Why not extend the $8,000 first-time home buyers’ tax credit when it expires in November? Everyone loves a tax break, especially one where you can get a quick check from the government. But the Obama administration could do better by targeting the credit to people and places that need it.

Continuing weakness in the housing market makes it tempting for Congress to simply extend this temporary program, or worse yet, open the floodgates to the $15,000 credit-for-all that some are proposing. Closer inspection of how the credit has worked, and what it has cost, should give lawmakers pause.

According to a recent National Association of Realtors study, only about 350,000 buyers out of the nearly 2 million who will claim the credit this year would not have bought without it, and some of those were just buying a few months earlier than they would have otherwise. In effect, four out of five buyers were handed $8,000 by other taxpayers for a purchase they would have made anyway.

Full story is availabl eon Centre for American Progress