress is now debating whether to either continue the credit into next year or even expand it to include all home purchases. This program, as they used to say up in the North End of Boston, needs to take two in the hat.
– Howard Gleckman, senior research associate at the Urban Institute and editor of the Tax Policy Center‘s TaxVox blog, characterizing the $8,000 first-time buyer tax credit as an irredeemable “boondoggle.” For now, the credit is set to expire after November 30.