It appears Uncle Sam will keep propping up the still shaky real estate market for months to come. The Senate last night voted to extend the $8,000 first-time home buyers tax credit, and the House followed suit today. The president is expected to soon sign it into law.

But is the bill good for real estate? Not at all. What better way to fix a bubble caused by way too much home ownership than to encourage more home ownership?

Extending the home buyer tax credit is a bad idea because the real estate market doesn't need it. The panic phase of the housing crisis is essentially over. Americans know full well that house prices are no longer in free fall, but still have a ways to go before resembling anything close to a recovery.

Goldman Sachs spent years buying hundreds of thousands of subprime mortgages during the real estate boom, packaging them into high-yield bonds. Now that the bottom has fallen out of the property market, the Wall Street behemoth finds itself in a different role: taking homes away from Americans defaulting on their loans.

That's according to a lengthy investigation by McClatchy Newspapers . The report says there are hundreds of cases in which subsidiaries of Goldman have sought to contain bondholder losses by foreclosing on properties and evicting delinquent borrowers.

In an attempt to stem the tide of fleeing residents in an economic downturn, landlords across the US are showering tenants with gifts that include everything from flat-screen TVs to cash in the hope of encouraging them to renew their leases, writes the Wall Street Journal (subscription required).

In a jobless recovery, they're hoping to avoid the expense of filling empty units. In the third quarter, the national apartment-vacancy rate hit 7.8%, a 23-year high, according to Reis Inc., which tracks vacancies and rents in the top 79 markets.

And rising unemployment is forcing some out-of-work tenants to seek ways to cut costs, including getting a roommate, moving home with Mom and Dad or trading down to a cheaper apartment. Owners are focusing on keeping existing tenants because when apartments become vacated they can sit empty for months and often require marketing, painting, brokerage commissions and other expenses to attract new tenants.

Denver-based UDR is offering renewing tenants a flat-screen TV, new carpet, kitchen upgrade or $300 in cash, according to the WSJ. In New York City, landlords are paying broker fees, too. Equity Residential in New York says it has paid about $1.5 million in such commissions so far this year.

"Many companies are doing whatever they can to keep units occupied, especially heading into the seasonally slower leasing period," Paula Poskon, an analyst with Robert W. Baird & Co., told the WSJ.

The deadline for first-time home buyers to take advantage of the government's $8,000 tax credit appears in line for an extension. But the popular tax break has already been fueling a phenomenon that many struggling real estate markets haven't experienced in years: bidding wars.

Lower-priced homes on the market in many once-beleaguered areas have seen a flood of offers, say real estate brokers from Boston to Portland, Ore. Though the original tax credit is good on homes sales completed by Nov. 30, because home deals can take months to complete, new buyers are rushing to close escrows so they don't miss out on the credit.

"It's a welcome change from the way things have been around here," says Carrie Novotny, a realtor in Edina, Minn., outside Minneapolis. She says a recent open house for a two-bedroom, Craftsman-style home listed at $213,000 drew several dozen prospective buyers and more than five serious bidders. The home eventually went into contract for $217,000, Novotny says. "It's been a bit crazy," she says. "People really want to nail down a sale to cash in on the tax break."

In the morass of glum housing news, there is one bright spot: Tantalizing low mortgage rates are continuing to entice more homeowners to refinance. The number of applications to refinance has tripled in the past year, says the Mortgage Bankers Assn.

Refinance applications soared 18% in the week ending Oct. 2 compared with the previous week, according to the Mortgage Bankers Assn. Rates on 30-year fixed rate conforming home loans dropped to 4.89% -- their lowest level in four months. (They hit a record low of 4.78% in the spring.) Some refinance rates are even better for borrowers with stronger credit, say experts.