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High property taxes are good

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Re: High property taxes are good

#411

Post by Supermancho »

negamax wrote: post #393
Supermancho wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why are seniors magically allowed to be immune to basic market forces when no one else is? Because they have fixed incomes (generally). This income is immune to market forces. That's why. While many elderly invested wisely (and at the right time) to become wealthy, especially when leveraging dips (like during the 80s), it doesn't change the average case. Living month to month on a fixed income is the norm after ret…

I do not think elderly invested wisely. Cities grew. They got lucky. It's as simply as that. The remote working is taking pressure off the cities. And you can see many crying about return to office, who have multi year leaseholds or own the buildings.

I specifically called out that this is a minority situation, so the characterization you put forward seems like a wild overstatement.

Some seniors bought post ww2 bonds at phenomenal rates. There were many ppl who made wise investments, regardless. Patience turned thousands into hundreds of thousands outside of the housing prices.

Re: High property taxes are good

#412

Post by imtringued »

bbbobbb wrote: post #260
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.

I don't get the joke. So in your scenario people are basically not allowed to own land and the benefit is what?

To be fair that idea is worse than auctioning land leases for a fixed period.

Re: High property taxes are good

#413

Post by gruez »

washadjeffmad wrote: post #409
cryptonector wrote: post #395

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I doubt speculator demand has anything to do with anything in the long term. I also doubt that developers would bother with a market like the one described. Why not go to some other state/city where construction costs are low and property taxes are also low?

Blackrock is currently propping up residential property prices in Atlanta to keep the bottom from falling out of the housing market. As the "cheapest of the Big 6", once Atlanta falls, other cities will, as well. General contractors don't just do general contracting, and it's not like tech where you can pick up and move anywhere there's internet.

>Blackrock is currently propping up residential property prices in Atlanta to keep the bottom from falling out of the housing market

source? On one hand they could be as you said, but the alternative could be that investors think that "cheapest of the big 6" makes real estate there undervalued and therefore a good investment.

Re: High property taxes are good

#414

Post by imtringued »

Retric wrote: post #297
laverya wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you ever seen a flat parking lot in the downtown of a US city? Low property tax (because it's unimproved) plus real estate speculation.

You might be surprised just how profitable those parking lots can be. Putting in a 10 to 25+ million dollar multiple level parking garage can pay off, but only if there is enough demand for it and you can get zoning permission.

Yes it is profitable to wait for land to appreciate.

Re: High property taxes are good

#416

Post by imtringued »

naasking wrote: post #127
cbm-vic-20 wrote: post #6

Land value taxes are even better. Property taxes provide a disincentive to making the land more productive. A land value tax would incentivize residential landowners to build more units which provides more supply and would lower rents.

I'm not clear on how land value taxes would incentivize the right kinds of units. For instance, would a land value tax incentivize the creation of tiny bachelor apartments, or larger apartments that families can use? We need incentives for both, and larger units are not very common these days.

It doesn't, the only thing it does is remove the tax per apartment which means building more apartments on the same lot becomes cheaper per apartment.

Re: High property taxes are good

#417

Post by abeppu »

throwaway742 wrote: post #382
abeppu wrote: post #372

If you want to tamp down on speculation, can't we be a little more creative and targeted than just high vs low property tax rates? - Some cities are already getting into vacancy taxes; here the problem seems to be enforcement. No one's going door to door in luxury condo buildings looking for empty ones. - Can a tax due when a property is sold be based on how long the seller owned the property? If you lived there for…

The problem is once you start making complex rules people will start finding loopholes and ways to work around it. Like you pointed out vacancy taxes are very difficult to actually enforce. If taxes are based on how long you have owned the property maybe instead of selling the property I give you a transferable 20 year rent to own lease or create a corporation that owns the property and sell you that corporation so t…

I don't think vacancy taxes are _actually_ hard to enforce, but I think there are a lot of noisy objections from people who don't want them enforced, and that can be enough to sway municipal government.

I agree that simpler rules are generally harder to work around.

_However_, I notice that argument is almost always made to claim that governments shouldn't try to change behavior in line with the preferences of their electorate. Tax laws have loopholes, regulations have loopholes and push jobs and industries overseas, etc. The logical end point seems to be that democratic processes are doomed to be ineffective and we should just trust everything to the invisible hand of the market.

What if the real problem is that the mindset that improving policy is so hard that governments shouldn't even try, itself dooms us to bad policies?

What if 20 years ago we had all said, "making complex rules to identify and block spam emails is too hard; there will always be some way for the spammers to get through. So let's not waste resources on it."

Re: High property taxes are good

#418

Post by imtringued »

conductr wrote: post #351
yellowapple wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exclusionary zoning exists because of NIMBYism. NIMBYism exists because of the financial incentive to raise land values. That financial incentive exists because of a lack of taxation on land value.

Not sure I agree. Or doesn't fit with my experience/city/state. All zoning is exclusionary to my knowledge. That's the entire point. It's not necessary but it exists because it exists. And, it's sticky. It was established most likely when the entire city was raw land and undeveloped; so it served as a plan for development. There was no NIMBY because people were building their BY. Because there was a plan, you could d…

A lot of zoning in sane countries is hierarchical which means it doesn't exclude, it gives permission.

Re: High property taxes are good

#419

Post by ed25519FUUU »

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…

> And what on earth does Chicago have to do with San Francisco or New York?

This was such a laughable comparison because BOTH of these cities have high property taxes compared with more affordable cities in other states.

Re: High property taxes are good

#420

Post by imtringued »

kashkhan wrote: post #37
cbm-vic-20 wrote: post #6

Land value taxes are even better. Property taxes provide a disincentive to making the land more productive. A land value tax would incentivize residential landowners to build more units which provides more supply and would lower rents.

property taxes are terrible for old people. you should be able to buy a reasonable amount of land tax free. USA has about 2.5 billion acres. 1/4 acre per person in an average area tax free is reasonable.

It is called a citizen's dividend and it even rewards people who use less land than the average.
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