MASHPEE, Mass. — Taylor Swift owns a huge mansion on the Rhode Island coast, which often sits empty.
Now it’s subject to a new state tax which is being called the ‘Taylor Swift Tax’.
The idea is to make people who own high-end luxury vacation homes that are often vacant pay a property tax surcharge.
A Cape Cod official would like to enact something similar to help year-round residents buy housing.
Max Nash of Mashpee knows he doesn’t have much of a chance to stay in the town he grew up in.
“Almost zero,” said the rising high school senior.
“Due to some financial family circumstances, we’re going to have to sell our house in a few years… My mom is definitely not going to be able to find anywhere to live on Cape Cod because she is on disability and doesn’t make a lot of money, so we’re going to have to move off the Cape.”
Home prices have soared on the Cape in recent years.
According to www.datacapecod.org, the median price of a home was $433,000 in 2019.
Today, it’s $790,000.
That’s a jump of 82%.
“A family needs a quarter of a million dollars a year in order to afford a median home on the Cape,” said Dan Gessen, Falmouth’s representative on the Barnstable County Assembly of Delegates. “As you go further and further down the Cape, that gets higher to the point that you go to a town like Truro and three-quarters of the homes sit empty year-round there.”
He now thinks high-end vacation homes could actually be part of the solution to the Cape’s housing problem.
“The Cape is at an intersection when it comes to these issues.”
Gessen would like to follow Rhode Island’s lead and institute the so-called Taylor Swift tax on Cape Cod.
He’s proposing what’s officially known as the “Non-owner-occupied property tax” on high-end vacation homes.
It would apply a property tax surcharge if the owner lives in the property, or rents it, for less than half of the year.
That money would go into a mortgage assistance fund for full-time Cape residents.
“Our idea is charging a small fee in order to create the community that people want to see when they come to the Cape,” explained Gessen. “You’re expecting beaches that work. That takes beach committees and lifeguards and year-round residents. You’re expecting a coffee shop that has young folks working in it. You’re expecting a 9-1-1 service that’s going to respond if you have a medical emergency.”
UMass Lowell Management Professor Kimberly Merriman, Ph.D., said if there isn’t a full complement of services, “the entire system collapses, and you lose the quality of place that attracts people there to begin with.”
She says ideas like the Taylor Swift Tax are being taken seriously in high-cost places like Cape Cod and New York City these days.
Merriman believes these proposals resonate when there is an extreme wealth gap, adding that people who own a second home don’t get to vote on these policies, or the officials who advocate for them.
Gessen said, “I think the cost to any individual homeowner who has a multi-million dollar second home that they can afford to let sit for most of the year is negligible compared to the benefit that the community is going to get from this.”
For long-term Cape residents like Nash, a program like this might bring back a stronger sense of community, even at schools.
“It’s really rough. A ridiculous amount of my teachers live off Cape, many of whom live in Plymouth, or other towns, and have to commute over the bridge to get to work.”
It’s estimated that half the workers on Cape Cod now commute over the Bourne and Sagamore bridges because of the high cost of workforce housing.
As for the Taylor Swift Tax, it needs approvals on the Cape and the state legislature before it could be put into effect.
Boston 25 News asked the Cape Cod and Islands Association of Realtors for their thoughts on this proposal, and they declined to comment.
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