Realtors say poll supports change

Real estate professionals lobbying the Legislature for more favorable tax treatment of recently sold properties have released a poll claiming that 70 percent of South Carolinians oppose the practice of reassessing properties when they change ownership.

The findings are provocative because nearly the same percentage of South Carolinians created that very system of taxation in 2006, when 69 percent of state voters approved Amendment 4 to the state constitution.

With Amendment 4, voters decided that assessments should be capped for as long as people own their properties, but not when there's a change in ownership.

Assessments are values assigned to properties in order to calculate property taxes.

Currently, new construction and recently sold properties are assessed at full value in South Carolina, while properties that have not changed ownership enjoy capped assessment values.

The S.C. Association of Realtors says the rules should be changed because the reassessments and higher taxes that follow changes in ownership are depressing real estate sales and hurting the economy.

"Voters get it," Nick Kremydas, chief executive officer of the association, said in a prepared statement. "They understand that the current point of sale tax is flawed."

Associations representing municipalities and school districts agree that the system is flawed, and they opposed the 2006 constitutional referendum that created the system. However, they argue that the Realtors' proposed legislation would make the inequitable tax system created by Amendment 4 even worse.

Kremydas did not return phone calls seeking information about how the poll was conducted, and associations representing municipalities and counties declined to comment because they had no information on the survey questions or the data collected.

The poll results supporting the Realtors' position were released by the association Thursday, at a time when state lawmakers are working to develop compromise legislation dealing with the point-of-sale reassessment issue.

The Realtors association wants to cap point-of-sale reassessments, while municipalities, counties and school districts argue that such caps could have a huge impact on revenues that could force them to cut services or raise tax rates.

A compromise plan had been reached last week, aimed at spurring commercial real estate sales by temporarily eliminating point-of-sale reassessments, but that plan fell apart when the Realtors association withdrew support and demanded larger tax breaks.