To the editor:
Your home may be your most valuable investment. So, before you jump at the proposed tax reduction for primary residents that is being discussed, you should consider how this affects the value of your investment.
As I will explain in greater detail below:
- The proposed exemption program will make your home less valuable.
- Even if you are eligible now to take advantage of the exemption, you may lose the privilege and end up paying increased taxes in a few years as compared to your neighbors.
- If you are thinking of retiring and moving away for part of the year, you may lose the exemption and end up paying increased taxes as compared to your neighbors.
Great Barrington real estate values are largely driven by the influx of retirees and second-home owners. In 2026 the median list price of a home in Great Barrington was $829,000, and the median home assessed value was approximately $599,000. That suggests that there is likely a large gap between your current assessed valuation and the fair market valuation, and plenty of room for the assessed value to rise quickly. In fact, most homeowners who examine their current tax valuations would not be willing to sell their home at that price.
Great Barrington tax rates are higher than most of the surrounding towns in the southern Berkshires. At $13.24, plus the fire district tax and community preservation assessment, the total exceeds $15 per thousand of taxable value.
The proposed exemption is mathematically certain to cause a significant jump in the tax rate. Depending on the size of the exemption and the growth in the town budget, that rate will rise to somewhere between $17 and $20 per thousand (including fire district and CPA).
I have been a real estate attorney in Berkshire County for over 30 years and closed more than a thousand home sale transactions. So I am fully familiar with how tax rates affect home sales. This exemption, if adopted, will cause our tax rate to be equal to or above certain high tax rate communities such as Pittsfield and Dalton. Their tax rates are $17.50 per thousand (Pittsfield) and $18.35 per thousand (Dalton, including the fire district tax). This is critically important if you care about the value of your home when you want to sell it, because many buyers will not be eligible for the Great Barrington exemption.
When comparing the prices of similar houses in Pittsfield and Dalton to South County houses, you often see a six-figure negative effect on houses in high tax towns. I have frequently had clients ask to see a listing of a beautiful home in Pittsfield and then drop their interest in the house as soon as they learned what the annual tax cost will be. They confined their house search to lower tax communities.
If you decide to vote for this tax exemption, you may save $800 to $1,000 per year in taxes. But you could be giving up more than $50,000 in valuation when you sell your home. Buyers can easily choose other towns in the southern Berkshires. Even though other South County towns are eligible to adopt a residential exemption program, virtually all of them start at tax rates far below Great Barrington (Alford $4.95, Egremont $6.44, Stockbridge $6.83, Otis $6.46, etc.). So these towns will still have a competitive advantage in the real estate marketplace when you sell your home, even if every town adopts this proposal.
There was a well known psychological study often referred to as The Stanford Marshmallow Experiment. Children were offered one marshmallow that they could eat right away. But if they waited 15 minutes to eat it, they would receive two marshmallows. A longitudinal survey showed that the children willing to wait 15 minutes for more marshmallows later scored higher on SAT tests and had higher educational achievements. While I cannot confirm the reliability of that experiment, I can state based on my experience that you can vote for an exemption that gives you 800 marshmallows today, or you can get an extra 50,000-plus marshmallows if you wait until you sell your home in the future.
Perhaps you are not worried about the price you will get when you sell the home because that is just too many years away. Could there be some other consequences to worry about?
Remember the figures I quoted earlier. There is a huge gulf between the median offering prices of houses in Great Barrington ($829,000) and the median assessed value (approximately $599,000). This suggests that even if you are not selling soon, your tax assessment, which is tied directly to the fair market value of your home, is going to rise significantly and quickly in the next several years.
And that should be important to you because the proposal to exempt tax valuations on primary homeowners will be phased out and exclude “high-value” homes of primary residents—e.g., houses valued at $1 million or more. This year the town assessment rose uniformly for most houses by six percent. So if your tax assessment is $750,000 and values increase at that rate, your exemption will be phased out in about five years. And then you will get the privilege of paying your taxes and a hefty percentage of your neighbors’ taxes as long as you continue to own your home.
Some of the people reading this letter may be nearing retirement age. Perhaps you want to spend the winters somewhere warmer or nearer to your family. Your lawyer or accountant reminds you that you can save on income taxes and estate taxes if you become a “snow bird” and spend six months and one day in those other states. Now that sounds appealing—except, of course, when you remember that you voted to substantially increase the real estate taxes on retirees like yourselves.
The adverse effect on home values created by this program will dampen the overall tax base of the town. Your homes will become less desirable when compared to other locations, and they will command a lower price if and when you sell. In the meantime, you may “phase out” of the exemption program as your homes increase in value over time.
The law that created the seasonal community exemption has been adopted by many towns on Cape Cod. However, in many of these towns, such as Truro, Wellfleet, and Provincetown, second-home owners account for 50 percent to 70 percent of homeowners. This means the impact of the tax exemption for primary homeowners on the Cape is spread over a large number of taxpayers. In Great Barrington, only 15 percent of the housing is owned by second-home owners. The impact of this proposal will be dramatic on the few hundred homeowners being asked to shoulder taxes from 3,000 primary homeowners. And the effect on your home’s future resale value will also be dramatic.
Do you want a few marshmallows now or a lot of them later on? You may be inadvertently voting against your financial future if you vote to enact the proposed residential tax exemption.
Charles Ferris, Esq.
Great Barrington
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