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President's Letter - May 25, 2012

Council Passes Budget with
Reduced Recordation Fee Increase

 
Alease Bowles
2012 PGCAR President
We were not entirely victorious in our effort to overturn the 20% recordation fee increase originally proposed in the Fiscal Year 2013 County Budget. However, BECAUSE OF PGCAR LOBBYING EFFORTS, we were successful in forcing a compromise between the County Council and the County Executive - hammered out in the hours leading up to yesterday's vote - that resulted in:

A "reduced increase" from the original proposal of $.50
to a more reasonable $.25 (per $500 in home sale price).

Thank you to all PGCAR members who responded to our "calls-to-action" sending well over 4,300 opposition email messages to the County Council and the County Executive. Your messages were definitely heard, along with the opposition voices from another 2,145 concerned citizen voters who phoned their Council representatives through "robo call pass-throughs" hosted by the National Association of REALTORS®. Thank you NAR! I want to also thank the Maryland Association of REALTORS® for their generous contribution that allowed us to run two full-page advocacy advertisements in the Prince George's Gazette. And let's not forget the countless hours PGCAR representatives spent meeting with public officials to plead our case.

Thank you to all!

Fortunately, these efforts were not in vain as we were successful in bringing this issue to the attention of the membership and the general public, and successful in lessening the impact of the fee increase.

Finally, I wish to thank our County Executive Rushern Baker, County Council Chair Andrea Harrison, and the full Council for listening to our concerns and recognizing the vital role that our housing market contributes toward our local economy. We, as REALTORS®, will certainly do our part to spur Prince George's County's economic recovery.

The new recordation fee of $2.75 per $500 in home sale price
will take effect on July 1, 2012.

Alease Bowles
President, Prince George's County Association of REALTORS®, Inc.

  Prince George's County Association of REALTORS®
8300 Corporate Drive, Suite 100  :  Landover, MD 20785
Phone 301-306-7900  :  Fax 301-306-8273  :  www.pgcar.com  :  ©2012 PGCAR

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