SPRINGFIELD – As the cost of housing continues to rise, Illinois realtors are pushing legislation to make it easier for first-time homebuyers to save for a down payment.
Senate Bill 148 would enable Illinois residents to open a special kind of savings account that could only be used to pay eligible costs for the purchase of a single-family residence. Deposits into those accounts would be deductible from state income taxes with some limitations.
The deductions would be limited to $5,000 per year for individuals and $10,000 per year for joint accounts, up to maximum aggregate amounts of $25,000 per individual and $50,000 for joint accounts over a 10-year period.
The accounts would be available to Illinois residents who have not owned or purchased, either individually or jointly, a single-family residence during the prior 10 years. That would include both first-time and “second-chance” buyers – people who may have purchased a home previously and now want to get into the ownership market again.
“When you look at the median sales price of a home in Illinois in 2024, it was almost $300,000,” Sen. Cristina Castro, D-Elgin, said during a news conference Thursday. “That’s 8% higher than in 2023 and almost 40% then higher than in 2019. So you see the rapid (rising) cost of homes.”
Jim Clayton, senior director of state government affairs for the trade group Illinois Realtors, said the bill is one of several initiatives the industry has introduced this year to help alleviate the burden of rising home prices.
The bill has been assigned to the Senate Revenue Committee and is awaiting further action.
Senate Republicans push property tax relief measures
Senate Republicans are urging passage of a handful of bills they say are aimed at providing property tax relief to Illinois homeowners, something they say Democratic Gov. JB Pritzker did not address in his budget proposal last week.
“He talked about affordable housing,” Sen. Jil Tracy, R-Quincy, said during a Statehouse news conference Thursday. “And yes, that’s very necessary. First-time homeowners are facing difficulties in buying homes, because what you have to consider most of all is, can you make the property tax payment? You can’t address affordable housing unless you first address what’s going on with Illinois’s high property tax and high property tax amounts.”
Sen. Chapin Rose, R-Mahomet, is sponsoring Senate Bill 2246, which would put a cap increases in the assessed valuation of residential property to the rate of inflation over the previous 12 months. He said it would help bridge the rapidly increasing gap between what senior homeowners collect from Social Security and the increasing amounts they’re being charged for property taxes.
“This is real, this is hurting people, and it’s all scalable,” he said. “Whether you live in $100,000 home or $200,000 home or $4,000 home, it’s becoming unaffordable.”
The bill has not yet been assigned to a committee.
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