- Homeownership tax credit bills S. 198 and S. 875 in the Senate and H.R. 839 in the House would help bridge the gap between the cost of developing affordable housing and the price that buyers can afford to pay for a home in many lower-income neighborhoods. The credit each year would stimulate construction of 50,000 new or rehabilitated homes and create 120,000 new jobs.
- “The First-Time Homebuyers’ Tax Credit Act of 2003,” S. 1175, would create a refundable tax credit of $3,000 for single taxpayers and a $6,000 credit for married couples buying their first home. It has been estimated that the program would help as many as 17 million people become home owners over the next seven years.
- “The Mortgage Insurance Fairness Act,” S. 846, and companion bill H.R. 1336 would make premiums paid for FHA and private mortgage insurance tax deductible. This would aid lower- and moderate-income home buyers, who are the biggest users of the insurance.
- “The American Dream Downpayment Initiative,” introduced in the Senate as S. 811 and in the House as H.R. 1276, would provide $200 million to help lower-income families become home owners. The program is expected to assist 40,000 households annually.
To spur construction of new affordable housing, Rayburn called on the Federal Housing Administration to insure single-family construction loans. This would establish a secondary market for these loans to attract new lenders and investors to the housing production credit market.
“The development of such a market will lower the cost of construction credit, help attract more capital to underserved areas and help home builders avoid the type of severe credit crunch that occurred in the early 1990s,” said Rayburn.
Noting NAHB’s full support for the Bush Administration’s “Blueprint for the American Dream” initiative to increase homeownership opportunities for minority families, Rayburn added that the association is committed “to promoting homeownership education, improving minority access to credit and working with lawmakers at all levels of government to identify and fix policies and bureaucratic hurdles that make it difficult to build affordable housing or that add to the cost of such housing.”
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Photo by Herman Farrer
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