4 ms·

> eminent domain, however, requires paying fair market value for any land taken (it's basically just an offer to buy your land that you can't refuse) If it's "

> eminent domain, however, requires paying fair market value for any land taken (it's basically just an offer to buy your land that you can't refuse) If it's "fair market value," then why do they need to exercise eminent domain in order to force the sale? I don't see how this can ever be considered OK. If you want to buy someone's land and they won't sell it, you offer them more. You get creative and offer to help them relocate their business. How do you determine "fair market value," anyways? The land and the building on it might be worth like $800,000 according to a property appraiser, but that completely ignores the value of the business. They're going to have to get new property elsewhere and build similar facilities; this will almost certainly cost more than their existing property is worth. So you're forcing a business to eat the cost of relocating, and they're losing revenue during the relocation, and this is fair how? You can't make people do anything, you can only give them incentive to do what you'd like them to do. In a fair system, that incentive is a compensation package that works for both parties. It's not getting the government on your side to use force as the incentive. And if the person is irrational and refuses to sell their land at any price, you freaking change your plans. I don't understand why we should accept the idea that certain people have more rights to property ownership than others, for no other reason but money and clout. Although the article wasn't the most well-written, I think it did a good job of conveying that idea.

ekidd 16y ago
If it's "fair market value," then why do they need to exercise eminent domain in order to force the sale? I don't see how this can ever be considered OK. In the U.S., this is specifically discussed in the fifth amendment to the Constitution: ...nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation. This suggests that government may choose to take private property for public use so long as the compensation is "just". Note that "just" may not be the price that you want the government to pay, but it might instead be based on some other theory of justice, such as the current market value for similar property. Now, not everything allowed for by the Constitution is morally desirable. (Recall the "3/5ths of a person" compromise.) But the U.S. government does have a defensible rationale for eminent domain; our ancestors agreed to the Constitution, and we haven't ever amended that part of it. However, the Constitution also says "public use." I'm always very leery when there are private actors involved, not the least because there's a huge incentive to corrupt the government.
- jamesbritt 16y ago
  "I'm always very leery when there are private actors involved, not the least because there's a huge incentive to corrupt the government." Indeed. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelo_v._City_of_New_London http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelo_v._City_of_New_London
kbutler 16y ago
> If it's "fair market value," then why do they need to exercise eminent domain in order to force the sale? Because sometimes individuals choose not to sell at the fair market value (e.g., not everyone sells their stock at the current stock price - in fact, some people choose to buy at that price. That's the definition of a fair market value.) > And if the person is irrational and refuses to sell their land at any price, you freaking change your plans. Sometimes this makes the plans dramatically more expensive and/or impossible. The canonical example is if a road needs to be built. It may be that there is _no_ viable route where all the existing property owners are willing to sell. This may either be because of personal attachments to the property or because they know that as the last holdout, they can demand a higher price. In either case, "eminent domain" says the government can force the sale, paying a just compensation, in order to promote the public welfare. Yes, this is imperfect (the owner may not consider it a fair price, or may not want to sell at any price). Yes, it is open to abuse. But yes, there are cases where it is needed, hence the inclusion in the Constitution, but with possibility of judicial and electoral review. kb
eftpotrm 16y ago
Eminent domain (or compulsory purchase in the UK) is designed to keep fair market value fair though. Otherwise there is an escalating cost of acquisition for each subsequent parcel of land - the cost to abandon the project rises with each previous purchase and every delay caused by an individual seller and the last to sell is in a position to obtain a very substantial surplus over the natural market value, simply because that one asset holds the entire remainder to ransom. This might be natural, unfettered markets in action, but it's also rather close to extortion for my taste.
- anthuswilliams 16y ago
  It's important to note that the valuation assigned by government appraisers is often well below what the property would be worth on the open market. When I was young, my grandparents were caught up in an eminent domain suit. They were to be paid about two thirds the worth of their home (the worth of their home, in this case, being based on mortgage appraisals[1]). If they had run a business, they would have also had to factor in relocation costs, downtime, etc. Insofar as the seizing body is an interested party, or operates via political pressure from an interested party, the "fair market value" is prone to work in the buyer's favor. [1] - obvious disclaimers - This is anecdotal evidence, and it happened in the 90s. Perhaps there was a tendency amongst lending institutions to inflate their appraisals so as to justify offering loans with higher profit margins. But I still think my point holds.
  - eftpotrm 16y ago
    But this is surely an argument for better valuation rather than against the principle of forced sale per se. I'm not at all arguing that people should be forced to surrender for less than the true value, but I'm also well aware (my ex worked in this area) that each and every vendor will have an explanation for why they should get more money than it might seem at first. The customer who needs the land for whatever public good is just as restricted as the person required to sell and the whole point of this system is to ensure the seller gets a fair valuation while the customer isn't at the mercy of vendors gold-plating special cases for why they need more money.
lambda 16y ago
> If it's "fair market value," then why do they need to exercise eminent domain in order to force the sale? Because without something like eminent domain, someone with a relatively worthless piece of property can inflate the value of it by holding an entire project hostage in exchange for their piece of land. If I have land that I ordinarily couldn't sell for more than a hundred thousand, but I know that the government will be doing a multi-million dollar project, I might demand a half a million for my land, in order to make a nice profit at the taxpayer's expense. Now, this case is in more of a grey zone than that. It's not at the taxpayers expense, but at the expense of a private, non-profit institution. I'm not sure how I feel about that; it's certainly less objectionable than using eminent domain for a for-profit developer, but still makes me uneasy. Even more troubling, however, is the fact that if you check other sources on this story, such as Columbia's own daily paper http://www.columbiaspectator.com/2010/12/13/us-supreme-court-will-not-hear-manhattanville-eminent-domain-case http://www.columbiaspectator.com/2010/12/13/us-supreme-court... , you find that part of the reason the neighborhood has been determined "blighted", which is necessary for the justification that it's in the state's interest to buy the land and sell it to someone else, is that Columbia has already bought up many of the buildings in the area and left them abandoned. If that claim is true, then it certainly is outrageous to grant eminent domain on that basis; it means that any private developer who wants to gobble up land can just destroy the neighborhood, both driving down prices and allowing them to use eminent domain to buy up any remaining land. The strident populist rhetoric in the New York Post article originally linked to is a bit misplaced. But given a bit more research, I'm inclined to agree on this particular case that there's something pretty rotten going on here. > I don't understand why we should accept the idea that certain people have more rights to property ownership than others, for no other reason but money and clout. The idea is that the city or state has an interest in cleaning up blighted neighborhoods; there are serious risks of crime, public health, land value, and the like with property is allowed to decay. When that really is the case, there is an argument for the government having the power to buy up whole blocks at a time in order to redevelop them (it is very difficult to impossible to fight blight a bit at a time, since no one wants to move in next to an abandoned building filled with squatters or drug dealers). However, it should not be the case that a private developer can cause blight buy buying and abandoning land, and then using that as an excuse to get the rest of the land through eminent domain.

ekidd 16y ago

If it's "fair market value," then why do they need to exercise eminent domain in order to force the sale? I don't see how this can ever be considered OK. In the U.S., this is specifically discussed in the fifth amendment to the Constitution: ...nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation. This suggests that government may choose to take private property for public use so long as the compensation is "just". Note that "just" may not be the price that you want the government to pay, but it might instead be based on some other theory of justice, such as the current market value for similar property. Now, not everything allowed for by the Constitution is morally desirable. (Recall the "3/5ths of a person" compromise.) But the U.S. government does have a defensible rationale for eminent domain; our ancestors agreed to the Constitution, and we haven't ever amended that part of it. However, the Constitution also says "public use." I'm always very leery when there are private actors involved, not the least because there's a huge incentive to corrupt the government.

jamesbritt 16y ago
"I'm always very leery when there are private actors involved, not the least because there's a huge incentive to corrupt the government." Indeed. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelo_v._City_of_New_London http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelo_v._City_of_New_London

kbutler 16y ago

> If it's "fair market value," then why do they need to exercise eminent domain in order to force the sale? Because sometimes individuals choose not to sell at the fair market value (e.g., not everyone sells their stock at the current stock price - in fact, some people choose to buy at that price. That's the definition of a fair market value.) > And if the person is irrational and refuses to sell their land at any price, you freaking change your plans. Sometimes this makes the plans dramatically more expensive and/or impossible. The canonical example is if a road needs to be built. It may be that there is _no_ viable route where all the existing property owners are willing to sell. This may either be because of personal attachments to the property or because they know that as the last holdout, they can demand a higher price. In either case, "eminent domain" says the government can force the sale, paying a just compensation, in order to promote the public welfare. Yes, this is imperfect (the owner may not consider it a fair price, or may not want to sell at any price). Yes, it is open to abuse. But yes, there are cases where it is needed, hence the inclusion in the Constitution, but with possibility of judicial and electoral review. kb

eftpotrm 16y ago

Eminent domain (or compulsory purchase in the UK) is designed to keep fair market value fair though. Otherwise there is an escalating cost of acquisition for each subsequent parcel of land - the cost to abandon the project rises with each previous purchase and every delay caused by an individual seller and the last to sell is in a position to obtain a very substantial surplus over the natural market value, simply because that one asset holds the entire remainder to ransom. This might be natural, unfettered markets in action, but it's also rather close to extortion for my taste.

anthuswilliams 16y ago
It's important to note that the valuation assigned by government appraisers is often well below what the property would be worth on the open market. When I was young, my grandparents were caught up in an eminent domain suit. They were to be paid about two thirds the worth of their home (the worth of their home, in this case, being based on mortgage appraisals[1]). If they had run a business, they would have also had to factor in relocation costs, downtime, etc. Insofar as the seizing body is an interested party, or operates via political pressure from an interested party, the "fair market value" is prone to work in the buyer's favor. [1] - obvious disclaimers - This is anecdotal evidence, and it happened in the 90s. Perhaps there was a tendency amongst lending institutions to inflate their appraisals so as to justify offering loans with higher profit margins. But I still think my point holds.
- eftpotrm 16y ago
  But this is surely an argument for better valuation rather than against the principle of forced sale per se. I'm not at all arguing that people should be forced to surrender for less than the true value, but I'm also well aware (my ex worked in this area) that each and every vendor will have an explanation for why they should get more money than it might seem at first. The customer who needs the land for whatever public good is just as restricted as the person required to sell and the whole point of this system is to ensure the seller gets a fair valuation while the customer isn't at the mercy of vendors gold-plating special cases for why they need more money.

lambda 16y ago

> If it's "fair market value," then why do they need to exercise eminent domain in order to force the sale? Because without something like eminent domain, someone with a relatively worthless piece of property can inflate the value of it by holding an entire project hostage in exchange for their piece of land. If I have land that I ordinarily couldn't sell for more than a hundred thousand, but I know that the government will be doing a multi-million dollar project, I might demand a half a million for my land, in order to make a nice profit at the taxpayer's expense. Now, this case is in more of a grey zone than that. It's not at the taxpayers expense, but at the expense of a private, non-profit institution. I'm not sure how I feel about that; it's certainly less objectionable than using eminent domain for a for-profit developer, but still makes me uneasy. Even more troubling, however, is the fact that if you check other sources on this story, such as Columbia's own daily paper http://www.columbiaspectator.com/2010/12/13/us-supreme-court-will-not-hear-manhattanville-eminent-domain-case http://www.columbiaspectator.com/2010/12/13/us-supreme-court... , you find that part of the reason the neighborhood has been determined "blighted", which is necessary for the justification that it's in the state's interest to buy the land and sell it to someone else, is that Columbia has already bought up many of the buildings in the area and left them abandoned. If that claim is true, then it certainly is outrageous to grant eminent domain on that basis; it means that any private developer who wants to gobble up land can just destroy the neighborhood, both driving down prices and allowing them to use eminent domain to buy up any remaining land. The strident populist rhetoric in the New York Post article originally linked to is a bit misplaced. But given a bit more research, I'm inclined to agree on this particular case that there's something pretty rotten going on here. > I don't understand why we should accept the idea that certain people have more rights to property ownership than others, for no other reason but money and clout. The idea is that the city or state has an interest in cleaning up blighted neighborhoods; there are serious risks of crime, public health, land value, and the like with property is allowed to decay. When that really is the case, there is an argument for the government having the power to buy up whole blocks at a time in order to redevelop them (it is very difficult to impossible to fight blight a bit at a time, since no one wants to move in next to an abandoned building filled with squatters or drug dealers). However, it should not be the case that a private developer can cause blight buy buying and abandoning land, and then using that as an excuse to get the rest of the land through eminent domain.