Since then, it’s been one problem after another. School districts are chafing under the unsteady and dwindling revenue stream, and Realtors aren’t happy because it’s causing new home sales to be limited because of higher associated costs. So, when the General Assembly returns in January, it’s going to be taking up the issue of property tax reform again.

Ironically, it was a group of Charleston-area residents led by local Realtor Emerson Read who led the fight to get the tax laws changed in 2006.

“This point-of-sale assessment, we did our best to try and keep that out of it,” Read said in a January interview.

“Just about every Realtor has lost sales,” he said then. “I hate to tell you how much my income is off.”

In South Carolina, all properties are reassessed about every five years, as they were before the laws changed, but now a property’s taxable value can rise only by 15 percent during a general reassessment. A 15 percent increase over five years is historically a modest rise, around the average rate of inflation, so the countywide reassessments now have a limited impact on tax bills.

In order to deal with point-of-sale, a bill was passed this year to help out. That only opened up another problem, as school districts are on tap to get nailed again.

The county, which by the end of 2008 was looking at a $7.5 million budget gap and was cutting back on basic services, such as road repairs and ditch maintenance, would have had to cut more services or raise taxes without the revenue from point-of-sale reassessments.

School districts, towns and cities would have been in a similar situation. The statewide impact of the proposed legislation has been estimated at $44 million yearly, by the Board of Economic Advisors.

No doubt, this is why Act 388 wasn’t included in the Taxation Realignment Commission legislation that was passed and went into effect. This is one, as a friend of ours would say, “gnarly problem.” Schools need to be funded, but real estate needs to be affordable. No easy solutions here.