{"id":23876,"date":"2025-09-25T19:41:05","date_gmt":"2025-09-25T19:41:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/realtorparty.realtor\/?p=23876"},"modified":"2025-09-25T19:41:05","modified_gmt":"2025-09-25T19:41:05","slug":"santa-fe-realtors-promote-diverse-housing-options-in-housing-strapped-region-2-3-2-2-3-2-2-2-2-2-2-2-3-3-2-3-2-2-2-2-2-2-4-2-4-2-2-3-2-4-2-2-3-2-2-2-2-3-3-2-2-3-2-2-2-3-2-3-2-2-2-2-3-3-2-2-2-3-2-2-5-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/realtorparty.realtor\/homepage\/success-story\/gar-im1025","title":{"rendered":"Glendale Association of REALTORS\u00ae Layers Multiple REALTOR\u00ae Party Resources to Oppose Threat of Additional Transfer Tax"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"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. \u00a0One possibility was a transfer tax on real estate sales, on top of one already levied by the county; the local REALTOR\u00ae<\/sup> association was having nothing of it.\u00a0 Tapping into the Land Use Initiative<\/a> and Issues Mobilization Grant<\/a> programs of the REALTOR\u00ae<\/sup> Party, it managed to dissuade the Council \u2013 and keep the local housing market from becoming even less accessible to aspiring homeowners.<\/p>\n

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.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n

\u201cFortunately, we were able to nip this in the bud,\u201d he continues.\u00a0 \u201cIt was important that we kept this proposal from making it to the ballot, where fighting it would certainly have cost five times as much.\u00a0 In under three months\u2019 time, by strategically layering several of the REALTOR\u00ae<\/sup> Party\u2019s 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

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.\u00a0 It also showed that an additional transfer tax would unfairly burden a very narrow segment of the Glendale community \u2013 those involved in real estate transactions \u2013 and disproportionately disadvantage lower-income households and first-time homebuyers.<\/p>\n

Another vital advocacy tool was the Glendale Economic and Impact Study funded by an Issues Mobilization Grant from the REALTOR\u00ae<\/sup> Party, which revealed not only that real estate contributes about $98M annually to the city\u2019s economy, not including brokerage fees, but that a proposed transfer tax would dramatically reduce both jobs and transactions in 2024.\u00a0 \u201cThese are not facts that our elected officials could ignore,\u201d notes Astorian.<\/p>\n

The grant also supported a campaign targeting legislators, policy makers, and Glendale homeowners. \u00a0The term \u2018transfer tax\u2019 was re-branded as \u2018Mainstreet Tax\u2019 across all graphic and video assets to better fit the campaign\u2019s messaging, which was distributed widely on social media.\u00a0 \u201cOur YouTube video was seen more than 300K times in a city with a population of 185K,\u201d reports Astorian; \u201cthat\u2019s an enormous success rate. And each of our five City Council members received over 2K emails; when the mayor called and said, \u2018Greg, you\u2019ve got to stop this!\u00a0 Our server is crashing!\u2019 \u2013 that\u2019s when we knew we\u2019d made our point.\u201d<\/p>\n

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.\u00a0 \u201cMyself, my CEO, and the rest of our local staff, we serve as a vessel for our members\u2019 goals, which we bring to the City Council in a practice that I think of as \u2018anticipatory advocacy.\u2019\u00a0 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

To learn more about how the Glendale Association of REALTORS\u00ae<\/sup> is working to protect and promote homeownership, contact Government Affairs Director Greg Astorian at gregastorian@gmail.com<\/a> or 818.807.7428.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A strategic deployment of several resources from the REALTOR\u00ae Party, including an Issues Mobilization grant and an assessment by the Land Use Initiative program, helped the southern California association keep an additional transfer tax from being put on the ballot, where it would have been magnitudes more costly to combat. ","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":23888,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,33,296],"tags":[14,414,501,619],"class_list":["post-23876","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-about-us","category-success-stories","category-success-story","tag-grants","tag-issues-mobilization","tag-land-use-initiative","tag-land-use-memo-database"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/realtorparty.realtor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23876","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/realtorparty.realtor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/realtorparty.realtor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/realtorparty.realtor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/realtorparty.realtor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23876"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/realtorparty.realtor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23876\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23889,"href":"https:\/\/realtorparty.realtor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23876\/revisions\/23889"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/realtorparty.realtor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23888"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/realtorparty.realtor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23876"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/realtorparty.realtor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23876"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/realtorparty.realtor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23876"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}