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Which is bad. It's possible it may end up benefiting me since my parents own a home in the bay area, but I still think it's bad. The entire prop 13 + zoning +

Which is bad. It's possible it may end up benefiting me since my parents own a home in the bay area, but I still think it's bad. The entire prop 13 + zoning + property value situation is terrible, it's a total pyramid scheme: older generations get wealthy through wealth transfers from the younger generation from inflating property values. But it can only work once or twice before the property values are so comically high that even high income DINK couples can't afford to buy in.

aey 8y ago
Why is that bad? A family lived in the city for generations, and now due to the tech boom and a property bubble they should be forced to move? It makes a hell of a lot more sense for FAANG to open offices somewhere else.
- objclxt 8y ago
  It’s bad because the tax rate you pay on your property should not be tied to how long you’ve owned it. Right now two different families living in identical properties in CA can be paying vastly different property taxes depending on when they bought (or inherited) their house. This is manifestly unfair.
  - AdrianB1 8y ago
    Paying an increasing tax is not fair too. You don't get more services from higher tax, the city is just extorting more money because it can and because enough people think this is fair.
    - ridgeguy 8y ago
      Inflation is a real thing. I doubt we'd have any workers paid through property taxes if we were paying like it's 1955.
    - Dylan16807 8y ago
      The services cost more to deliver as cost of living rises. Cities don't usually have a profit motive, can you name cities in booming areas that you think are 'extorting' money and wasting it?
      - AdrianB1 8y ago
        No, no profit$$$, just throwing money on stuff that is either a way to siphon it or not the purpose for a city. Like you organize people in a city and instead of providing services like clean roads you do politics, social care, welfare etc (most cities in Europe spend more on benefits and welfare than on proper services to tax payers).
  - shados 8y ago
    One could argue that tying it to the value of the property (or owning property AT ALL!!!) is not great either. Why do renters not pay taxes? Sure, they're "property taxes" so from that angle it makes sense, but really they're taxes to run the city. Renters can vote and decide policies just like owners do, but they only indirectly pay for what they get (the landlord pays it from their rent). My house being more expensive than next door's doesn't mean Im a bigger burden on the city. The only reason it kinds of sortoff make sense is as a proxy to income. So why not just have everyone pay taxes based on residency (those who get to vote and receives city services), like we do for federal/state taxes? And if someone owns property and don't live there (investment), then their burden should be from it being an investment and be kind of unrelated. Only (albeit significant) hiccup is maintenance of the property and the responsibility of the owner via the city.
    - e12e 8y ago
      Renters do pay taxes - it's added to the rent, effectively?
      - TulliusCicero 8y ago
        This is true if you're looking at rent prices in a cost model, where the price of rent is basically the cost of providing housing plus a little extra for profit, similar to low-margin commodities like basic groceries. But in a high demand area with constrained supply, it's more of a supply & demand model: landlords charge what the market will bear, which is mostly based on how many people there are around with decent/high-paying jobs. Prices haven't risen rapidly in recent years because the actual cost of building housing rapidly increased, obviously. So using the latter model, increased property taxes probably wouldn't have much impact on rent prices.
      - shados 8y ago
        Thats what I meant when I wrote "but they only indirectly pay for what they get (the landlord pays it from their rent).". The other poster explained it better than me, but basically it's too indirect. A renter sees rent go up, but not always why it goes up. We had that happened in our city, where people voted for an exceptional tax increase, which immediately got passed down in rent increases, and then people complained about -that-, not making the obvious link.
- mochomocha 8y ago
  "My parents got here before" shouldn't entitle you to a lower tax rate than anyone else. This is feudalism.
  - avar 8y ago
    Property taxes can be viewed as a form of feudalism. You never outright own your property, and if you're not productive enough (can't pay your property tax) your feudal lord (the government) will throw you out and find someone else who is more productive. You can sensibly critique Proposition 13, but calling it "feudalism" is nonsense. It's the opposite, it's basically carving out a limited exemption in a partially feudal system for some citizens over others. Is it dumb? Sure, unequal? Definitely. But it's not "feudal", it's making the system less so.
    - village-idiot 8y ago
      It’s feudal because there are a number of people who own land and can extract an unusually high level of revenue from it purely because of who their parents were. That someone can own inherited land, collect rent, and pay a mere pittance in property tax purely because of who their parents were is as close to an aristocracy as we get in America. It was never a requirement of feudalism that a land owner had 100% control over their land. Most feudal lords had a greater lord that expected tribute and support during war. In this metaphor land owners would be the lesser lords, not the king.
      - nitrogen 8y ago
        Do inheritance loopholes apply to rental properties? I've seen the counterpoint sentiment in this thread described as "right to place". Some have a deep instinct to want to stay where they grew up and continue to build it. Maybe we should find a way to support that dream as well as the needs of people moving from outside to take advantage of the growth produced by their predecessors, instead of vilifying anybody who has something we want. Otherwise you end up with an entirely transient population with little sense of ownership, responsibility, or community.
- nightfly 8y ago
  It's great for one child of that family each generation, not so good for anybody else.
- TulliusCicero 8y ago
  No, I think there should be some kind of accommodation for long-time homeowners who are actually cost burdened by increasing property taxes. But a regulation that narrow -- only residential, only primary residence, only long-term owners, only when substantially cost burdened by increased property tax rates -- would only overlap with the current Prop 13 by a small sliver. "Grandma might lose her home" only represents a tiny percentage of the beneficiaries of Prop 13. > It makes a hell of a lot more sense for FAANG to open offices somewhere else. Network/ecosystem effects are a natural part of economies and businesses. Why don't we leave it more up to businesses to decide where to hire? Besides, the current setup is manifestly harmful to any non-homeowners and recent homeowners as it is. Why support a system that strains budgets, kicks out the poor and renters, hurts the environment, and forces long commutes?
  - Kalium 8y ago
    There's actually a separate program to help low-income homeowners who are excessively burdened by increasing property taxes: https://www.sco.ca.gov/ardtax_prop_tax_postponement.html https://www.sco.ca.gov/ardtax_prop_tax_postponement.html It's even got the limits you suggest baked in - only residential, only primary residences, requires high equity ratio, etc.
    - TulliusCicero 8y ago
      Neat! This actually sounds too narrow though, especially the income limit (35k is comically low for coastal California homes). I think a simpler solution would just be: you may choose to lock in a lower/earlier assessed property value for the purposes of property taxes, with the caveat that the state gets right of first refusal at the assessed value when you decide to sell. Bam! One and done. Grants flexibility, too; each household can decide whether to treat their house as an investment or as a home, but not both.
      - Kalium 8y ago
        I think it might even be easier - take the PTP program and relax a few constraints for eligibility (or at least link it to AMI) and you're done! The option to convert deferred taxes to liens is in there, and the interest rate is high enough to make people think twice about using this for financial engineering without being punitive. At that point the state has the ability to get their money from any future sale without the extra complexity of having to own the property.
- village-idiot 8y ago
  That’s an argument for controlling tax rate increases for one home owner, it’s not a great argument for why people should be able to pass on their tax rates to their children. The cumulative effect of prop 13 has been to create a landed aristocracy in California cities who have millions of dollars in real estate and pay almost nothing on it purely because of who their parents were. This situation is even worse when the real estate is rentable, and the owners can collect 2019 rent and pay 1970 tax rates.
- austhrow743 8y ago
  People don't deserve privileges because they fell out of the right vagina. There's already an inherit unfairness to the idea of families, we certainly don't need to be using the government to increase it.
tofflos 8y ago
DINK - Double Income, No Kids
puranjay 8y ago
Where are affordable homes anymore in any big city in the world now? A good apartment in Delhi, India, is 4-6 times the annual income of a high income DINK couple with salaries in excess of $40-50k each (a big amount in India) I can't think of a single major economic center that has affordable housing now.
- sandworm101 8y ago
  >>I can't think of a single major economic center that has affordable housing now. That's what makes them major economic centers: real estate prices. The building, renovation, redevelopment, renting and investing of real estate ... that a massive part of the the modern economy. Think Vancouver makes its money on tourism or lumber? Fishing? It is all down to industry that is perpetually-increasing land values.
  - vkou 8y ago
    What makes them major economic centers is that a lot of useful work is done in them. High real estate prices is just rent-collection by landlords. Vancouver is an outlier that makes its money as a destination for laundered international money. The other economic centers actually produce, and export useful goods.
    - toomuchtodo 8y ago
      So support remote work and the disintermediation of geography from delivering value. Unless you’re twiddling atoms, no need to be somewhere specific in space time. And if you must twiddle atoms, pay a premium for demanding a specific piece of space time that is in high demand. High rent collection is a symptom of high demand for an asset. If the land wasn’t valuable, the rent wouldn’t be high! But the argument that “place X is an economic engine but should still be cheap” is wildly unrealistic.
      - shados 8y ago
        > Unless you’re twiddling atoms Or married to someone twiddling atoms, or needing to support someone twiddling atoms, or married to someone who needs to support someone twiddling atoms... Or have such level of arrogance and greeds (:gasp:) as to want to be near a family member who needs to twiddle atoms... Or if you're straight up greedy and don't want to live in the middle of nowhere.

aey 8y ago

Why is that bad? A family lived in the city for generations, and now due to the tech boom and a property bubble they should be forced to move? It makes a hell of a lot more sense for FAANG to open offices somewhere else.

objclxt 8y ago
It’s bad because the tax rate you pay on your property should not be tied to how long you’ve owned it. Right now two different families living in identical properties in CA can be paying vastly different property taxes depending on when they bought (or inherited) their house. This is manifestly unfair.
- AdrianB1 8y ago
  Paying an increasing tax is not fair too. You don't get more services from higher tax, the city is just extorting more money because it can and because enough people think this is fair.
  - ridgeguy 8y ago
    Inflation is a real thing. I doubt we'd have any workers paid through property taxes if we were paying like it's 1955.
  - Dylan16807 8y ago
    The services cost more to deliver as cost of living rises. Cities don't usually have a profit motive, can you name cities in booming areas that you think are 'extorting' money and wasting it?
    - AdrianB1 8y ago
      No, no profit$$$, just throwing money on stuff that is either a way to siphon it or not the purpose for a city. Like you organize people in a city and instead of providing services like clean roads you do politics, social care, welfare etc (most cities in Europe spend more on benefits and welfare than on proper services to tax payers).
- shados 8y ago
  One could argue that tying it to the value of the property (or owning property AT ALL!!!) is not great either. Why do renters not pay taxes? Sure, they're "property taxes" so from that angle it makes sense, but really they're taxes to run the city. Renters can vote and decide policies just like owners do, but they only indirectly pay for what they get (the landlord pays it from their rent). My house being more expensive than next door's doesn't mean Im a bigger burden on the city. The only reason it kinds of sortoff make sense is as a proxy to income. So why not just have everyone pay taxes based on residency (those who get to vote and receives city services), like we do for federal/state taxes? And if someone owns property and don't live there (investment), then their burden should be from it being an investment and be kind of unrelated. Only (albeit significant) hiccup is maintenance of the property and the responsibility of the owner via the city.
  - e12e 8y ago
    Renters do pay taxes - it's added to the rent, effectively?
    - TulliusCicero 8y ago
      This is true if you're looking at rent prices in a cost model, where the price of rent is basically the cost of providing housing plus a little extra for profit, similar to low-margin commodities like basic groceries. But in a high demand area with constrained supply, it's more of a supply & demand model: landlords charge what the market will bear, which is mostly based on how many people there are around with decent/high-paying jobs. Prices haven't risen rapidly in recent years because the actual cost of building housing rapidly increased, obviously. So using the latter model, increased property taxes probably wouldn't have much impact on rent prices.
    - shados 8y ago
      Thats what I meant when I wrote "but they only indirectly pay for what they get (the landlord pays it from their rent).". The other poster explained it better than me, but basically it's too indirect. A renter sees rent go up, but not always why it goes up. We had that happened in our city, where people voted for an exceptional tax increase, which immediately got passed down in rent increases, and then people complained about -that-, not making the obvious link.
mochomocha 8y ago
"My parents got here before" shouldn't entitle you to a lower tax rate than anyone else. This is feudalism.
- avar 8y ago
  Property taxes can be viewed as a form of feudalism. You never outright own your property, and if you're not productive enough (can't pay your property tax) your feudal lord (the government) will throw you out and find someone else who is more productive. You can sensibly critique Proposition 13, but calling it "feudalism" is nonsense. It's the opposite, it's basically carving out a limited exemption in a partially feudal system for some citizens over others. Is it dumb? Sure, unequal? Definitely. But it's not "feudal", it's making the system less so.
  - village-idiot 8y ago
    It’s feudal because there are a number of people who own land and can extract an unusually high level of revenue from it purely because of who their parents were. That someone can own inherited land, collect rent, and pay a mere pittance in property tax purely because of who their parents were is as close to an aristocracy as we get in America. It was never a requirement of feudalism that a land owner had 100% control over their land. Most feudal lords had a greater lord that expected tribute and support during war. In this metaphor land owners would be the lesser lords, not the king.
    - nitrogen 8y ago
      Do inheritance loopholes apply to rental properties? I've seen the counterpoint sentiment in this thread described as "right to place". Some have a deep instinct to want to stay where they grew up and continue to build it. Maybe we should find a way to support that dream as well as the needs of people moving from outside to take advantage of the growth produced by their predecessors, instead of vilifying anybody who has something we want. Otherwise you end up with an entirely transient population with little sense of ownership, responsibility, or community.
nightfly 8y ago
It's great for one child of that family each generation, not so good for anybody else.
TulliusCicero 8y ago
No, I think there should be some kind of accommodation for long-time homeowners who are actually cost burdened by increasing property taxes. But a regulation that narrow -- only residential, only primary residence, only long-term owners, only when substantially cost burdened by increased property tax rates -- would only overlap with the current Prop 13 by a small sliver. "Grandma might lose her home" only represents a tiny percentage of the beneficiaries of Prop 13. > It makes a hell of a lot more sense for FAANG to open offices somewhere else. Network/ecosystem effects are a natural part of economies and businesses. Why don't we leave it more up to businesses to decide where to hire? Besides, the current setup is manifestly harmful to any non-homeowners and recent homeowners as it is. Why support a system that strains budgets, kicks out the poor and renters, hurts the environment, and forces long commutes?
- Kalium 8y ago
  There's actually a separate program to help low-income homeowners who are excessively burdened by increasing property taxes: https://www.sco.ca.gov/ardtax_prop_tax_postponement.html https://www.sco.ca.gov/ardtax_prop_tax_postponement.html It's even got the limits you suggest baked in - only residential, only primary residences, requires high equity ratio, etc.
  - TulliusCicero 8y ago
    Neat! This actually sounds too narrow though, especially the income limit (35k is comically low for coastal California homes). I think a simpler solution would just be: you may choose to lock in a lower/earlier assessed property value for the purposes of property taxes, with the caveat that the state gets right of first refusal at the assessed value when you decide to sell. Bam! One and done. Grants flexibility, too; each household can decide whether to treat their house as an investment or as a home, but not both.
    - Kalium 8y ago
      I think it might even be easier - take the PTP program and relax a few constraints for eligibility (or at least link it to AMI) and you're done! The option to convert deferred taxes to liens is in there, and the interest rate is high enough to make people think twice about using this for financial engineering without being punitive. At that point the state has the ability to get their money from any future sale without the extra complexity of having to own the property.
village-idiot 8y ago
That’s an argument for controlling tax rate increases for one home owner, it’s not a great argument for why people should be able to pass on their tax rates to their children. The cumulative effect of prop 13 has been to create a landed aristocracy in California cities who have millions of dollars in real estate and pay almost nothing on it purely because of who their parents were. This situation is even worse when the real estate is rentable, and the owners can collect 2019 rent and pay 1970 tax rates.
austhrow743 8y ago
People don't deserve privileges because they fell out of the right vagina. There's already an inherit unfairness to the idea of families, we certainly don't need to be using the government to increase it.

tofflos 8y ago

DINK - Double Income, No Kids

puranjay 8y ago

Where are affordable homes anymore in any big city in the world now? A good apartment in Delhi, India, is 4-6 times the annual income of a high income DINK couple with salaries in excess of $40-50k each (a big amount in India) I can't think of a single major economic center that has affordable housing now.

sandworm101 8y ago
>>I can't think of a single major economic center that has affordable housing now. That's what makes them major economic centers: real estate prices. The building, renovation, redevelopment, renting and investing of real estate ... that a massive part of the the modern economy. Think Vancouver makes its money on tourism or lumber? Fishing? It is all down to industry that is perpetually-increasing land values.
- vkou 8y ago
  What makes them major economic centers is that a lot of useful work is done in them. High real estate prices is just rent-collection by landlords. Vancouver is an outlier that makes its money as a destination for laundered international money. The other economic centers actually produce, and export useful goods.
  - toomuchtodo 8y ago
    So support remote work and the disintermediation of geography from delivering value. Unless you’re twiddling atoms, no need to be somewhere specific in space time. And if you must twiddle atoms, pay a premium for demanding a specific piece of space time that is in high demand. High rent collection is a symptom of high demand for an asset. If the land wasn’t valuable, the rent wouldn’t be high! But the argument that “place X is an economic engine but should still be cheap” is wildly unrealistic.
    - shados 8y ago
      > Unless you’re twiddling atoms Or married to someone twiddling atoms, or needing to support someone twiddling atoms, or married to someone who needs to support someone twiddling atoms... Or have such level of arrogance and greeds (:gasp:) as to want to be near a family member who needs to twiddle atoms... Or if you're straight up greedy and don't want to live in the middle of nowhere.