Congress sure did folks a big favor when they gave them $8,000 checks for buying new houses, reports Smartmoney.com:

The government’s recent $8,000 cash incentive for first-time home buyers has proved even more costly for recipients than for taxpayers, according to data released Monday. Typical buyers have lost twice as much to price declines as they received from the program.
The median home value fell to about $170,000 in March from $185,000 a year earlier, according to Zillow.com. That means a buyer who closed on a house just before the tax-credit program expired in April 2010 collected $8,000 but has since lost $15,000 in value. Those who bought earlier in the program have done worse; the median price is down $20,000 from March 2009.

To help these folks out even more, the government destroyed thousands of perfectly good used cars in Congressmen Braley’s insane “Cash for Clunkers” program, making used cars more expensive at a time when tsunami-related disruptions are making new cars more expensive too. Good thing we’ve got such smart congresscritters taking care of us.
Via the TaxProf.