First Home Owner scheme was introduced by the Romanian government as an incentive for the housing market. The program is partially similar to other schemes previously established in United States, Poland and Australia. Specialists interviewed by Wall-Street outlined the similarities and differences between these schemes, as well as the shortcomings of the one adopted by Romania.

First Home Owner program in United States

First Time Home Buyer Tax Credit program in United States can be partially compared with First Home Program in Romania, as George Ene (photo) vicepresident of US-based Rabobank Group’s Leveraged Finance.

First Home program has three major flaws: 1) it is randomly capped to 60,000 euros, thus favoring a certain class of apartments, 2)it is limited to a total ceiling of 1 billion euros, which means few first-time homebuyers will actually benefit of this facility, and 3)it can pave the way to a softening of lending standards, as the banks are no longer so much concerned on the risk of default, as the government will take the brunt of it.

In contrast, in the first-time homebuyer scheme in United States, the arrangement is strictly between the government and the buyer, the state grant covering 10 percent of the purchase price of the home. This is made through a tax credit, namely an amount which is returned after filing the income statement at the Revenue Service.

Under these terms, conditions are: 1) to buy the house between April 8 2008 and December 1 2009; 2)the purchase price to be more than 75,000 dollars or 80,000 dollars if purchased after December 31; 3)to occupy it and not to be a vacation home or rental property; 4)not to own another principal residence at any time during the three years prior to the date of purchase 5) the income not to exceed 95,000 dollars/year for single taxpayers or 150,000 dollars/year for m