"A way to think about this ... is it's a sales tax applied to real estate. So whenever real estate is sold -- and that real estate can be your home, it can be land, it can be commercial property -- this tax would be applied," explains Dr. Walden, a North Carolina Cooperative Extension economist. "It would be up to a maximum of .4 percent or four dollars on $1,000 of value in counties.

"County voters will have a chance -- if the county commissioners decide they want to go this route -- to vote on this," he continues. "Although the tax would be paid by the seller, it's likely a large part of that tax will actually be passed on to the buyer. And really the split there depends upon market conditions.

"The overall economic impact of this tax really depends on how residents view it. If they view this as a tax with no real benefits or they can't see the benefits, then this may actually be detrimental to the county," says Dr. Walden. "On the other hand, if they can see where this money is going and they value the use of that money -- for example, if it's used to build schools or buy parkland or something -- then this could actually enhance the attractiveness of the county.

"So you really need to think about not only the tax but how the money is used in terms of evaluating its impacts," he says. "Now there is an alternative. Counties have also been authorized to instead of talking about a land transfer tax to consider increasing the local sales tax by a quarter percentage point. Or, of course, they can always raise the same amount of revenue through the annual property tax.

"And this is all going to be of course very strongly debated."