From now until the end of 2009, the government is offering a 30%, or up to $1,500, tax credit for all energy efficient home upgrades. Upgrades that are eligible include items like replacement windows, exterior door replacement, installing or upgrading your homes insulation, and replacing old Heating and Air Conditioning units. There are other possible items that can be replaced. Please contact Callaway Construction for more information on qualifying items and estimates on installation

Key Issues for Home Builders

Home Occupancy Bill – Passes House: Rep. Ted Pitts’ (R-Lexington) “Home Occupancy” bill (H. 3018) passed the SC House on Thursday. The bill would allow builders with completed, but unoccupied, new homes to delay paying property tax for a limited time on the real estate improvement (house) until the house is sold/occupied, or remains on the market for under three years. During the time the house is unoccupied, services provided by the local government are minimal. The builder would have to annually certify to the tax assessor that the house remains uninhabited.

Representative Jim Merrill of the House Ways & Means Subcommittee led the charge on the House floor. Representatives Ted Pitts, Kenny Bingham, Harry Ott and Anton Gunn were key players in working the bill on the House floor. The bill should be in the SC Senate when it returns after Easter.

Point of Sale Bill – Passes in the House: A bill (H.3272) to address the inequities caused by the point-of-sale assessment method for existing commercial and residential property received a favorable vote this week in the SC House. In order to insure House passage, the bill was amended on the floor to restrict the original bill.

Under the amended bill, if a parcel of real property, which has had no further improvement since the most recent countywide reassessment program was implemented, is sold (ATI – assessable transfer of interest), the new point of sale value is postponed until the next countywide re-assessment. The point of sale value is the value to which the limit on increases (15%) in fair market value is imposed going forward.

The good news is that the SC House kept the “Point of Sale” issue in play by getting it over to the SC Senate in a timely manner. The bad news is that the SC House bill just postpones the “point of sale” problem, it doesn’t solve it. The SC Senate, when it returns later this month, is expected to continue its hearings on a companion bill (S. 432). The bigger problem is that there is no easy solution to the “point of sale” problem. Any attempt to tweak the “point of sale” law creates financial winners and losers.

Building Codes Reform Bill Introduced: Recently, two bills were introduced in the Senate and the House (S. 618 and H.3769) to modernize the South Carolina building codes process. The bill contains several key provisions:

Splits SC Building Code Council into two boards: Residential and Commercial.

The current composition of the SC Building Codes Council does not reflect the increased sophistication of the construction industry and the different requirements of residential and commercial construction. Modern building codes are increasingly complex requiring practical experience in the use of the codes to make value judgments on the interpretation of building codes. The current 16 member council would be split into smaller councils.

Building codes and their modifications must be submitted to the General Assembly for approval prior to implementation. It requires that all building codes and their modification be first approved by the respective Building Code Council (Commercial or Residential) and then the General Assembly. This process has been used in the past.

It requires that the 2006 and 2009 SC Building Code be modified to use the seismic and wind maps prepared by The Citadel and Clemson University in its report to the SC Building Codes in February 2009. These state-of-the-art studies showed that South Carolina is over-engineering its houses.

Establishes a new state appeal process. An appeals procedure would be created that would allow a builder who differed with a building codes decision by his local building official to appeal the decision to the state level.

The bill was taken up in the Senate LCI Committee this week, but had to be carried over until we get the official wind study from Clemson University. The additional time will allow us an opportunity to fine tune the bill and resolve some of the concerns over the bill.