Residents Push Back On County Petition For Real Estate Transfer Fee

BARNSTABLE – A proposal by the Barnstable County Assembly of Delegates to petition the state legislature to allow towns to enact a transfer fee on high-end real estate transactions was met with pushback from Cape residents last month.

The assembly sees the fee as a way of generating revenue to help the Cape out of the ongoing housing crisis. But residents who spoke during a public hearing on the petition Jan. 21 said the fee would only further burden property owners. Others argued that the assembly should focus its attention on more pressing local issues.

A draft of the proposed petition to the state legislature would allow each of the Cape’s 15 communities to opt in to the county program, which would empower them to assess their own fee of between 0.5 and 4 percent on transfers of property valued at more than $1 million. Properties valued at less than $1 million would be exempt from the fee, according to language in the draft.

Brewster Delegate Karl Fryzel said following the hearing that the assembly put together the petition on the advice of state legislators, who noted that attempts by Cape and Islands communities to petition the legislature on their own have been unsuccessful.

“We were informed by the legislative delegation, the senators and representatives from the Cape, that if this was a countywide effort, it would have a much better chance of passing the legislature,” he said.

But some Cape select board members Jan. 21 spoke against the proposal. Anne-Marie Siroonian told the assembly that the Bourne select board, of which she is a member, voted unanimously not to support the petition. She said the town lacks the inventory to justify the transfer fee.

Shareen Davis of the Chatham select board also spoke in opposition to the proposed petition, advocating instead for towns to control and manage their own fee initiatives. She said Chatham is exploring enacting its own real estate transfer fee.

“We’d like to be able to keep our money here to work on our community and what we see as important,” she said, adding that a county program would create an unnecessary “layer of bureaucracy” and would not give Chatham the assurance that money generated through the county program would go to support the town’s projects and initiatives.

Fryzel said as proposed, the county would direct 90 percent of the collected revenue to the towns in which the transfers occur, and that it would be up to each participating town to decide how best to spend the funds.

“There’s no one size fits all,” he said. “You can build some affordable housing if you want to. You can buy long-term rental covenants. You build attainable housing. You can have some deed restricted properties. So there’s a great deal of flexibility and local control in what to do with the funds.”

The remaining 10 percent would be kept by the county to cover the cost of administering the program and to provide a “pool of money to do something of regional impact,” Fryzel said. A separate “board of managers” would be responsible for determining how to use those regional funds, he said.

Fryzel also said it would be up to each town if they want to opt in and set a transfer fee and at what percentage. That would involve a vote in favor of adopting the fee at each town’s respective town meeting. Similarly, he said, towns that opt in are free to opt out whenever they choose.

“I think some people who have been negative, they don’t understand we’re not imposing a tax,” he said. “This would be a community decision.”

In a previous draft in September, the assembly set the fee to apply to transfers of all property valued at $2 million or more, and Eric Schwaab of the Barnstable Housing Authority expressed disappointment that the threshold had been set lower.

“That concerns quite a few of us because a million [dollar] house is no longer considered a luxury in Barnstable,” he said. Schwaab asked that any final version of the petition be sent to Barnstable’s town counsel to allow for local input before it goes to Beacon Hill.

John Julius, a local realtor, similarly saw the proposal as something that will adversely affect local property owners. Julius also noted that sales of properties valued at or higher than $1 million dropped from 103 in 2024 to 71 last year.

Instead, Julius said the county should focus more of its attention on the region’s wastewater issues, pointing to a suit filed against the town of Barnstable by the Conservation Law Foundation over alleged nitrogen pollution from the town’s wastewater treatment facility. Julius also filed suit against the town on the same grounds in 2021. 

“That’s where your focus should be, not on taking money from taxpayers,” he said.

But towns would not be held to that $1 million threshold, Fryzel said. He said that participating towns would have the power to set a higher threshold for applying the fee.

“Some people say a million [dollars] is too low. Well, you can set it higher if you want to,” he said.

Centerville resident Sandra Jones, who also called the proposed fee unfair, worked multiple jobs and put herself through school in order to afford her move to the Cape from Lowell 26 years ago. While much has been made about how the current housing market is excluding younger residents and families, she said some people will just have to wait until they can afford it.

 “I know that I’m going to get beat up for that…but for a younger generation, I think that people have to leave the Cape and then come back like all of us,” she said.

Andrew Gottlieb, executive director of the Association to Preserve Cape Cod, said the proposed transfer fee as planned could serve to further existing problems such as traffic, poor water quality and the high cost of housing. He called for language in the petition that would restrict the kinds of housing that would be allowed on the 14 percent of the Cape that remains “undeveloped and unprotected.”

“Without those boundaries and without those guardrails, developing and intensifying the use of undeveloped land, 80 percent of which is priority land as identified by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, threatens to kill the goose that laid the golden egg,” he told the assembly.

The current housing crisis is one that has been “decades in the making,” said Barnstable resident Adam Hogue, who faulted the region for failing to plan, properly regulate housing and invest in local infrastructure. He spoke against the proposed transfer fee, saying it will only discourage responsible development and raise costs further.

“We need policies that expand opportunity, not just ones that simply shift the cost of housing onto our residents,” he said.

Elizabeth Derry of Hyannis, who sported a sign calling for “no tax hikes,” blamed the ongoing crisis on what she called the county’s allowance of an influx of illegal immigrants into the region in recent years.

“You need them to win elections,” she said. “That’s the big push. You can’t win any more elections starting this year without those illegals with social security numbers.”

But for all the negative feedback the assembly received at the hearing on the proposed fee,  Fryzel said others have voiced support for the idea. That includes the Cape Cod Regional Chamber of Commerce and the Housing Assistance Corporation, he said.

Fryzel said he expects the Jan. 21 hearing will be the last of several that have been held on the proposed fee. He said the assembly is in the process of amending the draft petition, and that it could come back to members for a vote as early as next month.

“Whether it will be ready for a vote or if the assembly needs a little more time to deliberate, I can’t say for sure,” he said.