New home builders serving the Eastern Shore and Chesapeake Bay regions are worried once again that the state has found yet another way to curb new home construction.
The legislature is weighing whether to reinstate a regulation requiring most rural homes to come equipped with high-tech septic systems that remove nitrogen but cost about $7,500 more than traditional ones. The requirement was in effect for four years before Gov. Larry Hogan’s administration reduced its scope last year to lands within 1,000 feet of tidal waters, including the Chesapeake and Atlantic coastal bays.
The most regulated state in America in which to build a new home, second only to California, this is just another one more way to raise the price of homes out of reach of the average new home buyer.
If you are a modular home builder in the central and eastern part of Maryland, you already know that if high impact fees, over-regulation by the agency that writes the rules for modular housing and high labor aren’t enough to kill modular home building, adding this huge cost to every house should just about do it.
Too bad President Trump isn’t in charge of Maryland’s Manufactured Housing agency as that swamp needs drained quickly.
