Governor Holds Press Conference to Highlight $10,000 Homebuyer Tax Credit

Fresno, CA January 14th, 2009 – Making the Case for Stimulating California’s Housing Market

If you’re like me and don’t want to sit through 20 minutes of political hyperbole, here’s a summary of the above speech.  Plus, I can’t stop thinking he’s going to say “Come with me if you want to live”….I dunno, too much of a movie junkie I guess.

Mayor Swearengin of Fresno, CA introduced Governor Schwarzenegger and wasted no time supporting the Governors push to extend and expand the $10,000 homebuyer tax credit for California’s residents.

The homebuyer tax credit is particularly important for us since we’ve felt firsthand the impacts of the downturn in the housing market. We saw great success with the previous tax credit and we believe the Governor’s proposal will provide a much-needed economic boost for us in Fresno and in the San Joaquin Valley. Not only does this credit result in more home sales but most importantly, it creates jobs in an industry that so desperately needs them.

Even though many critics are against spending taxpayer money, or rather not collecting taxpayer money and contributing further to the troubled California economy, the Governor is making his position on the tax credit very public as he rally’s public support for a plan to allocate $200,000,000 for the extension and expansion of this credit.

The extended and expanded California $10,000 homebuyer tax credit is part of a wider California Jobs Initiative that the Governor is trying to push through as a vital part of stimulating and slowing California’s climbing unemployment rate.

Here are several excerpts from the Governor’s speech discussing the credit:

But this time we are here today again also talking about job creation but talking much more about housing, as housing being the means for job creation, because for our job creation initiative I think housing is a very important part of this puzzle. And so we want to do everything that we can to stimulate that market. Every new home that is being built creates three new jobs, permanent new jobs. And last year when we extended the tax credit it started a whole chain reaction. Homes were sold and therefore builders began pulling permits again, subcontractors began hiring again. And of course then the roofers started working, the carpenters got jobs, the plumbers got jobs, the cement pourers got jobs. And so it created a lot of great, great jobs. As a matter of fact, here in La Ventana Homes there was an increase of 300 percent in home sales, so that just shows to you what kind of an effect that it had. A lot of young families bought homes and moved in and that, of course, created jobs and brought people from the unemployment back to work.

But once the tax credit expired, then you saw right away again a drop off in home sales. And this is why my proposal is to extend that tax credit now, the $10,000 tax credit to purchase new and existing — for the purchase of new and existing homes. Altogether we want to put aside $200 million for these tax credits. Right now the inventory of new homes is at the lowest it has been since 1971 and that means, of course, now we create demand to build new homes and that’s exactly what we want to do. We want to get people off the fence and move them into homes.

It’s difficult to know how much traction this initiative is getting as lawmakers carefully consider this new stimulus plan.

As always, I will keep you updated and let you know what we know, when we know it!

Related posts:

1. Governor Briefly mentions Homebuyer Tax Credit in Recent Speech
2. Governor Talks up $10,000 Homebuyer Tax Credit in Bakersfield – Tuesday, February 16th 2010

Tagged as: 10000 tax credit, California, existing homes, homebuyer, new construction, qualifying, Tax Credit