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High property taxes are good

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Re: High property taxes are good

#501

Post by trentnix »

jfim wrote: post #454
KerrAvon wrote: post #438

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The elephant in the room is the amount of housing supply being held by banks and private equity in an effort to shore up housing prices. They can afford high property taxes. Your elderly parents might not be able to. Obama should have let the bankers twist in the wind when the citizenry was out for blood in 2008. They repaid him by channeling money to Republicans. Put them all in jail.

> They can afford high property taxes. Your elderly parents might not be able to. Texas has an interesting solution to this. Homeowners over 65 can elect to defer the payment of their property taxes indefinitely, although the taxes eventually get paid when the house changes owners.

Homeowners over 65 in Texas (along with certain widower situations and disabled veterans) are also eligible for exemptions that “freeze” the amount of tax they are required to pay (if the property is their homestead) irrespective of the appraised value of the property.

Re: High property taxes are good

#502

Post by mlyle »

midoridensha wrote: post #498
jelliclesfarm wrote: post #471

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Multigenerational families are the answer. Move in with grandma. Problem solved.

What if grandma lives in a city where there's no jobs for me? Asking people to move in with their relatives is not the answer; the answer is very simple: build more housing. Eliminate zoning rules and start replacing older buildings with new, larger and taller buildings.

> Eliminate zoning rules and start replacing older buildings with new, larger and taller buildings.

Right now, NIMBY tries to prevent taller buildings.

A land value tax incentivizes more effective land uses-- as opposed to property taxes that include improvements, which reduce the incentive to build high density.

Re: High property taxes are good

#504

Post by yellowapple »

Dracophoenix wrote: post #310
yellowapple wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So your answer is to dismiss my position without evidence? My evidence is your evidence. If you're arguing that a parcel of land increases in value due to the existence of improvements on neighboring parcels, then so, too, would improvements on the parcel in question be more valuable (since they're already built in a desirable location). Hence: the impact for land tax + improvement tax would be worse under your pre…

Not just neighboring parcels. Any improvements on one's own property (separate from the land itself) would be factored into LVT through an indirect tax on improvements via a higher assessment value. While certains areas can be "nice", not all homes in a given area are equally "nice". Some parcels of land will have their values "propped up" by the home that is sitting on it as well as proximate homes while others are…

> Any improvements on one's own property (separate from the land itself) would be factored into LVT through an indirect tax on improvements via a higher assessment value.

No, because that's already subtracted out of the total property value to produce the land value.

> And if COVID telecommuting is an indication of market preferences, home-owning adults prefer small, out-of-the-way towns with plenty of space, low property taxes, and good internet connections.

The exodus from city centers stems from farther-out places being cheaper - i.e. having lower land value.

Re: High property taxes are good

#505

Post by krustymeathead »

raldi wrote: post #477
lolinder wrote: post #380

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The person you're replying to isn't arguing against land value taxes in the abstract, they're arguing against an implementation of LVTs that would force most homeowners to decide between overpaying taxes by a wide margin or suddenly losing their home.

Perhaps I'm not stating the proposal clearly. Nobody would suddenly lose their home. If you understated its value, and someone made an offer, you'd have the opportunity to restate the property's value, keep the home, and pay the appropriate property taxes from then on.

Hypothetically, let's say I owned a modest home. Then, what if a very wealthy person who grew up in that home wanted to buy it for a grand sum of money? In that case, I'd be torn between revaluing my house to a huge amount (that no one except this one person would be willing to pay) and being forced to sell. It's an interesting scenario, because that wealthy person could lower their valuation almost immediately after the sale, since no one else would pay what they paid.

Re: High property taxes are good

#506

Post by FpUser »

What a piece of BS. High ever rising property taxes are good at pushing older people out of their houses. It is fucking immoral. If the author is so concerned about speculative investors (yes they are huge problem) then this problem must be addressed separately. Not difficult to do at all.

Re: High property taxes are good

#507

Post by danielheath »

fleddr wrote: post #491
danielheath wrote: post #424

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is “a hefty tax on a good reduces it’s value” a controversial claim requiring substantial evidence? Nobody is willing to pay as much up front for housing that has higher ongoing costs.

Because a suppression of price would also suppress new development? Why would a builder build anything in an area of low profitability, in a backdrop of rising costs and worker shortages? So how come there's ample low cost high quality housing in Chicago? The same remark applies to home owners. Your property won't rise in value, so why buy it? You must really want to live in the area, I guess. And yes, I know the poi…

> almost everywhere it has a double function in also being an appreciating retirement fund.

That's true, but it's also a looming economic disaster as it prices out the younger generation and entrenches generational wealth.

Chicago are famous for their highest rate of 2.5% per annum, grown smoothly over 15+ years. Thought experiment: What happens if the land value tax rate keeps growing smoothly? What does it look like at 10% per annum? 20%? 100%?

At 100% per annum, the average land value of a house needs to be below $50k or so in current dollars (most would need to be much less). Any higher, and ~nobody is willing to pay the taxes.

A large home costs $200k or so to build vs a small/cheap home at 80k, so property prices now range from 50k (old cheap home) to 250k (new, high-end home).

That's a huge result for housing affordability! People are currently saving deposits of 80k to get a mortgage.

Instead of paying mortgage costs to capital holders, you're paying tax to a government that ostensibly exists to serve you. Instead of buying "the most I can afford so I get a retirement fund", now people are buying housing based on their willingness to pay an ongoing cost for access to amenities.

Re: High property taxes are good

#508

Post by mgraf1 »

igorkraw wrote: post #376
mgraf1 wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would a non market based system work for housing though? How do we decide who gets to live in places like Honolulu or Boulder?

That's the hard question. Once you have a community that decides to so it differently, you can use democratic consensus or voting (partial exampl Vienna, lots of counter-market public housing), but to get there you either need force or political will for places like boulder (think cutting off any subsidies for private home ownership and replacing then with mandates to have public bodies or cooperatives build dense-bu…

The point I'm getting at is that some places are much more desirable than others. In a market, it's prices that act as a mechanism for deciding who can live in a limited space. For example, way more people want to live on the beach than there are houses on the beach.

Re: High property taxes are good

#509

Post by onlyrealcuzzo »

fleddr wrote: post #384

I'm struggling to make sense of the cause and effect in the article: "The high cost of property taxes have long pushed away speculative investors as it has pushed the carrying cost beyond what is profitable to hold as a passive investment long-term." Alright, so now the speculative buyers are gone and we're dealing with ordinary home buyers that actually occupy their home. These genuine owners are paying high propert…

> If so, why not just get rid of speculative buying (simply make it illegal)?

How do you propose to do that in the US?

Re: High property taxes are good

#510

Post by 8note »

bko wrote: post #256
raldi wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just let property owners declare a value for their land, and give anyone the right to buy it for 120% of that value at any time, with the existing owner given a grace period where they can restate their estimate.

That sounds awful. Imagine being forced to move every few years or giving people with money that much power over you. Seems crazy that this idea is so popular. I'm guessing the people who like this idea are very young and mobile. Imagine telling grandma she has to move and sell her house and have police show up at the door when she doesn't want to. It's basically the abuses of eminent domain except done privately.

its basically what renters have though, and is considered a "benefit of renting"
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