Home tax credit boosts sales ... and fraud

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Oct. 23, 2009

Home sales were up 9.5% in September, thanks in large part to an $8,000 tax credit for first time homebuyers. Many members of Congress are pushing to extend the credit beyond its December 1 expiration, but the White House harbors its doubts. An IRS watchdog group told Congress that hundreds of millions of dollars have already been fraudulently claimed. Is the bump to home sales worth the cost? Larry Mantle learns more.

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Guest:

Xavier Becerra, U.S. Congressman (D-CA 31)

Richard Green, Director, Lusk Center for Real Estate, USC

patty
3 months, 2 weeks ago

please ask about how the banks have stopped reporting when an owner actualy defaults which has created a false reporting of foreclosures.

michael from Orange
3 months, 2 weeks ago

Larry I share yours and professor's concerns. I do think is program is a mistake. Yet again congress does something on one hand despite their good intentions that ends shooting us in the front putting us back into the dllema that was a cause omuch of the financial disaster this country has suffere. Unfortunatley too many of the wrong people such as investors and fraudsters are again taking advantage of congress generosity at the expense of most of the rest of us. Congress needs to stop catering to the real estate, banking and construction industries. We need more 'real" jobs in industries such as manufacturing that don't depend so much on the housing market. When will this country ever learn.

linda L.
3 months, 2 weeks ago

THAT IRREGULATIRY IN HOME PURCHASES vs EMPLOYMENT IS CALLED SPECULATION WITH NOTHING DOWN!

If I was an speculative investor and had 3-kids and 3 sisters with kids, and could buy (through them), 6-homes, for an investment of $18,000 but an immediate tax return of 48,000.00??

A BIG problem with the first-time homebuyers program is that all the people who are recipients of bad credit from the banks who swindled them (and they lost their homes); all these are NOT able to get into this program because they have bad credit now and probably would not be considered first-time home buyers either. These are your families, not the speculators.

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