84th Recap: Cities Charging Builder Impact Fees

We are always on the lookout for impact fees. For those that don't know, in many other states, like California, they charge specific fees to home builders and developers for home building. In Texas cities are allowed to charge fees for new capital improvements needed for new developments, but find it difficult to pass such ordinances. Impact fees are essentially another tax specifically on home building, and for us it would be home installation and placement. Impact fee bills don't surface regularly in all legislative sessions, but do come up from time to time. 2015 was one of those times.

HB 3984 was filed this session and the filed version would have mandated cities assess and collect impact fees, including a portion of the fees collected going to the Texas Department of Transportation. When the bill was heard in committee many other housing trades groups joined our opposition to the bill, including the Texas Association of Builders, Texas Association of Realtors, and the Texas Apartment Association. Faced with this opposition the bill was changed from requiring a fee to conducting a study on whether the future collection of impact fees could be used to fund city roads. Once changed in committee the bill was voted out 5 to 1. The bill was then sent to Calendars exactly one month before the end of session. However, for even the modified version of HB 3984 that was as far as it would get. The bill never made it out of Calendars, thus never came to the floor for a vote, and died when the end of session deadline hit.

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