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Why are there suddenly so many car washes?

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Re: Why are there suddenly so many car washes?

#331

Post by _heimdall »

BirdieNZ wrote: post #323
_heimdall wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The farmland’s 40$/year in taxes isn’t pushing anyone to sell I don't think that's an easy assumption to make. Cost of living, average income, and average plot size are very different in rural areas. I don't know Idaho so I can't speak to land value there, but I can say farmable land in rural Alabama goes for between $1k and $6k per acre depending on the land. If you really want to farm it for anything more than a…

For land assessment, many countries or municipalities assess it regularly. In my country (New Zealand), most city councils re-assess land value and improvements value every three years (and charge council rates based on them).

Its probably more of a rural issue, but assessing value can be difficult when there aren't enough recent comps since the last major economic shift.

I live on around 80 acres (30 hectares?). Our land is a bit unique in the area, and in general there hasn't been a single piece of land sold near us since before the pandemic and all the economic change that came with it. I don't know how the county could possibly know what our land is worth until something similar sells on the open market again.

Re: Why are there suddenly so many car washes?

#333

Post by paulryanrogers »

gameman144 wrote: post #283
pixl97 wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And late stage capitalism with boom/bust cycles is good for the community and customers too? At least for the 1% it's doing great. The point is that a "Local" government deciding on how many of one kind of business shows up in one spot isn't optimizing from the top (you could consider that the state or federal government). Instead you could consider it optimizing it from the middle. The local people are electing offi…

Are boom/bust cycles unique to capitalism? China is going through a pretty big bust and is hardly a capitalist role model.

Is China not a capitalist country? It does not appear to be a heavily planned economy, at least not in the past few decades.

Re: Why are there suddenly so many car washes?

#334

Post by acdha »

xeromal wrote: post #300
Retric wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So my main concern related to destruction of natural land is that there is a disincentive to keep land natural if you have to pay the tax anyway. There’s no need to limit land value taxes based on density as that’s what’s giving land its value. With the property if the tax is say 0.2%. An acre of farmland worth in rural Idaho worth 20k would be assessed as being worth 20k in a land value tax and an acre of swamp mi…

I just worry if there are valuable trees on a piece of land. It would be unfortunate for someone to own, say, 10 acres of land with redwoods on them. If the wood is valued at a ton of money, that would encourage them to chop it down.

Yes - I think any such system should at least be restricted to urban areas (I’m not sure I’ve seen it proposed otherwise) and you’d need some careful work to have credits for functional ecosystems without having people try to scam it by claiming that the koi pond & tree on their mini golf course makes it a wildlife habit after a duck is spotted there.

Re: Why are there suddenly so many car washes?

#335

Post by _heimdall »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #326
_heimdall wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you see a solution here of higher property taxes, is it focused on the raw land value or on the value of "improvements?" I've never been a fan of taxing the value of raw land, mainly because it creates incentives for destroying natural land and extracting as much value as possible from the space. Taxing structures based on the expected economic value can make sense, though even then if its a business there are m…

To be honest, I think you have it exactly backwards, and a land value tax isn't about taxing "raw land" (that is, land with no improvements), it's about taxing the value of the land without regard to improvements. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_value_tax and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgism

Would the land go untaxed until there are improvements? If not, the raw land value itself is being taxed.

Re: Why are there suddenly so many car washes?

#336

Post by speakfreely »

The answer is private equity "roll-up" strategies of "boring businesses". You're going to see this accelerate in tons of other things that PE thinks can be easily consolidated, the gold rush has already started for dental practices, primary care providers, coin laundry, HVAC companies, landscaping, etc.

American small businesses are disappearing because that's what consumers want (what they vote for with their dollars, as opposed to what they say in polls).

Re: Why are there suddenly so many car washes?

#337

Post by etc-hosts »

speakfreely wrote: post #336

The answer is private equity "roll-up" strategies of "boring businesses". You're going to see this accelerate in tons of other things that PE thinks can be easily consolidated, the gold rush has already started for dental practices, primary care providers, coin laundry, HVAC companies, landscaping, etc. American small businesses are disappearing because that's what consumers want (what they vote for with their dollar…

Veterinary care choices are simultaneously shrinking and skyrocketing in price.

Re: Why are there suddenly so many car washes?

#338

Post by cokeandpepsi »

speakfreely wrote: post #336

The answer is private equity "roll-up" strategies of "boring businesses". You're going to see this accelerate in tons of other things that PE thinks can be easily consolidated, the gold rush has already started for dental practices, primary care providers, coin laundry, HVAC companies, landscaping, etc. American small businesses are disappearing because that's what consumers want (what they vote for with their dollar…

[dead]

Re: Why are there suddenly so many car washes?

#339

Post by acdha »

y1n0 wrote: post #274
atrus wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If the market were too small, the weakest would fail, right? Right? I find it interesting that we have sayings like this, and sayings like "the market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent." > why should a politician need to step in to regulate, rather than letting the market decide? Because the market doesn't price in externalities. Sure the market will figure out which car washes live. But what abo…

It sounds like you are saying it would be better for those people to have never been employed (i.e. some of the carwashes never being built) than employed for a while and then losing their job if the carwash goes out of business.

Consider whether the alternative to a car wash being built is leaving the land idle or some higher-value business using it. Part of the problem is that failed businesses often leave a durable footprint - if your car wash fails, in many places it’s just going to sit idle while the land owner tries to find another car wash or someone with enough budget to demolish the old buildings and clean up any dumped chemicals. It probably will happen unless the local economy has completely cratered but it might take a decade and in the meantime it’s just sitting there dragging down the value of adjacent properties.

Re: Why are there suddenly so many car washes?

#340

Post by dinp »

KingMachiavelli wrote: post #181

I really hate sounding like a broken record but this is just another instance of how low property taxes and the absence of land value taxes massively benefits low-value businesses. The real business of car washes is real estate, it's profitable enough to get 3-4x leverage with a low interest loan. TBH I think real estate used to have high information asymmetry between local residents and large investors; low property…

Somehow the idea of perpetually paying property taxes and land value taxes doesn't sound appealing to me, especially since businesses already pay taxes. I don't understand the argument of designing a system to hurt a specific business type such as low value businesses. If there's a loophole such as lack of sales tax for car washes, fix that, but let the playing field remain even. If desirable high value businesses aren't able to compete with car washes, isn't that the market doing it's thing? Introducing additional property and land value taxes might discourage low value businesses, but what are the 2nd and 3rd order effects of such a change?
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