A victory was recorded for the personal financial privacy for many Montanans, as House Bill 16 was tabled in the House Business and Labor Committee on Thursday. HB 16 would have disclosed the sales price on the Realty Transfer Certificate for residential property.

HB 16 was on the Montana Association of REALTORS® legislative agenda heading into the 2011 session, and MAR testified against the legislation. Not only would the bill have disclosed personal financial information, it would not have lessened the “sticker shock” that comes with the current reappraisal process and only information on the Realty Transfer Certificate would be used. Whole segments of the economy are exempt from the RTC process, most notably of these are agriculture and forestlands. It would not have been fair that these transactions would have been excluded from the requirement to reveal sales price data when homeowners would have been so required.