Farm Subsidies to Lower Your Housing Costs

FarmsubsidiessubdivisionWant to know how to beat the lowering of property values? Build your home on farmland and let the federal government subsidize your property. You do not even have to be a farmer to capitalize on the subsidies the government is handing out like Costco snacks at an open house in San Francisco.

Even though Donald R. Matthews put his sprawling new residence in the heart of rice country, he is no farmer. He is a 67-year-old asphalt contractor who wanted to build a dream house for his wife of 40 years.

Yet under a federal agriculture program approved by Congress, his 18-acre suburban lot receives about $1,300 in annual “direct payments,” because years ago the land was used to grow rice.

Matthews is not alone. Nationwide, the federal government has paid at least $1.3 billion in subsidies for rice and other crops since 2000 to individuals who do no farming at all, according to an analysis of government records by The Washington Post.
Some of them collect hundreds of thousands of dollars without planting a seed. Mary Anna Hudson, 87, from the River Oaks neighborhood in Houston, has received $191,000 over the past decade. For Houston surgeon Jimmy Frank Howell, the total was $490,709.via the Washington Post

Related posts:
  1. Property Values of Farm Real Estate Decline For The First Time Since 1987
  2. How Local Governments Will Not Lower Property Taxes When Property Values Drop
  3. $8,000 New Home Buyer Tax Credit, $6,500 Old Home Buyer Tax Credit
  4. Should The $8,000 Home Buyer Tax Credit Go Away

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There Is 1 Response So Far. »

  1. I AM LOOKING FOR A SUBSIDIZE RETIREMENT FARM LAND IN HAWAII. PLESAE GUIE ME TO APPROCH THE GOVT OR APPROPRIATE AGENGY

    THANKS

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