Cape Business Trends newsletter December 20, 2006
To landscape or not to landscape
A good landscape design can add 20 percent to the value of your property and save up to 25 percent in heating and cooling costs.
The American Society of Landscape Architects recommends that homeowners invest 10 percent of their homes’ value in landscaping. This goes beyond plantings to include structural features like lighting, fences, garden paths, fire pits, swimming pools and ponds.
Outdoor rooms, terraces and decks are also high-yield investments.
These insights are part of Cape Business’ next Personal Finance publication: Building and Protecting Your Real Estate Investment.
It will appear in the March/April edition of Cape Business and also be mailed directly to the 20,000 highest-assessed residences across the Cape.
To learn more about the first of three Personal Finance editions for 2007, please contact Bob Viamari at (508) 385-3811 or bob@capebusiness.net.
The advertising deadline for this publication, which will reach 75,000 readers, is January 30.
Meet the Sandwich Association of Financial and Legal Professionals
Fifteen area businesses are forming the Sandwich Association for Financial and Legal Professionals. This nonprofit hopes to extend its reach throughout Southeast Massachusetts; it envisions its own Web site, a speakers bureau and a “financial fest” to draw attention to the quality of financial and legal services in Sandwich.
Members expect to develop commercial office space that could accommodate as many of their businesses as possible. The development of this coalition is one more indicator of Sandwich’s rapid development as a white-collar community whose employment profile resembles more a suburb of Boston than the Cape’s historic – but fast-changing seasonal economy.
Cape Business will be profiling this new association as part of its upcoming publication: Sandwich: The Cape Begins Here. Published in partnership with the Sandwich Chamber of Commerce, this publication will be inserted in the March/April edition of Cape Business and mailed directly to 5,000 homes in Sandwich. In addition, the Sandwich Chamber will distribute the publication throughout 2007.
If you are interested in advertising in this special Sandwich publication, please contact Bob Viamari at (508) 385-3811 or bob@capebusiness.net.
Auto insurance rates to drop nearly 12 percent
The New Year starts with good news.
State Insurance Commissioner Julianne Bowler has announced a nearly 12 percent rate cut for automobile insurance. The reduction doesn’t take effect until April 1, but will result in an average annual decrease of $120 per vehicle and an average statewide premium of $899.
This year’s rate cut marks the third consecutive year rates have been going down and the lowest rate decrease since 1978. The 2007 rate cut should save Massachusetts drivers $480 million.
Home insurance pain spreading across state
The Cape has felt it for two years; now rising home insurance premiums are hitting almost everyone along the entire Massachusetts coast.
Not only are premiums expected to rise for all residences near the shore, but watch Connecticut for yet another hefty expense. Homeowners there are being asked to storm-proof their houses if they want to continue receiving coverage.
In the face of rising premiums, some Cape residents have formed Citizens for Homeowners Insurance Reform to gather information on why insurance companies are canceling policies near the coast and raising premiums – even after a year with virtually no hurricanes.
"People are so angry," said Paula Aschettino of Eastham, one of the organizers of the group, in a recent Globe article. "It just seems as if there's no regulation."
Maybe the spreading pain will get legislators on Beacon Hill to take notice now.
Cape Sen. Robert O'Leary has been pushing for a catastrophic fund backed by state bonding authority that would allow insurers to effectively self-insure against some hurricane losses. “The state needs to address this issue," O'Leary said. "Things are going to get worse, I'm afraid."
Extending rooms tax to short-term home rentals
Chatham Town Manager William Hinchey says extending the existing rooms tax to cover short-term vacation rentals in private homes and condominiums could provide “quite a significant revenue stream” for the town. As much as $2 million, he estimates; money that can lower the town’s tax rate.
“It’s a huge opportunity to displace what a whole lot of people feel is an unjust tax, and that’s the property tax,” Hinchey said in a report by the Cape Cod Chronicle.
A majority of Chatham’s board of selectmen was reported expressing support for a bill, drafted by First District Representative Cleon Turner and Brewster Selectman Ed Lewis, that gives towns the option to extend the room occupancy excise tax to private vacation rentals. Currently, the state collects a 5.7 percent rooms tax, while local communities can opt to tag up to 4 percent, which comes back to the general fund. Chatham levies the full 9.7 percent tax, and in fiscal 2006 its 4 percent share came to $947,874.
“People are now staying more in condos, more in homes, and staying less in hotels,” Lewis told selectmen last month. The tax would be extended to cover private rentals of 90 days or less. An exemption is being developed for short-term workforce housing, he added.
Selectman Sean Summers opposes the idea. While the town has seen a decrease in hotel rooms, private homes that are rented contribute through property taxes, he said. He also questioned how the measure would be enforced, and said it would put the tourist industry, the Cape’s largest, at a competitive disadvantage.
Lewis said states surrounding Massachusetts impose a room tax on private home rentals, as do many other resort areas including Florida and Arizona, so the argument that it would make the Cape less competitive doesn’t wash. “I think there’s a certain amount of scare tactics that go into that.”
Ray Braz, owner of the Old Harbor Inn and new president of the Chatham Chamber of Commerce, supports the bill. Inn and hotel owners, he said, are at a disadvantage competing with private home rentals.
Sovereign job cuts
Sovereign Bank’s announced job cuts will barely touch the Cape, and those eliminated are all back-shop positions. Seven of 800 positions throughout the company are in the Sandwich central office and one in Hyannis.
Sovereign is cutting the 800 jobs in coming months as part of a $100 million cost-saving plan. The bulk of Massachusetts job cuts will occur in greater Boston, says bank spokeswoman Ellen Molle. The corporate office in Boston will see 77 positions cut. After the cuts, Sovereign still employs about 3,300 in Massachusetts among an entire staff of 12,000.
Did you know?
• The average tax refund is $2,154, according to the most recent data from the Census Bureau.
• Chances are 98 percent that the shoes you will buy on Cape Cod in 2007 will be imported.
• You drink about 23 gallons of bottled water a year.
• More than half of us own stocks and mutual funds.
• More than half of all families with credit cards “almost always” pay off the balance; but 24 percent “hardly ever” do so.
These tidbits about our economic standing come compliments of the U.S. Census Bureau and its just-released Statistical Abstract of the United States.
Happy New Year
Cape Business Trends will not publish during the holiday week between Christmas and New Years. It will return again the first week of January.
All of us at Cape Business wish our readers a very happy holiday season.
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