ALLENTOWN, Pa. \u2013 Allentown City Council voted Wednesday to adopt an ordinance to increase the realty transfer tax by 0.5% for the purpose of raising funds to deal with issues related to housing.<\/p>\n
The current rate is 2%, which has remained unchanged for about 50 years.<\/p>\n
In November 2024, voters passed a referendum to allow council, through an ordinance, to remove a cap in the home rule charter which had been placed on the deed transfer tax.<\/p>\n
Councilmember Santo Napoli said he introduced the legislation after realizing how investors were acquiring real estate in the city.<\/p>\n
“And at that time (2024), the percentages that I came up with were 44%,” Napoli said. “Our finance department did a deeper dive in over 18 months, and they came in at 48% as an average.”<\/p>\n
“So, the fear of investors acquiring this much real estate and squeezing out Allentown residents was a huge concern,” he said. “Investors, as you know, come to the table with all-cash offers, and we have inspections, fast settlements, and that entices sellers to sell to them instead of homeowners.”<\/p>\n
“And meanwhile, Allentown residents are stuck renting instead of acquiring home ownership and building generational wealth,” Napoli added. “So, one of the thoughts I had was that too many rentals also has a negative effect on quality of life and public safety. This legislation tonight is an opportunity to level the playing field for our residents.”<\/p>\n
Napoli stressed that the legislation will not impact current homeowners in the city or anyone on a fixed income.<\/p>\n
Napoli said the transfer tax increase will bring in approximately $3.2 million a year.<\/p>\n
“Most importantly, all the funds received from this 0.5% increase exclusively goes into a housing fund under our [community and economic development] department, and that fund is going to be tasked with addressing housing initiatives in the city,” Napoli said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ALLENTOWN, Pa. \u2013 Allentown City Council voted Wednesday to adopt an ordinance to increase the realty transfer tax…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":33768,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[2748,153,155,154,29451,14932],"class_list":{"0":"post-51840","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-bethlehem","8":"tag-allentown-city-council","9":"tag-bethlehem","10":"tag-bethlehem-headlines","11":"tag-bethlehem-news","12":"tag-real-estate-transfer-tax","13":"tag-santo-napoli"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51840","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=51840"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51840\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/33768"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=51840"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=51840"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=51840"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}