Looking to stave off anticipated fiscal challenges last year, the City Council of Glendale, California, a municipality within Los Angeles County, was considering as many as ten different methods of increasing its revenue. One possibility was a transfer tax on real estate sales, on top of one already levied by the county; the local REALTOR® association was having nothing of it. Tapping into the Land Use Initiative and Issues Mobilization Grant programs of the REALTOR® Party, it managed to dissuade the Council – and keep the local housing market from becoming even less accessible to aspiring homeowners.
As Government Affairs Director Greg Astorian explains, recent studies have shown that transfer taxes depress the number of real estate transactions in a given jurisdiction. They also tend to disproportionately affect lower-income households attempting to buy a first home, and even small increases in transfer taxes can substantially decrease the number of homes they can afford.
“Fortunately, we were able to nip this in the bud,” he continues. “It was important that we kept this proposal from making it to the ballot, where fighting it would certainly have cost five times as much. In under three months’ time, by strategically layering several of the REALTOR® Party’s highly effective resources, we managed to change the hearts and minds of our elected officials, who then turned their focus to other possible revenue sources.”
A review of the proposal transfer tax by Robinson & Cole, LLC, the law firm retained by NAR to analyze land use legislation, confirmed the likely negative impact of such a tax on property values and housing affordability in Glendale. It also showed that an additional transfer tax would unfairly burden a very narrow segment of the Glendale community – those involved in real estate transactions – and disproportionately disadvantage lower-income households and first-time homebuyers.
Another vital advocacy tool was the Glendale Economic and Impact Study funded by an Issues Mobilization Grant from the REALTOR® Party, which revealed not only that real estate contributes about $98M annually to the city’s economy, not including brokerage fees, but that a proposed transfer tax would dramatically reduce both jobs and transactions in 2024. “These are not facts that our elected officials could ignore,” notes Astorian.
The grant also supported a campaign targeting legislators, policy makers, and Glendale homeowners. The term ‘transfer tax’ was re-branded as ‘Mainstreet Tax’ across all graphic and video assets to better fit the campaign’s messaging, which was distributed widely on social media. “Our YouTube video was seen more than 300K times in a city with a population of 185K,” reports Astorian; “that’s an enormous success rate. And each of our five City Council members received over 2K emails; when the mayor called and said, ‘Greg, you’ve got to stop this! Our server is crashing!’ – that’s when we knew we’d made our point.”
This is the latest in a string of highly successful campaigns conducted by the Glendale association; none of them would have been possible without the guidance, support, and commitment of NAR and the staff of its advocacy team, says Astorian. “Myself, my CEO, and the rest of our local staff, we serve as a vessel for our members’ goals, which we bring to the City Council in a practice that I think of as ‘anticipatory advocacy.’ NAR provides the research, and we turn it into a campaign, weaving a narrative together that helps our legislators understand the issues as they arise.”
To learn more about how the Glendale Association of REALTORS® is working to protect and promote homeownership, contact Government Affairs Director Greg Astorian at gregastorian@gmail.com or 818.807.7428.
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