As the clock winds down to the last hours of the last day of this month, I can hear Realtors all over the country collectively sounding a sigh of relief. The Home-Buyer Tax Credit gold rush is over. There never has been anything like it before in the real estate market that I can think of. Maybe the Oklahoma Land Grab in the late 1800′s? I know that there was a lot more offers written the last few months because of it…and business the last few weeks and days especially was brisk. To me it was wildly entertaining to see grown people running around crazy the last couple weeks trying to find something they wanted to buy. As always, the good homes were in short supply. I had several customers who wanted to take advantage of it, so yes, I was out there in the mix myself. I turned it into a game, a challenge…one you were trying to win for your customers. It ended up being fun.
It will take quite some time though before anyone will know what effect it had, if any, on the market and the economy. I personally think that hardly anyone bought a home because of this that wasn’t going to buy one anyway. They just did it a little sooner than they would have because of the Tax Credit. The ripple effect though may continue for a while as people whose homes were purchased then buy their next home…and those people then buy their next home…and so forth. That’s what this stimulus was trying to accomplish. We’ll see.
I can hardly wait to learn what the total bill to the American public for this will be. $6,500 to $8,000 credit for everyone who bought a home? A staggering amount I’m sure. Congress will just borrow more money to pay for it I suppose, like they have been doing for everything else. Of course, Congress is full of very smart people, right? They know what they are doing. All of us end up paying for all the borrowing ultimately…or more accurately our children, grandchildren…and so forth. The real ripple effect?
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