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In the first 11 months of 2022, the Peconic Bay Community Preservation Fund raised $160.78 million through a 2 percent tax on East End real estate transactions, a decline of 17.6 percent compared to the same period in 2021.
A few factors contributed to the decline in revenue, among them a lack of available housing inventory to sell, rising mortgage rates and economic uncertainly. Still, 2022 has been a robust year for CPF revenue, which the five East End towns have spent, primarily, on open space conservation and water quality protection.
New York State Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele Jr., the architect of the CPF, said that the cyberattack that targeted Suffolk County government last year had disrupted real estate filings for the months of September, October and November, but said his office was informed that the current CPF revenue numbers are up-to-date.
The CPF generated $2.05 million in September, $7.24 million in October, and $11.8 million in November for a three-month total of $21.1 million, Thiele reported. Comparatively, for the same three months of 2021 the CPF generated $50.3 million.
Since its inception on 1999, the CPF has generated $1.97 billion.
“The impact of the Suffolk County cyberattack clouds the ability to make relevant month-to-month comparisons,” Thiele said. “Regardless, there can be no doubt that there has been a significant cooling of real estate activities on the East End in the last few months. Whether it be attributed to the inevitable bursting of the COVID-19 market bubble, increased interest rates, stock market declines over 2022, predictions of a coming recession, or some combination of these factors, the conclusion must be that there has been a clear reduction in CPF revenues over the last three months.”
Staff Writer on Jan 12, 2023