Real estate agents fight adding taxes on buyers, sellers

Realtor president calls group 'watchdogs' for customers

MOSES LAKE — Area real estate agents recently made a donation to a local government representative in thanks for her support in their fight to keep costs down.

Rich Engelmann, member of the Realtor Political Affairs Council, or RPAC, and president of the Moses Lake/Othello Association of Realtors, recently presented Rep. Janea Holmquist, R-Moses Lake, with a $250 donation in appreciation for her support.

"Janea Holmquist has been a real good backer, a real good supporter," Engelmann said. "She's fought for us, and that's the biggest battle — just getting your representatives to see the future how you would like to see it, and back your cause."

Engelmann said RPAC represents real estate agents and works to defeat bills and laws that would be detrimental to the real estate industry.

"They go out and lobby it to our representatives why they should or shouldn't endorse the bill," Englemann explained. "The real goal is to get people into office that are on our side; they're going to back what we want to help our industry, to help our buyers and sellers, to help make sure that you can buy a home."

Recently, RPAC helped fight an excise tax on buyers in Clallam County, Engelmann said. He said he has been an RPAC member as long as he has been a real estate agent.

"Right now if you buy a home, the seller pays tax on that amount," he said. "Since the real estate industry is kind of what's driving our economy right now, the good old government's hurting for money, they say, 'Let's go get them.' So what they wanted to do was tax the buyers now, not just the sellers."

RPAC is finding that smaller communities and counties are also trying to pass regulations that would be detrimental to real estate agents. The association also recently donated $100 per agent to a fund to help stop such items and keep the industry "going in a right direction so people can afford to buy homes so we can afford to sell it to them." That fund will help local communities defeat items that could be detrimental. The local association had 100 percent compliance to RPAC this past year, Engelmann added.

The average person is not usually aware of these regulations until after they pass, Engelmann said, when it is too late.

"We've got watchdogs out there looking for this stuff coming down the pipeline," he said. They're in Olympia, Washington, D.C., and their job is to make sure you can afford to buy a home and I can afford to sell you one."

Items like these come back, Engelmann said, because the government is struggling and sees the real estate industry as a booming one. It is, he said, but without protection people will be priced out of homes.

"That excise tax thing, they keep beating on that," he said. "And they always keep trying to tax real estate agents; we already pay taxes, but they want to tax our commissions. To me, it's like double taxation almost."

Engelmann said sometimes people think of real estate agents as "just one step above used car salesmen."

"We're actually out there trying to make it easy and better for buyers and sellers all the time, because we've got to keep this industry going," he said.