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In California, you can now sell your ADU

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81–90 of 108 posts

Re: In California, you can now sell your ADU

#81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it my backyard if I do not even live in the state?

> "I do not want to live in a ADU nor do I want one on my property, nor do I want to live in a community that has ADUs." Sounds like you don't want them in your backyard.

I do not, but I also don't think regulations would fix the problem. I would rather just move to a new backyard.

Re: In California, you can now sell your ADU

#82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can't afford to move because they have to pay capital gains tax is such a bullshit reason. Pay it from the fucking gains, grandma..

If I were facing that situation (as I might be 25-30 years from now), I'd surely not rob my children/grandchildren of part of their inheritance by paying capital gains while I am alive rather than passing it along with stepped-up basis after my and my wife's death. "Whoa, hold on; we should change the law on that last point!" I hear you saying. And I might even agree, but unless/until we do, grandma is doing the obvi…

Right, but that's the point - why is legislation moving forward that doesn't address the problem?

Re: In California, you can now sell your ADU

#83

> The legislation could be a major benefit to senior citizens on a fixed income who often can’t afford to move, whether because of high interest rates or capital gains taxes incurred by selling a long-time home. A group that is extremely small - and we pretend like every grandma in the world lived in a little cottage in Hollywood that's now worth $3m - and whatever would she do if she had to 1031 into rental properti…

> We have to think about all the poor multi-millionaire grandmas and not the current generation that can't afford to own a home and start a family

I think it comes from a distaste for low-income housing.

California law requires a fraction of new developments to be low-income housing. Because Cupertino doesn't want that, but does want to build, they created low-income housing for seniors only. (Also you get priority if you've lived in Cupertino, famously-affordable Cupertino, for a certain number of years.)

TL; DR Think of the millionaire grandmas is a convenient way to dodge low-income housing requirements.

Re: In California, you can now sell your ADU

#84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I were facing that situation (as I might be 25-30 years from now), I'd surely not rob my children/grandchildren of part of their inheritance by paying capital gains while I am alive rather than passing it along with stepped-up basis after my and my wife's death. "Whoa, hold on; we should change the law on that last point!" I hear you saying. And I might even agree, but unless/until we do, grandma is doing the obvi…

Right, but that's the point - why is legislation moving forward that doesn't address the problem?

It turns out that there are thousands of problems various legislatures can choose to address. That they're addressing just a subset of the entire problem space with any given piece of legislation is a feature, not a bug.

In this case, the federal tax treatment of inherited property (problem 1) cannot be addressed by a California state-level legislature, but the latter can try to increase the supply of housing in CA (problem 2) by making ADU sales legal there.

Re: In California, you can now sell your ADU

#85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Polling shows that there's only a slight preference for single family homes. Yet the land usage is absolutely dominated by bans on apartments. If preferences really were so strong for single family homes, there wouldn't have to be a legal ban on other forms of housing. This stranglehold on the housing problem, by a few politicians and a small number of homeowners banning others from living their preferred way of life…

> Polling shows that there's only a slight preference for single family homes. So, 51% vs 49% ? That's still half of the people wanting houses. I agree that regulations are to blame, and most of the voters vote against housing, because people in the us who vote are mostly the boomers, who are mostly homeowners, hence increasing the value on their home.

I think it's more like 60% with a stated preference for single family home over a walkability to amenities.

But this is stated preference, not the true preference as revealed by having to put money on the line. And markets prove time and time again that opinion polls do not match up with actual behavior. IMHO, I would suspect more people would choose walkability over SFH than the polls suggest, but I could also be wrong and maybe it would swing the other way.

In any case, the market is not allowed to meet consumer demand because of the ubiquity of apartment bans in cities.

I have a feeling that if we did more voting rather than backroom deals with a veneer of "public input" where the only people who provide input are busybodies, then we would not have apartment bans at 90% of land area in most cities. (I say "busybody" as a busybody myself, I had to start being one to push back against the housing policy that was causing so many of my friends to move away!)

Re: In California, you can now sell your ADU

#86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I were facing that situation (as I might be 25-30 years from now), I'd surely not rob my children/grandchildren of part of their inheritance by paying capital gains while I am alive rather than passing it along with stepped-up basis after my and my wife's death. "Whoa, hold on; we should change the law on that last point!" I hear you saying. And I might even agree, but unless/until we do, grandma is doing the obvi…

Right, but that's the point - why is legislation moving forward that doesn't address the problem?

> why is legislation moving forward that doesn't address the problem?

Helping multi-million dollar inheritances built on the housing shortage dodge taxation isn't the political winner it might have sounded like on first glance?

Re: In California, you can now sell your ADU

#87

The problem with San Francisco, Seattle, and Vancouver (BC), and other cities with housing issues is simple, Americans seem to hate apartments, everyone wants houses, so most of the cities are zoned for SFH (Seattle and Vancouver for sure). If you built 10 floor buildings everywhere, with 2/3 bedroom apartments, even at 1 apartment per floor, housing stops being an issue in 5 years. However, go to Seattle, San Franci…

> Americans seem to hate apartments, everyone wants houses

Tell that to every apartment building with a waiting list. The fetishization of single-family housing comes from planners, not the populace.

Re: In California, you can now sell your ADU

#88

> The legislation could be a major benefit to senior citizens on a fixed income who often can’t afford to move, whether because of high interest rates or capital gains taxes incurred by selling a long-time home. A group that is extremely small - and we pretend like every grandma in the world lived in a little cottage in Hollywood that's now worth $3m - and whatever would she do if she had to 1031 into rental properti…

To be fair, the group also includes grandma's children who have a lot staked on inherited the $3m shack on a stepped-up basis.

Bring back the death tax, IMHO.

I may get a few hundred thousand from inheritance, but even that feels really unfair. Society shouldn't operate that way.

Re: In California, you can now sell your ADU

#89

The problem with San Francisco, Seattle, and Vancouver (BC), and other cities with housing issues is simple, Americans seem to hate apartments, everyone wants houses, so most of the cities are zoned for SFH (Seattle and Vancouver for sure). If you built 10 floor buildings everywhere, with 2/3 bedroom apartments, even at 1 apartment per floor, housing stops being an issue in 5 years. However, go to Seattle, San Franci…

> Americans seem to hate apartments, everyone wants houses Tell that to every apartment building with a waiting list. The fetishization of single-family housing comes from planners, not the populace.

Every time I bring up the built environment with planners, almost all of them say "it's not our fault."

They blame politicians, etc. for the results of the planning profession over the past 50-70 years.

Perhaps the planners are right, but then my question is, what do planners actually do?

Re: In California, you can now sell your ADU

#90

I’ve resigned myself to the fact that California has signed a suicide pact with real estate speculators that can’t be revoked because of the political consequences of enacting policies that cause prices to go down or even stabilize. Like with the homeless crisis (which is the direct result of the housing crisis), the state will waste billions doing anything and everything to look like they’re working on the problem,…

>which is the direct result of the housing crisis The homeless crisis is better described as a mental health and substance abuse and addiction crisis.

Absolutely not. Areas with higher levels of addiction or mental health issues do not have out homelessness problems.

There may be a small causal arrow where homelessness causes some addiction or mental health issues, or a very small arrow where addiction or mental health causes some to be homeless, but the bulk of the problem is high housing costs.

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