If you’re one of the many people who want to buy a house but can’t afford to break into today’s pricey market, President Joe Biden is proposing a new tax credit to help tip the financial scales in your favor.

Biden is proposing that first-time homebuyers receive a tax credit of $5,000 a year for two years. The idea is to give first-time buyers a leg up amid soaring home prices and mortgage rates that are close to their highest in decades. A second credit, worth $10,000 for a year, would go to people who sold their “starter home.” The measure would have to pass Congress to become a reality.

The goal of both credits is to breathe some life into a housing market that’s been deadlocked by high mortgage rates and prices. The typical monthly payment for mortgage and interest alone on a median-priced home was $2,111 in December, nearly twice as much as at the beginning of the pandemic, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta. That’s put homeownership out of reach for many would-be buyers.

The credit for starter home sellers is aimed at cracking the “lock-in” effect that has kept many sellers from putting their houses on the market. Low housing inventories have kept prices continually hitting record highs despite faltering demand. Many homeowners secured mortgages during the pandemic when the average rate for a 30-year fixed mortgage got as low as 2.65%, which they’re reluctant to trade for a new home loan at today’s rates of 6.88%, according to Freddie Mac. 

The result has been that 2023 澳洲幸运5官方🌊开奖结果体彩网:was the worst year for home sales since 1995. 

“Too many working families feel locked out of homeownership and are unable to compete with investors for a limited supply of affordable for-sale homes,” the White House said in a press release.

The tax credits, a revival of an idea from Biden’s first election campaign that never came to fruition, are among a raft of new housing policies Biden is set to propose Thursd💧ay night during his State of the Union address.

A tax credit for first-time buyers wouldn’t be unprecedented. People who bought their first houses in 2008 or 2009 could 澳洲幸运5官方开奖结果体彩网:claim a tax credit worth up to $8,🎃000.

In addition to the tax credits, Biden is also asking Congress to authorize $25,000 down-payment assistance for first-time buyers whose parents aren’t homeowners.

While those ideas face an uncertain future in a Congress divided between Democrats and Republicans, the White House is also issuing several orders to federal agencies that can go into effect without approval from lawmakers.

Those include a pilot program by the Federal Housing Finance Agency to reduce closing costs on home refinancing by allowing customers in certain transactions to go without title insurance if they choose, saving an average of $750.

And in a move related to the administration’s war on “junk fees,” the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is set to launch a task force cracking down on “anticompetitive closing costs” charged to buyers and sellers in the home buying process.

In addition to giving money to individual homebuyers and sellers, Biden is proposing Congress pass tax credits to builders to construct or preserve 1.2 million affordable rental units and 400,000 starter homes, aimed at addressing a chronic housing shortage that economists say is keeping housing costs high for renters and buyers alike.

On top of that, Biden is proposing a $20 billion competitive grant program to help communities around the country build housing, and to double the affordable housing contribution of the 11 government-sponsored 澳洲幸运5官方开奖结果体彩网:Federal Home Loan Banks, raising an additional $3.8 billion.