The complicated story of the local option transfer tax

The saga of high real estate fees may not be over in Beacon Hill (Matt Stone/Boston Herald)

The housing policy debate is starting to reach a boiling point on Beacon Hill, and talk of local option fees on high-value property sales is far from over.

With less than two months left before the state Legislature is scheduled to officially finish legislating for the current fiscal year, a multibillion-dollar borrowing bill focused on housing affordability and housing affordability issues in Massachusetts has just passed the House of Representatives.

But the proposal did not include a key provision that Gov. Maura Healey has touted as one surefire way to raise money for more affordable housing across the state: a tax on high-value real estate transactions.

The local choice tax has had a winding path through the state legislature.

The policy has garnered support from Boston Mayor Michelle Wu, who has proposed a “modest transfer fee” as a way to encourage communities to address their housing problems. The proposal has also been the subject of fierce opposition from the Greater Boston Association of Realtors, which has called the idea an “unpredictable revenue stream.”

Then there’s House Speaker Ron Mariano, who initially told business leaders in March that even if the idea of ​​transfer “concerns some of you,” “we have to look at all options that could actually make a difference.”

He made it clear he did not know whether there were enough votes to pass the bill in the House of Representatives, and said whether he supported it would depend on how the fees were implemented.

“We want to make it doable. We don’t want to impede construction,” he said after the March speech. “When I read the governor’s opinion, my first reaction was, this may be too expensive.”

But as the months passed, Mariano began to question the idea, and eventually, when House Democratic leaders released their own version of a housing bond bill, the relocation fee was nowhere to be found.

Mariano told reporters on Monday that he had begun discussing the idea with other council members and that the fee “is not going to be as universally appealing as we thought it would be.”