realtors

Usually BlueNC's Greg Flynn keeps his eye on the activities of the NC Association of Realtors, but I may have beaten him to the punch this morning.

The News and Observer is reporting that there is a feud brewing within the Association over the campaign to land transfer tax.

UPDATE: Greg is already 10-steps ahead of me on his blog, STOP The NC Home Ticks.

"The good guys won last night," said Tim Kent, N.C. Realtors Association. "The good guys were 16-0 last night and the good guys will continue to be involved in this issue and do battle as necessary."

How can the forces of evil claim they are the good guys?

One of my friends in Durham sent me information about a hearing by the Durham County Commission for the real estate transfer tax. The forwarded email included the following, which I think you will find very interesting.

It's bad enough that the Home Ticks are getting their claws into the transfer tax issue, which they have no business being involved with. But now their cousins, the Sand Fleas, are pushing to change years of effective public policy. Coast developers are leaning on the legislature to pass legislation that will allow hardened structures on beaches and inlets - the first step toward building sea walls in front of luxury beachfront properties.

And in case you're not aware, hardened structures on one part of a beach cause accelerated erosion on other parts of the beach. In other words, they're destructive and stupid. The NC Conservation Network is asking sane people like us to contact our representatives to stop Senate Bill 599.

The work shenanigans of the sprawl lobby NC Senate have reached an all time low this year. It's hard to imagine, but it looks like things could get even worse.

In which I call the Realtor's bluff

Well I've been out of town with limited access to the tubes but I've been busy as you can see with a video debut:

The people who take 6% of the value of a home every time it is bought and sold are opposed to using 1% of the value of a home to pay for roads, sewers and, schools which help to maintain and increase the value of homes and our quality of life.

The virtual monopoly of Realtor®s (who have an actual monopoly on the word Realtor®) is spending thousands of dollars in a multi-media campaign opposed to a nominal land transfer tax. This is puzzling from a number of perspectives.

In North Carolina the provision of public services is largely dependent on property tax, sales tax and income tax. County and municipal governments are largely dependent on property tax and sales tax. Sales tax revenues are volatile and, in many cases, are regressive and only capture 1/3 of commercial transactions. Property tax is the beast of burden for counties and is overloaded by the costs of growth in booming areas and low property values in poor areas.

Today's N&O reports Chatham County is trying to get authorization to add a land transfer tax to help pay for growth. Most growing counties in the state are wanting some kind of impact/transfer tax/fee to help handle the costs associated with growth.

What I find interesting, but no longer surprising, is how the realtors and homebuilders are always right on top of things talking about how much these new fees and taxes will hurt "working families," etc.

Imposing taxes on new and existing homes will hurt working families by making homes less affordable," said Tim Kent, executive vice president of the Realtors Association.

How come we don't hear cries about this from groups who actually care about affordable housing. Nobody from Habitat ever speaks up. Nobody from the other groups speaks up. I guess they sit back and let the homebuilders and realtors go on with their own tireless fight for the working class. After all builders and realtors always voluntary include affordable housing in their big new subdivisions, don't they? If cities didn't have affordable housing mandates in place, the developers would still build a certain proportion of affordable housing out of the goodness of their hearts, right?