Presidential candidates eye industry changes aimed at housing, building incentives
With this week marking the national elections in our country, the real estate industry is anxious to see what changes will come about to help spur home sales volume, lower existing mortgage rates and to help increase the overall supply of housing.
It’s very easy to find what Harris’ campaign has planned, as they have laid out a detailed roadmap of policies aimed at expanding access to affordable housing both for homebuyers and renters through various government programs, tax incentives and credits.
The specifics of what the Trump campaign plans is a little harder to pinpoint, but AP Wire summarized the Trump plan as the following: create tax incentives for homebuyers, cut “unnecessary” regulations on home construction and make some federal land available for residential construction, and lower housing costs by reducing inflation and stopping illegal immigration.
A summary of the Harris campaign proposals detailed in their “A New Way Forward for the Middle Class” are:
1. Unlocking 1.2 million new affordable rental homes through historic incentives for the private sector, expanding the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC), a tax credit that helps make it financially viable for private and non-profit developers to build affordable rental housing.
2. Creating a new tax credit to rehabilitate affordable housing for homeowners who want to stay in their communities. She plans to create a new Neighborhood Homes Tax Credit, which would support the new construction or rehabilitation of over 400,000 owner-occupied homes in lower income communities.
3. Building up supply through the first-ever tax incentive for building affordable homes for first-time homebuyers. She is proposing the first-ever tax cut specifically targeted at encouraging homebuilders to build affordable homes for first-time homebuyers.
4. Launching a $40 billion Local Innovation Fund for Housing Expansion providing state and local governments, and private developers and homebuilders, funds to invest in innovative strategies to expand the housing supply.
5. Taking on algorithmic price fixing, which distort markets, and ending unfair practices that help large corporate landlords dramatically raise rents. Harris’ campaign wants to pass the Preventing the Algorithmic Facilitation of Rental Housing Cartels Act.
6. And, lastly, a campaign proposal that has garnered a lot of media exposure, expanding homeownership with a $25,000 down payment assistance for first-time homebuyers. The proposal states that this will be provided to working families who have paid their rent on time for two years and are buying their first home up to $25,000 in down-payment assistance.
Lauren Bunting is a Broker with Keller Williams Realty of Delmarva in Ocean City, Maryland.