Comments on: Home Buyer Tax Credit – Can We Afford It?

By: anon2

anon2 — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 12:43:38 +0000

Jay, it’s not the author who is making assumptions. He got those estimates from The NAR. So yes, they probably are wrong. Even so, the point is still valid that the cost of the tax credit per extra house sold is a lot higher than $8,000, unless you assume that there would have been zero buyers without the credit.

By: Jay

Jay — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 21:18:02 +0000

There is no data suggest those 1.9m qualified will buy in this marker condition. does author assume last year there were 1.9m first home buyer bought one? even so, we need check if the trend is going down from 2005 till now. if less people every year, that 1.9m number is questionable.

By: anon2

anon2 — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 16:35:39 +0000

Jay, no the point was that 0.35m was the number of additional sales (according to the NAR) that were generated by the tax credit. The other sales would have happened anyway, even without the credit. The blogger’s point was that in order to generate those additional sales, which was the point of the credit, quite a bit of tax money was spent subsidizing sales that would have happened anyway.

By: John Ford

John Ford — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 16:33:50 +0000

The point trying to be made is that the U,S is paying $8.000 to homebuyers who would be buying homes even with out the tax credit. The NAR claims 350,000 bought because of the credit which avg to 43K per new homebuyer.

By: Jay

Jay — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 14:41:50 +0000

Not understand and totally confused.
If 1.9 mil buyers bought 1.9m house, plus additional 0.35m house, total tax credit should be 2.25m times $8000 which is about $18 billion. Yet, credit per house is still $8k. why put all tax credit onto addtional 0.35 mil house? The blogger just missed the point that if no credit, those 1.9 mil people will not buy any house. so those $18b generates about 2.2m house sale. is that right?