Nineteen Massachusetts municipalities want a transfer fee. The Legislature approved none of them
Nineteen Massachusetts municipalities want a transfer fee. The Legislature approved none of them
2026-09-10 · Massachusetts · Legislation · Did not pass
What happened. The real estate transfer fee got closer than it ever has in Massachusetts, and still did not pass.
S.1937, An Act enabling a local option for a real estate transfer fee to fund affordable housing (Sen. Joanne Comerford, with Sens. Gomez, Eldridge and Lewis), was reported favorably out of the Revenue Committee on 18 December 2025 and referred to Senate Ways and Means — the furthest a transfer fee bill has advanced. It stopped there.1 Its House companion is H.3056 (Reps. Mike Connolly and Carmine Gentile).
What it would allow
A municipality could impose a fee of 0.5 to 2.0 percent on sale proceeds above $1 million or the county median sale price, whichever is greater, dedicated exclusively to local affordable housing.
The queue behind it
Nineteen municipalities have passed home rule petitions now awaiting State House approval: Amherst, Aquinnah, Arlington, Boston, Brookline, Cambridge, Chatham, Chilmark, Concord, Edgartown, Falmouth, Nantucket, Oak Bluffs, Provincetown, Somerville, Tisbury, Truro, Wellfleet and West Tisbury.2
The Legislature has approved none of them. More than half are on Cape Cod and the Islands. A separate count puts the total at 13 rather than 19; the discrepancy is unverified.
Why condominium sellers should care
In Boston, Cambridge, Somerville, Brookline and Provincetown, a very large share of transactions above $1 million are condominium unit sales. A fee keyed to a dollar threshold in those markets would fall disproportionately on condominium sellers rather than on the single-family sellers the framing usually invokes.
Whether S.1937 exempts or includes condominium conveyances could not be confirmed from the bill's status page and is unverified.
The local variations already drafted
The home rule petitions differ from each other and from the statewide bill, which is worth knowing because a municipality's own petition is what would actually apply there.
- Boston's petition would apply only to the portion of a sale above $2 million, with the threshold reviewed every three years by the Council with mayoral approval, indexed to the median citywide sale price.
- Somerville's updated proposal would take up to 1 percent from investors, developers and absentee landlords buying or selling, exempting all owner-occupant buyers and sellers. RKG Associates estimated $6.6 million to $9.1 million annually.
The Somerville design is the one that reaches condominium owners. An exemption for owner-occupants, with the fee falling on investors and absentee landlords, reaches precisely the investor-owned condominium units that make up a large share of that city's rental stock — and leaves the owner-occupant next door untouched.
The positions
Governor Healey previously proposed letting municipalities impose 0.5 to 2 percent on sales above $1 million or the county median; it failed to advance in the last housing bond bill, and she has not pushed it this cycle.
Support comes from Senator Julian Cyr, a housing committee co-chair, CHAPA and Progressive Mass, plus the Local Option for Housing Affordability coalition and the Massachusetts Budget and Policy Center. Skepticism and opposition come from House Speaker Ron Mariano, Senator Will Brownsberger, the Massachusetts Association of REALTORS and the Greater Boston Real Estate Board.
Industry sources confirm the Legislature “declined to advance any proposal authorizing local-option real estate transfer taxes” this session.
What a board and its owners can actually do
Almost nothing, and that is the honest answer. No transfer fee is in force in any Massachusetts municipality. There is nothing to plan around.
Two things are worth doing anyway, because they cost nothing:
- Know whether your municipality has a pending petition. Nineteen do. An owner in one of them selling above the proposed threshold has a reason to follow the legislative calendar.
- Understand that the fee, if enacted, is a seller cost at closing — not an association charge, not an assessment, and not something a board administers. Associations receive a great many questions about this and the correct answer is that it has nothing to do with the association.
The other fee proposal in circulation
Worth distinguishing, because the two get conflated. H.1523, the condominium ombudsman bill, would have funded an Office of the Condominium Ombudsman with a $50 fee on condominium sales exceeding $100 — a flat charge, not a percentage, dedicated to a condominium-specific office rather than to affordable housing. That bill also died, in House Ways and Means.
Two different proposals to attach a charge to a Massachusetts condominium conveyance, from two different directions, and neither advanced.
What to watch next
Refiling in the 195th General Court, convening January 2027, and whether the nineteen home rule petitions are taken up individually. The Legislature's consistent practice has been to decline both routes — approving no individual petition and advancing no enabling statute — which is itself a policy position, held now across several sessions.
The question worth following, for this audience, is whether any refiled version addresses condominium conveyances expressly. A fee written around $1 million single-family sales operates very differently in a market where the million-dollar transaction is a two-bedroom condominium.
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