On Thursday, it had been a year to the day that Becky Hjelm put her condo on the market. In that time, she cut the price by $19,000 and hired a new agent, but the "For Sale" sign is still there.

Now she's concerned that potential buyers are going to be lured away by a $6,000 state incentive aimed at getting the housing market moving.

Here's the hitch: Only newly built, unlived-in homes qualify for the state credit, putting Hjelm and hundreds like her at a disadvantage when they're trying to move their houses.

"It's discouraging. It's not going to help me in my house," she said. "I'm fortunate that I'm not in a situation where I'm going to lose my home, but a lot of people are and it would be nicer for people who are barely hanging on to their houses and want to get out of them to have this $6,000 motivating buyers to buy their homes."

Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. signed the "Home Run" program -- SB260 --- into law Thursday. It allocates $10 million in federal stimulus money for $6,000 grants for 1,600 qualifying homebuyers.

The idea, Huntsman said, is to put some of the 18,000 construction workers who have been laid off in the past year back on the job. That won't happen until the glut of between 3,000 and 4,000 new homes is whittled away.

"Most of the inventories that we're looking at are new homes, and in order for us to really get the economic stimulus necessary, you've got to move through the new homes, because you're not going to begin building any new homes, new construction, until such time as you bring that new home inventory down," Huntsman told The Associated Press.

"We begin to benefit when the construction sector is put back to work and they're put back to work as soon as that inventory's drawn down," he said.

Senate President Michael Waddoups said it was Clark Ivory, CEO of Ivory Homes -- the state's biggest homebuilder, which has built thousands of homes along the Wasatch Front and around St. George -- who initially advocated for the new-homes provision. Ivory did not return a phone message Friday.

The bill, as it made its way through the Legislature, had the backing of the Utah Realtors Association, Utah Homebuilders Association and Utah Bankers Association.

Howard Headlee, president of the bankers association, said banks sold most of the mortgages they issued, so they are not burdened with foreclosures, but they have ended up owning unfinished homes from developers they financed and who then defaulted.

The housing grant is a good idea and will help the developers in a state that was overbuilt, says Maria Garciaz, executive director of NeighborWorks of Salt Lake, which is aiming to revitalize urban neighborhoods. But she would like to see it taken further and apply to all existing homes.

"That would benefit tremendously the inner city," she said. "What we would like to see is some additional set-aside to help with the existing inventory in the inner city as we deal with some of the foreclosures, because those will sit vacant if there aren't incentives to move them."

While the governor's grant program should help slow falling housing values and revitalize the construction industry, it has its shortcomings, said Babs De Lay, a Realtor whose Urban Utah Homes and Estates targets the downtown market and is on the Salt Lake City Planning and Zoning Commission.

"It discriminates," she said. "It puts us [in Salt Lake City] at a disadvantage, because we don't have a lot of new housing."

De Lay said she expects the real estate industry, developers and homebuyers to be back at the Legislature saying they need more. But for now, residents might want to enjoy it.

"This is the only tangible thing that we as citizens are seeing from the government bailout," says De Lay. "It's not helping us at the grocery store, it's not helping us at the gas station but it could help us buy a home."