Real estate investors and income property owners may not know it, but they're on the verge of getting some important federal tax benefits from an election-bound Congress.

The House overwhelmingly passed a bill that would extend and renew a long list of real estate tax credits and deductions, and a similar bill is teed up for action in the Senate.

Here's what the Energy and Tax Extenders Act of 2008 would do for property investors and developers: It reauthorizes the accelerated 15-year depreciation deduction for leasehold improvements made by property owners on behalf of tenants.

That's a key benefit for commercial real estate investors because rather than be forced to write off the alterations and space improvements they make for incoming tenants over a long period, they can take the deductions using a much shorter time frame -- and that improves their after-tax cash flows.

A second major item in the bill: Renewal of immediate writeoffs for environmental cleanups and improvements rather than long-term capitalized expensing. The bill allows remediation costs to be deducted for federal tax purposes in the year in which they are incurred, rather than being capitalized and written off over many years.

The idea here is to encourage real estate investors and developers to spend the money needed to quickly clean up properties that have environmental issues. The legislation also extends the immediate writeoff benefits to Gulf Opportunity Zone Act properties -- real estate damaged by hurricanes Katrina, Rita and Wilma.

That's huge if you're looking to invest in the Gulf area, where returns and property values are rising.

Other sections of the legislation extend the valuable tax credits that encourage "green" development -- everything from use of solar, wind and geothermal energy sources to development and use of more unconventional but promising alternative energy sources such as landfill gas and hydrokinetic devices.

Speaking of tax bills, there's other legislation waiting for action on Capitol Hill that could be important for real estate as well: The House has passed -- and the Senate has a companion bill pending -- to give tax credits to buyers of houses this year. The Senate bill would provide a $7,000 credit to anyone who buys bank-owned or foreclosed houses, while the House bill would provide a $7,500 credit to first time buyers of any new or resale homes.

It's still too early to call, but it looks like there's a pretty good chance that some sort of new tax credits could be on the short-term horizon.

After all, this IS an election year.