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Berkeley's upzoning would be among nation's largest

darrellowens.substack.com

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Re: Berkeley's upzoning would be among nation's largest

#271

Post by shiroiushi »

nemo44x wrote: post #221
tekla wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What about all the things I have to haul? Rent a car. Millions of people do it just fine > What if I don’t want to ride a bike Deal with it > the weather is bad Deal with it > What if I have kids Kids ride bikes just fine.

I should rent a car multiple times every week? No thank you. I don’t think people with infants and toddlers expect them to ride a bike. Taking kids around to their clubs and sports, etc isn’t practical. I’m happy almost no one thinks like you do. You sound miserable. I hope you recover.

>I don’t think people with infants and toddlers expect them to ride a bike. Taking kids around to their clubs and sports, etc isn’t practical.

Obviously, you've never been to Japan. I see infants and toddlers on (their parents') bikes all the time. Parents regularly carry 2 kids on a bike with them.

Re: Berkeley's upzoning would be among nation's largest

#272

Post by acdha »

nemo44x wrote: post #221
tekla wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What about all the things I have to haul? Rent a car. Millions of people do it just fine > What if I don’t want to ride a bike Deal with it > the weather is bad Deal with it > What if I have kids Kids ride bikes just fine.

I should rent a car multiple times every week? No thank you. I don’t think people with infants and toddlers expect them to ride a bike. Taking kids around to their clubs and sports, etc isn’t practical. I’m happy almost no one thinks like you do. You sound miserable. I hope you recover.

> I don’t think people with infants and toddlers expect them to ride a bike. Taking kids around to their clubs and sports, etc isn’t practical.

Tons of parents around here use cargo bikes - my son went to daycare ~5 miles away on the back of mine and still hops on the back for longer trips in grade school. With e-assist it’s faster than driving, way less stressful and expensive, and the difference is that kids love getting on bikes in a way that they don’t riding in cars because they can see so much more of the world.

Re: Berkeley's upzoning would be among nation's largest

#273

Post by jjav »

BirdieNZ wrote: post #269
jjav wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The second paper could be interesting but can only see the abstract (I don't know anything about Auckland real estate to know about the first one). The summary of the paper seems sound, can't disagree. But then, why have we never seen these effects at a macro level, citi-wide? How come there are no examples of an expensive city that became cheap as density increased?

(This is not contrary to you, I think): See https://www.fresheconomicthinking.com/p/the-auckland-myth-th... Let's start by defining "cheaper" as "cheaper rent" specifically. Rent will only decrease or stabilise when supply outstrips the absorption rate of the market. In New Zealand, for example, at least one analyst sees the equilibrium absorption rate of rentals to be 2.5% vacancies to total rentals. This means that…

Agreed, thanks, you expressed it better than I could.

This is why I tend to question the YIMBY war cry of build build build until rent is affordable, as unrealistic. As you say, the build rate has to be consistently above the absorption rate. But that seems quite unlikely since builders are not chasing diminishing profits.

That's why don't see real world examples of cities that become denser and denser while becoming more affortable (relative to income, as you point out).

Re: Berkeley's upzoning would be among nation's largest

#274

Post by jjav »

astrange wrote: post #268
jjav wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> > I assume you have selected place(s) to live? Did you have any criteria for selecting the area? > Walkable to a grocery store. Obviously it can close, but I can't stop that from happening. But I bet you'd be unhappy if you chose this place specifically for the walkable grocery store and suddenly it's gone and now you need to drive. Maybe you don't even have a car, or even parking, because you built your life plans…

> Surely you'd be quite sad and probably annoyed by all that, suddenly having rearrange your life in a big way (either move, or get a car and parking). I would say the point of housing abundance is to make moving easy. This is both the best way to increase customer power vs landlords and the best way to let people reduce their commutes as their life circumstances change (like where their job is and where their childr…

> I would say the point of housing abundance is to make moving easy.

That's an interesting take, although I can't agree these are related.

It's not scarcity of housing that keep people from moving, it is that moving is mostly undesirable once you settle somewhere. If both spouses have a job and kids in school, you have three sites anchoring you there. And you like your neighbors and friends in the area and you like the neighborhood. Why would I move, even if there is an infinite supply of housing?

Re: Berkeley's upzoning would be among nation's largest

#275

Post by apsurd »

CydeWeys wrote: post #260
apsurd wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I learned this in 6th grade. You need bedrock to build skyscrapers. Laws of physics and all...

That knowledge is severely out of date, then. You don't need bedrock to build skyscrapers, and indeed the tallest skyscraper in the world, the Burj Khalifa, is built on top of sand with no connection to bedrock whatsoever. You just need to pour immense amounts of concrete to serve as a foundation.

Which is cost prohibitive and doesn't make sense for any other entity other than "let's light money on fire + enslave people to flex so the cool kids like us" UAE.

it's not a good look. hope my comment doesn't flag me in unforeseen ways 20 years from now.

To be clear, I'm saying effectively yep need bedrock otherwise it makes zero actual sense. (I do take you point, and lesson learned on my part)

Re: Berkeley's upzoning would be among nation's largest

#276

Post by snotrockets »

jjav wrote: post #148
kuchenbecker wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My neighbors bought their house in 1975, pay $3k in property taxes. I pay 9k in property taxes. If I bought today I'd pay 17k. I will not get a larger house because my property taxes would triple if I wanted another bedroom. A marginally larger house is not worth the marginal cost to move. And with my 2.8% refinanced mortgage and 60% equity, and current rates today, there's no chance I'd sell. It's a dream of mine to…

> My neighbors bought their house in 1975, pay $3k in property taxes. I pay 9k in property taxes. If I bought today I'd pay 17k. What neighborhood? The largest gap I've been able to find is ~2.5x, the one you mention is more than 5x.

There are maps.

And in South Berkeley, I pay almost $30k/year. Neighbor pays $3.5k.

https://www.officialdata.org/ca-property-tax/

Re: Berkeley's upzoning would be among nation's largest

#277

Post by jjav »

snotrockets wrote: post #276
jjav wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My neighbors bought their house in 1975, pay $3k in property taxes. I pay 9k in property taxes. If I bought today I'd pay 17k. What neighborhood? The largest gap I've been able to find is ~2.5x, the one you mention is more than 5x.

There are maps. And in South Berkeley, I pay almost $30k/year. Neighbor pays $3.5k. https://www.officialdata.org/ca-property-tax/

> https://www.officialdata.org/ca-property-tax/

Thanks for the link, I had seen that site before but forgotten about it.

Have you confirmed that 3.5k number with the neighbor, or is it from the website?

I see a few large errors on that site for my neighborhood, so can't really trust it.

There is one house similar to mine shown as paying less than one fifth property tax. But if I look up the tax history in zillow, it's not true, their property tax history is quite similar to mine.

Then there are two interesting cases, where their property tax is shown as minuscule, less than $1k. And interestingly, zillow agrees.

But here's the interesting part: looking at the history in zillow, it shows that both these houses were paying around $9K in property tax and then suddenly one year it dropped to $900.

Please correct me if I'm wrong but I don't think there is any mechanism in California property tax code that makes it possible for the property tax to drop like that.

I know one can request a revision if the market drops significantly (like in 2008) but this is not that, it dropped to 1/10th of previous value! And these are all very similar homes from a mass produced builder, they're all within a handful percentage of each other in estimated market price. None of the other houses in the neighborhood dropped in assessed value like that.

So I'm guessing it is just a typo or otherwise bad data from the county, feeding into both zillow and this website.

I should add: The $900 property tax shown is quite a bit less than the property tax on year one when these houses were built in the 90s. Which seems quite impossible, so I conclude the data is wrong.

Re: Berkeley's upzoning would be among nation's largest

#278

Post by jjav »

snotrockets wrote: post #276
jjav wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My neighbors bought their house in 1975, pay $3k in property taxes. I pay 9k in property taxes. If I bought today I'd pay 17k. What neighborhood? The largest gap I've been able to find is ~2.5x, the one you mention is more than 5x.

There are maps. And in South Berkeley, I pay almost $30k/year. Neighbor pays $3.5k. https://www.officialdata.org/ca-property-tax/

> https://www.officialdata.org/ca-property-tax/

To add to my previous comment, for my neighborhood, if one thought all the numbers there are true, there is 15x multiplier from the cheapest property tax to the most expensive. Which sounds wild.

But if you take out the obviously wrong values, the multiplier from lowest to highest tax is actually only ~2.5x. And that's lowest to highest. The mean difference is far less, under $1K.

One might say there shouldn't be any multiplier, perhaps. But the point is that the impact of Prop13 is often far overstated.

Re: Berkeley's upzoning would be among nation's largest

#279

Post by quesera »

cyberax wrote: post #253
quesera wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Napa County has acute water availability problems. SF County and most of Alameda County (the most populated parts) generally do not. I didn't say Napa was hot. Sacramento is hot. But SFBA comprises a large area and large climatic variations. I don't think it's meaningful to consider all 9 (or 13) counties in comparisons, because all things become true. Cold, hot, humid, dry, windy, placid, densely populated, sparsely…

The thing is, climate doesn't matter. Vegetation doesn't matter. Good looks don't matter. All that matters is proximity to jobs. Sacramento doesn't have a lot of them (although that is changing now), so it's not attracting significantly more population.

This doesn't make sense to me.

Taking it further -- all that matters is proximity to trade routes. SF has (had) a port, and so it grew first. Jobs resulted. The effects were compounded over years.

Sacramento has a river. The river is why Sacramento is not Vacaville. Also, it was selected as the state capital (partially for the available and inexpensive land!), which has greatly accelerated its growth.

Sacramento is the fastest-growing city in CA. It's actually almost as populous as SF, though of course much less dense. And the job market is good, but the jobs are not the same kind as in SF (and fewer are applicable to the typical HN denizen).

I really don't know what you're going for here. Different places are different, for myriad reasons. It's not as one-dimensional as you seem to suggest.

Re: Berkeley's upzoning would be among nation's largest

#280

Post by snotrockets »

jjav wrote: post #277
snotrockets wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are maps. And in South Berkeley, I pay almost $30k/year. Neighbor pays $3.5k. https://www.officialdata.org/ca-property-tax/

> https://www.officialdata.org/ca-property-tax/ Thanks for the link, I had seen that site before but forgotten about it. Have you confirmed that 3.5k number with the neighbor, or is it from the website? I see a few large errors on that site for my neighborhood, so can't really trust it. There is one house similar to mine shown as paying less than one fifth property tax. But if I look up the tax history in zillow, it'…

I think some of the data is just old: my house is listed with the tax assessment for the previous owner.

But all the tax bills are published (though in a harder to navigate format) on the country website. I went and checked all my neighbors property taxes there when signs against a modest tax increase for road fixing started going up in the neighborhood.

As for property tax drop: there are such mechanisms, like those in the Mills act. They’re not easy to use though

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