The Martha’s Vineyard Land Bank broke its own record for fees last week, collecting more than $1 million in a single five-day period.
Fees collected by the land bank on Vineyard real estate transactions totaled $1,079,470 for the week ending Feb. 6. The last time the land bank brought in more than $1 million was in the third week of December 2006, a peak period for real estate sales on the Island. Fees collected that week totalled $1,066,125.
“It was just barely a record,” land bank executive director James Lengyel said this week of the recent totals.
The land bank collects a two per cent transfer fee on most arm’s length real estate transactions with a few exemptions, including for first-time home buyers. The funds are used to buy public conservation land on the Island.
Several large property sales last week contributed to the windfall for the land bank, including a $22 million sale down harbor in Edgartown.
The home at 48 Witchwood Lane fronts the narrows in Katama Bay. The buyer is the Edgartown Trust, with John Zampino listed as trustee. The seller is JPBK Holdings MA LLC. That sale alone sent $440,000 in fees to the land bank.
A number of other noteworthy sales sent tidy sums to land bank coffers.
In West Tisbury two properties owned by the Fisher family on Watcha Pond sold for a combined price of $10.8 million. The buyer is Dennis Delaney and the Calawi Realty Trust.
In Aquinnah a property off Lobsterville Road sold for $6.4 million. The seller is Home Free Partnership; the buyer is Kaempfer Skippers Land LLC.
In Chilmark a property at 33 Beetlebung Road sold for $4.4 million. The buyer is Beetlebung Road LLC,; the seller is Andrew Silver and the Silver Family Nominee Trust.
Also in Edgartown, Charles and Anne Hajjar bought the Victorian Inn on South Water street from Karyn Caliri for $3.6 million.
Mr. Lengyel said he believed that all the sales had been under negotiation for varying amounts of time and happened to close in the same week by coincidence.
The extra fees put the land bank comfortably ahead of budget projections for the year. Mr. Lengyel said if the numbers continue on their current track, the land bank would end the year with about $10 million in fees, well above the $8.5 million projected for 2015. The land bank always projects conservatively; last year fees came in over $10 million, while the agency had budgeted for $7 million.
The highest year recorded for fees in the land bank’s history was 2006. That year the land bank collected more than $12 million in fees. Two years later the national economy crashed.
The Gazette publishes the record of weekly fees collected by the land bank on its website and on page two of the weekly print edition.
Although he stopped short of calling the news a bellwether for Vineyard real estate, Mr. Lengyel did say that the recent activity appears to show a trend.
“The land bank data seem to show that the prices are rather steady, so it would seem that this activity is volume,” he said.
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