patrick.net

No chance in hell.

But then again I have no idea how strange things are going to become here. I expect as the decade grinds on things will be getting weirder and weirder.

eg. $2T/yr deficits. States going BK.

Getting rid of the MID would cut the housing market off at the knees. It's one of the main price supports left.

And the stupid thing is, if they had just turned the mortgage interest deduction into a full tax credit they could have saved everything, or at least postponed the crash. Since the deduction costs is $130B/yr, moving to a full credit would cost around $400B more. Small price to pay to keep home prices up at 2008 levels, LOL.

The real dumb thing is nobody seems to understand that the MID makes homes more expensive. We are a very stupid people.

Nah. Just a baseless theory. A while ago I started a thread here on this topic. Govt. will end up cutting services,increasing tax but not eliminating MID.

This very same topic was posted not too long ago on this thread and has been answered many times. This deduction has been in the tax code from the very beginning in 1913 and it's not going anywhere. NAR is too powerful and about 1/2 of the population are homeowners and the politicians know that the vast majority of them vote. If anything at all is changed, which is highly unlikely in my opinion, the deduction would only be for multi million dollar homes and second homes, but the deduction for the average Joe and Joann (another reason is that most Congressmen/women and Senators own property) there will be absolutely no change whatsoever.

A new vitamin on the market that proclaims that if you do not take this vitamin you will get cancer and die. Do you think this another scare tactic ? Real Estate is a good investment (in normal times) because of four basic benefits. #1. Leverage. #2. Appreciation. #3. Capitol gains treatment. #4. Interest deduction... Usually when gubmint throws this THREAT out there, something else is being covered up. But we should be vigilant as they would put a lot of money into their Wet Bars and Swedish Chalet's if they could cut us off from that benefit.

They might. Democrats won't let it happen though. Pelosi was up in arms when bipartisan committee suggested it.

I am sure Obama would sign this legislation in a split second should it ever arrive on his desk.

There's an interesting article in the Chron about eliminating the MID. http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/09/04/MN101KRFD4.DTL Some of the comments are very clueless about the MID and its impact.

DennisN says

Some of the comments are very clueless about the MID and its impact.

Very true. And the most illiterate and ilnumerate comments are coming from people who are, presumably, beneficiaries of the deduction.

Too bad we don't tax cluelessness directly rather than make it a pass-through to the home sellers and the real estate industry.