61–70 of 620 posts
And, thanks to Proposition 13, California has entirely removed this policy tool from consumer housing. A tremendous amount of our problems, from high rent to gridlock, can be traced back to this decision.
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.
> A land value tax would incentivize residential landowners to build more units which provides more supply and would lower rents Zoning usually dictates what's allowed and is indifferent to tax rates
Japanese-style inclusionary zoning splits the difference nicely between making sure people don't live next to loud, potentially dangerous industry and allowing lots of mixed-use, human scale developments of varying density.
http://urbankchoze.blogspot.com/2014/04/japanese-zoning.html
In my region of northern New Hampshire, there are a lot of retired folks with houses rising from $200k-ish values to closer to $500k-ish values in the last 5-10 years. As such, there's a lot of discussion around lowering property taxes to help these retirees. In my opinion? Fuck 'em. Property taxes are a brilliant method of perfectly progressive taxation: you can always choose to live in a cheaper home. If your home…
So if they collected $10m last year, and will collect $10.1m this year, it doesn't matter if the houses have tripled in value, you'll pay roughly the same dollar amount.
Economic mechanisms like this, which don't change anything in the physical world, almost never have any long-term impact, positive or negative, since the economy is a densely-connected network. Findings of large effects depend on stopping accounting somewhere, and you can get positive or negative findings depending on where you stop.
Money juggling is a great distraction from what really matters: physical quantities and actions.
In my region of northern New Hampshire, there are a lot of retired folks with houses rising from $200k-ish values to closer to $500k-ish values in the last 5-10 years. As such, there's a lot of discussion around lowering property taxes to help these retirees. In my opinion? Fuck 'em. Property taxes are a brilliant method of perfectly progressive taxation: you can always choose to live in a cheaper home. If your home…
If the area was underutilized when they bought in cheap, they earned their windfall. I hope they didn't prevent apartment buildings from being built in their area.
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.
A quarter acre in Palo Alto, though?
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.
What's the difference between the two in reality? Theoretically, with a land value tax, "improvements" (however that's defined) aren't added to the final tax calculation. However better-looking homes are then a signal that drive up demand for (and therefore price of) land so ultimately it seems LVT does punish improvements if only indirectly.
Land value tax incentivises turning a single-family home into a multi-unit building. Property tax explicitly discourages that.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don’t think that’s a meaningful difference. It would take an extreme property tax to actually incentivize an empty field over productive use of that space. It might in theory make a difference when considering replacing a 40 story building with a 42 story one, but in practice you really don’t see that kind of construction project. In that context pushing for larger jumps before replacement might actually be economi…
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.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Those of us who can't afford property will shed no tears. You seem to believe the fallacy that not being able to afford a home is other homeowners fault, and not due to poor government planning (likely by the same politicians you willingly vote for.)
I took their statement differently; rather, that they aren't concerned for the fallout of the Haves at the sacrifice for the HaveNots. I am uninformed in this game, so this is not a statement by me: However i've been told that one issue is squatters, land being used purely as investment and with low costs you can easily afford to buy land and squat it till a time when you later sell it in the market. As someone looki…
Yes agreed, though I do think people conflate things and vilify wrong targets, which sounds a lot like the OP.
E.g. in California it's en vogue to rail against "Prop 13" without considering why it was passed, or how it helps people on fixed incomes remain in their homes. , or more importantly how the financialization of homes has made things bad globally.