FIRST-TIME Home Buyer Tax Credit

Obama's bloated non-stimulus stimulus bill offers an $8,000 tax credit to "first-time home buyers."

What's very odd is how "first-time home buyer" is defined.

From Zillow.com:

* First-time home buyer means you cannot have owned a home for the past three years prior to purchase.

What?

How is it possible that "first-time home buyer" means that you haven't owned a home for the past three years?

So if you owned a home two years ago, you wouldn't be considered a "first-time buyer." But if you owned a home four years ago, you would be a home buying virgin.

There's nothing "first" about that.

In the New York Times coverage of what the stimulus bill has to offer Americans, it mentions the credit for "first-time buyers" but doesn't note that you don't really have to be a "first-time buyer" to get the credit.

U.S. News and World Report does provide a definition:

First time buyers defined: For the purpose of this legislation, a "first-time home buyer" is someone who hasn't owned a principal residence for three years before buying a house. (The date of purchase is considered the day that the title is transferred.) That means if you've owned a vacation home--but not a principal residence--within the past three years, you would still qualify for the credit.

In other words, you can qualify as a "first-time home buyer" even if you have bought a home.

If you bought a home when you were 25 years old, and you lived there for 25 years, but then sold it and rented for the next three years, you would be eligible for the "first-time home buyer" credit.

You could have owned a home for 25 years and still be considered a "first-time buyer" now.

Equally strange, you could currently own a vacation home and qualify as a "first-time home buyer." As long as it's not a principal residence, where you live most of the time, technically you haven't bought your first home.

I don't know why the $8,000 tax credit is called a credit for "first-time home buyers" when it clearly is not.

Weird.