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With Oregon facing 10.5 percent unemployment and a $3.5 billion budget deficit, state lawmakers will surely soon toss around many ideas on how to generate money. But real estate professionals want to be sure one isn’t discussed.

The Oregon Association of Realtors and several local brokers and developers have formed a group determined to prevent the possibility of the state establishing a real estate transfer tax. They say such a tax would cripple a wobbly economic recovery.

The group is gathering signatures from around the state to get a measure on the November 2012 ballot that would amend the state constitution so that a real estate transfer tax could not be imposed.

“I’m not opposed to paying taxes if the money is used the right way,” said Alan Mehrwein, a principal broker with RE/MAX Equity Group in Lake Oswego and the 2010 president of the Oregon Association of Realtors. “But moving forward, it shouldn’t be about more taxes; it should be about less spending.”

A real estate transfer tax is basically a sales tax on property sales or property transfers. Whenever a property changes hands, a specified percentage of the purchase price or assessed value – depending on the state – is taxed; usually this is the seller’s responsibility.

Thirty-five states and Washington, D.C., impose a real estate transfer tax. The state of Oregon presently does not impose one; however, only a three-fifths vote from the state House and Senate would be required to change that. And, as Mehrwein pointed out, interest in such a tax has been gradually increasing in Oregon.

“There have been 10 proposals brought to the Legislature over the past five legislative sessions,” Mehrwein said. “We’d just rather have the entire voting population vote on whether the tax is a good idea or not, rather than the 90 members that make up the state Legislature.”

Some states are backing away from the tax. Both Missouri and Montana passed constitutional amendments banning the tax during this year’s election, and Arizona passed a similar amendment in 2008.

“In a place like Washington, where the majority of their tax base comes from a sales tax, it would make sense,” said Barry Cain, president of Gramor Development in Tualatin and one of the lead petitioners for the effort in Oregon. “But we have income taxes that are already imposed if people make a profit off the sale of real estate. Plus, we already have property taxes.”

Washington and California both have real estate transfer taxes. Washington charges 1.28 percent of the property sale, and local jurisdictions have the option of adding 0.25 to 0.75 percent of the sale to help fund local programs. In California, the burden is much smaller, with local jurisdictions having the option to impose a 0.11 percent fee on all sales.

In Oregon, Washington County imposes a 0.1 percent real estate transfer tax. It is written into the ballot measure that Washington County’s tax would be grandfathered in, said Paul Rainey, a spokesperson for the Oregon Association of Realtors.

And while the area’s regional government, Metro, doesn’t impose the tax, spokeswoman Karen Kane said it’s often discussed as a viable option to help pay for the agency’s various programs.

Florida has a 1.05 percent real estate transfer tax to generate money for affordable housing projects. And though the charge to ban such a tax is usually led by state Realtor associations, both the Florida Realtors association and the Florida Home Builders Association support their state’s tax.

Oregon real estate brokers say a transfer tax could lead to fewer deals, and both Cain and Mehrwein said the burden would be greatest on any property owners or homeowners.

“A tax like this could obviously hurt someone in my industry,” Cain said. “But if you look at it, it really hurts anyone who acquires a piece of property or sells it.

“I can’t even begin to tell you how many parcels were sold with no profit over the last few years just to off-load the asset. Can you imagine getting taxed on a situation like that?”

The group needs to gather 112,000 signatures by June 2012 to get the measure on the November 2012 ballot. According to Mehrwein, they have already gathered 35,000 and have not yet mailed the petition to several of the organizations who were against tax-increasing measures 66 and 67 that passed in the last general election.

“It’s a grassroots effort that we expect to pick up significantly over the next year,” Mehrwein said. “But we wanted to make sure we had an early start on signature gathering so the state Legislature knows how important this is to our industry and the citizens of Oregon before they meet in February.”