From the REO Insider blog (a site that, due to our never-ending short sale offer, has been a source of useful information about the burgeoning market for properties with “special conditions” – next Sunday will be four months since our offer was made) comes this tally of the cost of the various homebuyer tax credit and loan programs offered by the government that have helped to prop up the housing market over the last year or so.

The total bill for the homebuyer tax credit so far, as reported by the Internal Revenue Service, stands at $23.5 billion.

About $16.2 billion of that is for the $8,000 (Recovery Act) and $6,500 (Assistance Act) grants shelled out to first and second-time homebuyers, respectively. The other $7.3 billion is for interest-free loans through the Housing Act provision. Americans who qualified for these loans will begin repaying them next tax season, which starts in January.

The numbers are based on IRS filings through July 3.

The Government Accountability Office estimates that with all of the first-time homebuyer tax credits, the total revenue loss to the federal government will be about $22 billion.

When they write the history books for the current period, they’ll probably look back at things like Cash-4-Clunkers and the homebuyer tax credit as huge mistakes by the government that extended the downturn for years, much as historians now look back at the policy mistakes made during the Great Depression.