Home prices based on demand, not fees

LETTER

E-Mail

Text Size:

tool goes here

In his recent op-ed piece, Bill Quehrn of the local building industry promotes, a myth dearly beloved by development companies everywhere. It is that paying "impact fees," designed to help defray the infra-structure costs of new housing, "simply increases the final cost of the house for the buyer." In a similar vein he says that "builders and developers don't pay impact fees any more than they pay for lumber, paint or roof shingles."

The truth is that builders pay for all of these things along with land, labor and so forth. These are the costs of house construction.

The price of the house is another matter entirely. It is not set by the builder at all and is independent of his costs, but instead is determined in the market. Moreover the market is overwhelmingly dominated by the existing housing stock, not by new construction.

The result of the hard facts is that the price of housing is not affected by impact fees; what is affected is the profit realized by the developer.

Seeing as how half the multi-zillionaires in our fair country are in the "real estate business," I don't think we need to be too concerned about this.

Thomas Alden

Bellingham

Recent Stories