Tax credit for home buyers?

A $1 million average price for a new home in 20 years? The double-pronged culprits of high inter" est rates and high inflation may push dwellings to that lofty level in some sections of the country by the year 2000, calculated Stan Ross, co-managing partner of Kenneth Leventhal & Co., Los Angeles-based national real-estate accounting and financial consulting firm.

His figuring is based on homes now selling in the $150,000 to $200,000 range, such as in nearby Orange County where dwellings continue to be snapped up while housing activity sags in other aread around the nation.

Elsewhere, Mr. Ross continues, costs will be more "moderate" with price tags of $300,000 to $450,000 at the end of this century on average homes now selling for $75,000 to $100,000.

Mr. Ross, whose firm is consultant to financial institutions including Citibank and Chase Manhattan Bank in New York, and Wells Fargo Bank, San Francisco, also sees income taxes eroding net disposable income, thus making it increasingly difficult for home seekers to qualify for loans even when there are two paychecks in a family.

The consultant feels income tax indexing is the key to protecting net disposable income, permitting more people to qualify for loans. indexing would broaden the tax rate categories to avoid substantial hikes which now occur with pay increases, he points out.

"Housing, which formerly took only 25 to 30 percent of a household's net disposable income, is now requiring up to 40 percent and will be up to 50 percent or higher by the end of 1980 if we do not have tax indexing and some tax incentives," he maintains.