It's been said hear on AR that Tax payers will be repaying the Real Estate Tax Credit for generations. That may be true. It's also been said that it artificially manipulates the housing market and is doomed to fail!

Look, the market has been manipulated since congress allowed the mortgage interest deduction and the Real Estate Tax deduction. Should we also eliminate those? What's the difference? Other than the tax credit is going to be short lived in relation to the interest and tax deductions.

There are precious few homes on the market in South Orange County under 500K that are not short sales. I blame (credit), the tax incentive. Homes have been selling very rapidly on the low end here. I put in an offer last week and had to compete with 25 other offers!! $8000 isn't a huge incentive, but for someone thinking about buying, it may just be enough to help them make up their minds.

Is the tax stimulus artificial? Nope, buyer's really get the money.

We've rewarded many financial institutions for making bad investment decisions. Who in the world came up with the idea that it's ok to lend to a buyer that has nothing down, and oh yeah, believe whatever they claim as income (stated income). Maybe those institutions should have been punished (of course many were).

What about those that have lost their homes. We allowed many of them to be forgiven debt on Short Sales without taxing them. Should we not have done that?

We are in a real pickle here folks. Maybe we should have just let the whole thing collapse and let the cards fall where they may. That would be true capitalism, right?

The way I see it, buyers today are the good guys, they are the ones willing to purchase homes while others point the finger and complain about how things should have been done. It's the courageous home buyers today that are going to get us out of this jamb and get our economy rolling again. Personally, I feel they deserve a reward in the form of a Tax Credit, in fact, I for one think it should be MORE.

Bottom line is, we have rewarded a lot of groups that made poor decisions. Without buyers, there wouldn't be a Real Estate market. A small incentive, if nothing else, to show that our nation applauds them for being courageous, is well worth the cost.