Why the homebuyer subsidy needs to die a natural death.

Never mind end-of-life care discussions for senior citizens. We need to have one right now about the homebuyer tax credit. The powers that be need to let this program die with dignity when its time comes rather than letting it linger. As anyone buying or selling a home knows, the government will give you a tax credit of 10 percent of the home's purchase price up to $8,000, provided neither you nor your spouse has owned a home in the past three years. Your new digs have to be your primary residence for three years, and you can't make more than $75,000 a year (double that if there's two of you). 

This incentive was launched by the government earlier this year and is set to expire Nov. 30. But if the real estate and construction industries have their way, the program will go on life support until at least next year and perhaps indefinitely. Several members of Congress have drafted or voiced support for bills calling for extensions or expansions of the initiative. One version, introduced in the Senate by Georgia Republican John Isakson, would extend the program through 2010, raise the credit to $15,000, and be available to all homebuyers, regardless of current housing status or income level. Senate Banking Committee Chairman Christopher Dodd has voiced his support, as has Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. (It’s worth noting that Reid hails from Nevada, a state that’s been especially hard hit by the real estate crisis.)

Extending the credit and expanding its scope is a bad idea on multiple levels. For starters, let's look at the program's return on investment. According to the IRS, 1.4 million homes have been bought since the credit's inception; the National Association of Realtors gives a somewhat higher figure of 1.8 million to 2 million. (Either way, the program is already going to cost about $15 billion if it winds down as planned, according to the Associated Press.) And yet, according to the NAR’s own math, the tax credit was the make-or-break factor in only 350,000 of those sales. The National Association of Homebuilders, another industry group lobbying to extend the credit, places this figure even lower, at 150,000. In other words, the vast majority of homebuyers would have signed on the dotted line even without the government’s incentive.

As any marketing professional knows, you don't measure a campaign's success by how much it costs but by how much it costs per person to persuade consumers to change their behavior. As the observant bloggers over at Calculated Risk have pointed out, when you divide the number of “conversions” (that is, people who bought a house only because of the tax credit) by the total amount spent on the program, the numbers look very different. Now, instead of the program costing $8,000 per buyer, it costs $43,000—not a great use of taxpayer dollars.

That's not the only problem. The credit also artificially inflates the value of all eligible homes sold by up to $8,000, leaving the buyer with a debt that's greater than the value of the property. Sound familiar? Inflated home values were a big part of what got us into this mess in the first place. Perpetuating this via the tax credit might lessen the pain in the near term, but as we've all learned the hard way, a correction's going to come sooner or later.

What's more, the credit creates skewed incentives. America’s tax code is already tilted heavily in favor of home ownership; if you own your house, you get to deduct the interest you pay on your mortgage as well as your property taxes. Plus, the more house you own, the more you can deduct. Some economists think this encourages buyers to stretch for a McMansion instead of purchasing a more modest abode; following this logic, dropping the income cap and first-time requirement on the tax credit would only increase that effect.