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California's housing bill SB 50 has died in the state Senate

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Re: California's housing bill SB 50 has died in the state Senate

#61

Post by technofiend »

omgwtfbyobbq wrote: post #42
TulliusCicero wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Prop 13 has a TON to do with high housing prices, because it eliminates the downside of high housing prices: higher property taxes. Once higher property taxes are out of the picture, higher property values are purely beneficial for homeowners, which means there's every incentive to vote for anti-housing policies to enrich themselves at the expense of transplants and immigrants.

I wouldn't say it eliminates it. When you buy a property, you still pay taxes on whatever your purchase price is. Prop 13 just mediates the rate of increase, which is beneficial, but not immediately.

>When you buy a property, you still pay taxes on whatever your purchase price is.

And again every year after that, including whatever increase your taxing authority may legally apply, usually the maximum allowed by law unless you actively fight it.

Texas has no state income tax and property taxes are (so they tell me) quite high as a result. My property tax is $7k+ each year. Not onerous because I have a full time job, but many of the retirees and landlords in my area did find it onerous enough to sell. Bad for renters because a lot of reasonably priced rental properly was lost, good for the city because a house like mine was torn down and 5-7 condos or townhomes took their place. Now the city is looking at easily 8 or 9 times the tax revenue for a single lot like mine since these new homes also appraise higher than mine.

If anything prop 13 represents one extreme and Texas the other. It would be nice if we could meet somewhere in the middle.

Re: California's housing bill SB 50 has died in the state Senate

#62

Post by ummonk »

claudeganon wrote: post #29
fortran77 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No it won't. It would displace even more people. The only way to get lower-cost housing is to build more housing. It's that simple.

It’s not that simple because the housing that gets built in areas with the worse affordability crises is high-end stock that gets bought up as an investment or cash store. “The market” has decided that in an era of extreme inequality and stagnant wages that the only way to recoup investment is targeting this segment, leaving everyone else in dire straits. (Unless you’re talking about the government building massive a…

Even most high end housing ends up getting occupied. This takes high income / wealthy people out of the market for existing housing stock, helping reduce market prices for existing housing.

Re: California's housing bill SB 50 has died in the state Senate

#63

Post by amunicio »

fortran77 wrote: post #53
amunicio wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> They don't need the highest property tax, too. Prop 13 doesn't change the property tax rate, it changes WHO pays the full "nub" rate and who enjoys a "nobility" rebate. It disincentives home owners from moving, even when their new jobs are far away, increasing commuting time. It also creates a resource allocation imbalance. Folks that are retired and don't benefit so much by living in highly concentrated job areas…

So a retired person should be forced to move from his little 3 bedroom house because some Googler decided the house next door was worth $3.5MM and his property tax goes up to $75,000/year? That's pure evil. I fully supported SB50. Build. More. Housing.

>> So a retired person should be forced to move from his little 3 bedroom house because some Googler decided the house next door was worth $3.5MM and his property tax goes up to $75,000/year? That's pure evil.

Nope. A retired person should have the CHOICE to pocket the $3.5MM the Googler is ready to pay for his house in Palo Alto and buy an even fancier house in Livermore knowing that his property taxes is not going to substantially change much.

But with the present system instead, another Googler, let say the food service employee, will never be able to pay the mortgage for a one room apartment PLUS exorbitant "nub" real state taxes. At least the retired guy has a large amount of equity in the house and choices.

Re: California's housing bill SB 50 has died in the state Senate

#64

Post by lern_too_spel »

fortran77 wrote: post #37
lern_too_spel wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The reason California has the highest sales and income taxes is that it has the lowest property tax. People who have held property for a very long time are taxed very little relative to how they would be taxed in other states, and people who are new are taxed a lot.

California does NOT have the lowest property tax. It is very distasteful for you to try to win an argument by lying. http://www.tax-rates.org/taxtables/property-tax-by-state And if you rank the states by percentage revenue from property tax, you'll see they are right in the middle https://www.urban.org/policy-centers/cross-center-initiative...

It is very misleading of you to post aggregate statistics when people who have owned property a long time pay very different property taxes from people who have not, as I stated in my earlier post.

Re: California's housing bill SB 50 has died in the state Senate

#65

Post by arrosenberg »

pdonis wrote: post #58
paulgb wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If every corporation took a carbon negative stance like Stripe and Microsoft, that would make a big dent in carbon emissions. Sure, but it's a lot easier for a software company to go carbon neutral than a power company. Which is not to take away from what they're doing, it is still hard to do! The way I see it, we have two basic technologies for coordinating as a society: free markets, and governments. Neither is p…

> governments are the least-worst solution No, they're not, because while externalities and other forms of misaligned incentives are departures from the norm in free markets, they are the norm in governments.

> No, they're not, because while externalities and other forms of misaligned incentives are departures from the norm in free markets, they are the norm in governments.

How do you figure? A totally free market results in monopolies, which are rife with externalities that exist for the purpose of maintaining the monopoly. Government is the body responsible for balancing and managing those negative factors against the desirable results being produced.

Re: California's housing bill SB 50 has died in the state Senate

#66

Post by paulgb »

pdonis wrote: post #58
paulgb wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If every corporation took a carbon negative stance like Stripe and Microsoft, that would make a big dent in carbon emissions. Sure, but it's a lot easier for a software company to go carbon neutral than a power company. Which is not to take away from what they're doing, it is still hard to do! The way I see it, we have two basic technologies for coordinating as a society: free markets, and governments. Neither is p…

> governments are the least-worst solution No, they're not, because while externalities and other forms of misaligned incentives are departures from the norm in free markets, they are the norm in governments.

It took governments less time to fix the Ozone hole (remember the Montreal Protocol?) than it took for the free market to converge on one type of phone charger that works on multiple devices.

Unfettered faith in free markets and unfettered faith in governments are equally bad things.

Re: California's housing bill SB 50 has died in the state Senate

#67

Post by ummonk »

technofiend wrote: post #61
omgwtfbyobbq wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't say it eliminates it. When you buy a property, you still pay taxes on whatever your purchase price is. Prop 13 just mediates the rate of increase, which is beneficial, but not immediately.

>When you buy a property, you still pay taxes on whatever your purchase price is. And again every year after that, including whatever increase your taxing authority may legally apply, usually the maximum allowed by law unless you actively fight it. Texas has no state income tax and property taxes are (so they tell me) quite high as a result. My property tax is $7k+ each year. Not onerous because I have a full time jo…

It isn’t any coincidence that Texas is one of the few places in the US that has experienced large population growth without a corresponding affordability crisis.

Re: California's housing bill SB 50 has died in the state Senate

#68

Post by djannzjkzxn »

throwaway713 wrote: post #33

There’s one thing that constantly confuses me with the housing crisis, which is why more people aren’t moving to other cities (or at least a lot faster than they currently are). Perhaps my mentality is different than most, but if I can improve my economic situation by moving elsewhere I will. I know for some people it is difficult to move because of family ties or costs associated with moving, but I would have though…

Relocating HQ means laying off all your employees. This is not a figure of speech or analogy, it’s literally true. You are laying off all of your employees in the current location when you move the jobs away. The question is whether those employees are going to choose to uproot themselves to go work for you at the new HQ, or stay behind and find another job. Most will stay put instead of moving away. People generally don’t take kindly to forced moves. Many ethnic groups have legendary historical calamities that consist of being forced to move en masse.

If a software company did this, my guess is all development would cease for a long time and you may exceed the “bus factor” and permanently kill a large portion of projects. In fact I’m aware of management at one company winding down projects by moving the skeleton crew who agrees to leave to a lower COL city.

This is not much different from outsourcing to a lower COL country.

Re: California's housing bill SB 50 has died in the state Senate

#69

Post by Apocryphon »

fortran77 wrote: post #24
generalpass wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Well the only solution is a ballot initiative to repeal prop 13. That will change things. This seems to always be stated as if stating it makes it true. Prop 13 has little to do with high housing prices and a lot to do with getting more revenue for governments. Prices are influenced by supply and demand. The artificial limiting of supply by all of the governments in California is the biggest factor in why the price…

Exactly right. And every time a property is turned over, the base tax rate gets reset, plus prop 13 allows for a 2% increase every year. California has the highest sales and income tax (for incomes over $500,000) in the Nation. They don't need the highest property tax, too.

How about repealing Prop 13, and replacing it with a land value tax?

https://www.econlib.org/land-taxes-the-return-of-henry-georg...

Re: California's housing bill SB 50 has died in the state Senate

#70

Post by kec »

omgwtfbyobbq wrote: post #39
sjg007 wrote: post #14

Well the only solution is a ballot initiative to repeal prop 13. That will change things.

Repealing prop 13 might help a little, but it's a weaker driver than recessions and interest rates. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CASTHPI https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/JHDUSRGDPBR https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MORTGAGE30US

How do those graphs support this claim?
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