The 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) included a tax credit of up to $8,000 for qualified first-time home buyers purchasing a principal residence on or after January 1, 2009 and before December 1, 2009. To be sure this has helped some prospective buyers down off the fence. Increasingly though, states are employing innovative finance programs to assist first-time homebuyers at the closing table and, in doing so, are reaching a much broader group of would-be buyers.

To date, nine states have established a first-time homebuyer tax credit loan program and a tenth, Washington State, recently took a major step towards establishing a similar program of their own. The National Council of State Housing Agencies is tracking these programs, and there list can be found here (http://www.ncsha.org/section.cfm/3/34/2920).

For more information on how these tax credit loan programs work, contact NAHB’s tax economist, Rob Dietz. For additional information on what other states are doing, contact Alex Strong in NAHB’s Government Affairs department.  And for more information on the tax credit itself, please consult NAHB’s website www.federalhousingtaxcredit.com.

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