STEVE RYAN
‘Bad tax policy’
Bay State Realtors will head to Beacon Hill Thursday to press lawmakers to reject proposals for real estate transfer taxes and mandatory home energy inspections.
About 400 Realtors are expected to attend the Massachusetts Association of Realtors’ annual lobbying day.
Realtors are opposed to two bills to charge taxes on property sales in Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket. The islands want to charge property sellers a 1 percent fee, which will be placed in a fund to pay for affordable housing.
“We’re very much opposed to putting a sales tax on people’s home in any community. It’s bad tax policy and it’s a bad precedent for homeownership in the commonwealth,” said Steve Ryan, MAR’s government affairs director.
The bills received a favorable recommendation by the Joint Committee on Revenue earlier this year. During the last legislative session, the House voted down a similar bill for a Martha’s Vineyard transfer fee.
Supporters argue that the measures are needed because soaring home prices have made it difficult for working and middle-class families to live on the islands.
“We’re not opposed to creating affordable housing. We’ve got a strong record of supporting workforce housing. But what we can’t support is a measure that would create a tax on people’s homes to pay for it,” Ryan said.
Realtors also will be focusing on a section of the energy bill that would require home sellers to obtain energy inspections or audits of their properties. Different versions of the legisla-tion were passed by the House and Senate.
The Senate version would require sellers to get the audits but would allow buyers to waive their right to the inspection. The measure directs the Board of Registration of Home In-spectors to draft regulations and a cost analysis for developing an energy-scoring program.
MAR members support the House bill version, which seeks to create a commission to study the development and use of energy scoring and inspections. They say energy inspec-tions and scoring should be studied carefully before becoming a requirement.
They also say such inspections could be costly and would delay real estate transactions.
“No one is really sure what the cost would be,” said Ryan, noting that there aren’t any technically qualified or certified inspectors to conduct energy inspections so the cost can’t be determined. “It would clearly be in the millions for homeowners in Massachusetts selling their homes.”
And even though the measure indicates a buyer can waive an inspection, Realtors aren’t convinced the audits would be optional.
“It wouldn’t be clear to me how a buyer would be able to agree to such a thing if a seller would be required to do it,” he said.
MAR members also will ask lawmakers to support a bill that would clarify a landlord’s responsibilities with storing evicted tenants’ belongings. The law states that landlords are re-quired to store evicted tenants’ belongings with a “warehouser” or other storage facility. But Realtors say in some cases tenants want their items to be stored in a place that’s not rec-ognized by law as a storage facility.
“The ambiguity creates problems for the landlord,” Ryan said.
The bill has been reported out favorably by the Joint Committee on Housing and is before the House Committee on Steering, Policy and Scheduling.
