patrick.net

StillLooking says

xenogear3 says

$8000 is only useful if you buy a $100k house, because you can use it as a “down payment”.
It is useless if you buy a $800k house.

Seems to me that 3.5% downpayment on $300,000.00 house is $9500.00 so this makes the downpayment on a 300 grand house 1500 bucks.

Exactly. I know for a fact that this housing credit had a big effect on many people buying in the 300-400k range, keeping houses that SHOULD be closer to the 250k range, up in the upper 300k range. I see it all around me in the "working class" area of the East Bay.
It's going to take a while for people to realize that they are more and more going to have to bring more of their own money to the table, which makes it a little harder to pull the lever and sign up for a 300-400k++ house with a 50-100k a year household income..

http://marketplace.publicradio.org/display/web/2010/04/30/mm-homebuyers-tax-credit-impact-market/

looks like the impact is more than negligible...

MarkInSF says

From every report I’ve read, the tax credit has had negligible impact. Most people claiming the credit would have bought anyway. In the mid to high range it probably made no difference. The government just took money from me and gave it to somebody else that didn’t need it. That’s all.