Provincetown buyers would pay 0.5% fee on $1M home sales

In Provincetown, Massachusetts, a home sale that clears the $1 million mark would carry an extra cost at closing: a 0.5% real estate transfer fee. The bill would make the purchaser responsible for the charge, and any private agreement to shuffle that obligation elsewhere would not change who owes the town.

The fee would apply to any real property interest in Provincetown with a purchase price of at least $1 million. That matters because the extra money would not disappear into a general state pot. It would stay local, with collections paid to the town and split evenly each fiscal year between two housing funds.

The cost lands on the buyer

The bill is explicit about who pays. The purchaser would be liable for the fee, even if a contract tried to say otherwise.

That makes the charge part of the closing math for higher-priced homes and property interests in town. Instead of letting the cost be negotiated away on paper, the measure fixes it to the buyer and the transfer itself.

A local pot for year-round housing

Each fiscal year, Provincetown would divide the money equally between the Year Round Market Rate Rental Housing Trust and the Affordable Housing Trust. The design points the fee toward housing uses, not a broad municipal fund.

For a town where housing pressure is already part of daily life, that structure turns expensive sales into a dedicated revenue stream for local housing support. The bill does not say how either trust would spend the money, only where the proceeds would land.

A narrow exemption with a catch

First-time homebuyers would be exempt if they live in the home for at least five years. Until that condition is met, the deed would carry a lien for the amount of the waived fee, plus accumulated interest and penalties.

That lien gives the town a backstop if the buyer does not stay long enough to satisfy the exemption. The rule creates a path around the charge, but only for people buying their first home and only if they keep it as their home for the full five years.