The $6,500 move-up tax credit isn’t significant enough to have much of an impact on the housing crisis, housing experts say.

The percentage of current home owners who are considering buying was unchanged from January, a traditional slow month, to February, when business is usually better, according to a poll of 1,500 real estate agents by Campbell Communications and Inside Mortgage Finance.

"You’ve got a really big problem that requires big guns, and the tax credit is just not big enough," says Roberton Williams, senior fellow at the Tax Policy Center in Washington.

The credit "is hardly registering on the economic Richter scale," says Patrick Newport, an economist with IHS Global Insight.

Source: Associated Press, Adrian Sainz (03/01/2010)