8 ms·
Is there any evidence that the people moving are responsible for the bad policies? Something tells me the NIMBYs that bought their homes decades ago and pay $3.
by pb7 6y ago
Is there any evidence that the people moving are responsible for the bad policies? Something tells me the NIMBYs that bought their homes decades ago and pay $3.50 in annual property taxes aren't going anywhere.
- alexmingoia 6y agoWhat do low property taxes have to do with high rent and lack of housing? Higher property taxes would result in higher rent and property prices...
- DontGiveTwoFlux 6y agoHigh taxes incentivizes more productive use of real estate, such as multi family housing.
- alexmingoia 6y agoOnly to the extent that it makes single family homes unaffordable. Lower taxes incentivize building any type of housing, and cheaper rent for multi-family buildings.
- bcheung 6y agoHigh taxes are good because people will have less room to live? This doesn't sound like a good justification.
- klipt 6y agoMost economists agree that a land value tax is economically the best kind of tax. Imagine property tax is 0. Why would anyone ever sell? All the land would effectively be owned by hereditary feudal lords. Texas has higher property taxes than California but more affordable housing. Makes you think.
- bcheung 6y agoFunny enough, I actually agree with this, at least from an economics perspective. I'd much rather get rid of the income tax and have higher property taxes. That seems much more efficient to me.
- charrondev 6y agoMove to New Hampshire then. There’s no escaping federal income taxes, but the is no state income tax or sales tax. Just a slightly higher property tax, and a lower state budget.
- lotsofpulp 6y agoIf your goal is to have wealthier/higher income people pay proportionally more taxes than poorer/lower income people, i.e. reduce the wealth/income gap in society, then you want both income and property (specifically land value) tax.
- killtimeatwork 6y ago> Imagine property tax is 0. Why would anyone ever sell? All the land would effectively be owned by hereditary feudal lords. You'd sell for the usual reason, i.e. you'd prefer having money rather than that particular piece of land? That money would be then spent on either consumption or an investment with higher yield than land-holding. In my home country Poland the land tax is negligible and yet the market for land exists, it's not held forever by "feudal lords".
- TheOtherHobbes 6y agoYour home country Poland is primarily agricultural - at least compared to the BA - and has much lower demand for housing. I suspect if you pick apart of the BA housing market you'll see some very large landlords with huge property portfolios. While they're not literally "feudal lords" they might as well be in terms of their self-serving influence on housing policy. Perhaps not coincidentally, some of them are FAANGs. https://www.mercurynews.com/2019/11/03/meet-silicon-valleys-top-property-owners/ https://www.mercurynews.com/2019/11/03/meet-silicon-valleys-...
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- bawolff 6y agoIf your goal is to have land be more efficiently used, and thus decrease housing prices by increasing supply, then yes it is. Whether or not you think efficient land use is a good thing is up to you. The question of what taxes accomplish is separate from the question of if a policy objective is "good".
- refurb 6y agoWhy is that bad? If you own a single family home where an apartment tower could house 200 families (and there is demand for those units) why shouldn’t you pay a tax that reflects that?
- beamatronic 6y agoThey are referring to long time California residents taking advantage of Prop 13. Presumably, long time residents vote against "change", which would include construction of new homes. Now imagine a lifetime of such voting. This would lead to a long-term undersupply of housing. Leading to higher housing prices. edit: added more
- pb7 6y agoNIMBYs oppose new construction because it keeps their property values high. They don't care about property values ballooning because they pay property taxes on the assessed values from when they bought, which is often decades ago, due to Prop 13. Prop 13 in general keeps things stagnant. For another example, there is no incentive to renovate/tear down/rebuild bigger because now you will pay significantly higher property taxes. Single family homes don't get turned into denser properties. The list of consequences goes on beyond my interest in it.
- zamfi 6y ago> NIMBYs oppose new construction because it keeps their property values high No, they just don’t want their neighborhoods to change (read: poor people, more traffic). I don’t think most of them are frankly thinking about their property values because it’s just not super relevant, thanks to prop 13. > For another example, there is no incentive to renovate/tear down/rebuild bigger because now you will pay significantly higher property taxes. Single family homes don't get turned into denser properties. There is a ton of incentive to build more units: for one, you could sell them for a ton more in aggregate! But there is also a huge disincentive that is not prop 13: zoning laws that prevent basically any increase in density in some absurd fraction of California, especially absurd in central areas and inner ring suburbs. Prop 13 is definitely an issue, but it’s not the dominant one for the effects you describe.
- klipt 6y agoWell Prop 13 contributes to zoning. Cities get almost no money from residents, so they zone for denser commercial but sparser residential. The ratio of jobs to housing goes wack and you have a shortage of housing for the people who move here for jobs.
- zamfi 6y agoThis is a common refrain, but cities would absolutely collect substantial property taxes from new residents because new residents are much more likely to be paying substantially higher property taxes (having bought now-expensive properties). Commercial properties bring in tons of sales taxes, but not quite as much in property taxes. (See Figure 6 in [0].) The history of exclusionary zoning is a history of replacing restrictive racial covenants (binding agreements on property titles that prevent sales to certain groups) and redlining (which rendered unavailable mortgage loans to anyone for properties in neighborhoods that were not majority-white), both of which were invalidated by the Fair Housing Act in 1968, triggering the wave of exclusionary zoning intended to keep out the same people. The history is clear that this type of zoning is explicitly designed to keep properties expensive, to keep them out of the hands of "undesirables". Prop 13 then insulates longtime residents from that same increase in cost. They go hand in hand, but I'm not sure it's fair to say that Prop 13 contributes to zoning. [0]: https://lao.ca.gov/reports/2012/tax/property-tax-primer-112912.aspx https://lao.ca.gov/reports/2012/tax/property-tax-primer-1129...
- DylanDmitri 6y agoIf my understanding is right, if you purchase a house and you (or your kids) have been living in it continuously you pay taxes on the original purchase price, rather than current value. These tax savings pass to homeowner families who stay in one location for multiple decades, especially as land values rise. Homeowners are very opposed to being displaced, since moving means their taxes would reset to a higher level. Renters are excluded from these savings.
- dannyincolor 6y agoThat is correct. Source: just bought my first home in CA. Taxes were surprisingly reasonable
- zamfi 6y agoNot correct: your taxes will go up annually by 2% or CPI, whichever is lower. Granted, this means they will grow substantially slower than historical property appreciation, but it’s not 0. Also your property taxes start out at 1% of assessed value, which is very low compared with many other high-wealth states.
- jjav 6y agoThe above is factually correct.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- smsm42 6y ago> you pay taxes on the original purchase price Not exactly. It is more complex than that. The tax base is supposed to be the market value but if the market value raises, the tax base is allowed to follow only up to a certain margin. With CA and especially Bay Area prices skyrocketing for a while, the effect has been than the tax base lags very far from the actual market value, and for people who bought in the 80s the tax base may be a fraction of their current market value.
- 6y ago
- bcheung 6y agoHigh taxes, high cost of living, and bad policies were the primary reasons I left CA. Property tax assessment was 1/6th of fair market value (thank you prop 13). Still decided to leave. Got a house almost 3x the size for the same price, and no homeless tents everywhere is a nice bonus.
- thatfrenchguy 6y agoYeah having a house 3x the size is not great for you or the environment, given that people don’t use most of their houses ;-)
- bcheung 6y agoIt's people telling me what is good for me that is another reason I left.
- messick 6y agoSounds like a win-win for both of us.
- lynchdt 6y agoI didn’t leave voluntarily, miss a lot of things but I absolutely don’t miss this.
- abc_lisper 6y agoThat’s a sick burn. Well played, sir, well played
- octoberfranklin 6y agoThen why haven't you left HN? ;) I wish people here would stop telling me what's good for me too.
- dannyincolor 6y agoI think they said “the environment”. Whether that’s important to you is - as always - completely up to you in this country. I don’t understand the animosity between different states; we can all go wherever we fit best and that’s a great thing. Nothing wrong with wanting a big house, but also nothing wrong or coercive with mentioning it has environmental impacts
- Karishma1234 6y agoThe general logic is left leaning policies end up creating the problems that people do not like with California. Climate change paranoia, massive spending on things that never materialize, failure to upgrade infra, idiotic restrictions on private businesses and so on.
- type_enthusiast 6y agoI guess you're implying that old people are the reason for high housing prices in SV. Respectfully, what are the bad policies my parents are responsible for, besides pioneering the technology that makes you want to live in SV? And buying a house for 85k in a nice neighborhood in order to do so, without forseeing that Facebook and friends were going to move in and make their house unaffordable were it not for the protections you're mocking?
- paconbork 6y agoOpposing the construction of anything besides single-family housing for one
- CountSessine 6y agoChampioning restrictive zoning policies. They got theirs, and screw everyone else.
- jbay808 6y agoProposition 13, mentioned by a sibling comment.
- type_enthusiast 6y agoTwo counterpoints: - Direct your discontent toward the corporations and landlords who are exploiting Prop 13 when it wasn't intended for them. It was intended to protect homeowners (often on retirement income) from skyrocketing property values that is out of their control. It's done great at that, but unfortunately (like any regulation) has also been exploited by the greedy. - That aside, don't presume to be entitled to buy the house you want in the place you want it to be for the amount you want to pay for it. It sucks that I can't afford to buy a nice home in my hometown because FAANG came in and made it the place to be, but I'm also not entitled to that. The notion that people like my parents ought to be taxed out of their home so that well-off twentysomethings can have a more favorable property market really grinds my gears. There are lots of people trying to just live in their hard-earned homes after doing the work and taking the risks of building the tech industry, and most of them didn't become wealthy venture capitalists in the end. Just like most of us won't.
- fortran77 6y agoI bought my Sunnyvale CA house in 1991. I pay $6,000 in property tax. The tax goes up 2%/year. I do not pay $3.50 in taxes. You are, quite frankly, a liar. The median property tax paid by homeowners in NY State -- a state with no "Prop 13" is $5,865 (according to facts I just googled). What, exactly, am I getting away with? How will increasing property taxes in a state with the highest income and sales tax solve the housing crisis? They need to build more housing, and more dense housing. I live in CA about 8 months/year, and spend the Feb-May in Tel Aviv. We're actively looking to move our U.S. home to Nashville, TN.
- pb7 6y agoHow much would you be paying if you bought that same house right now? How will increasing it help? For one, it would have forced you to sell and move since you have limited interest in living there. You’re not entitled to live where you want just because you were born first. Property taxes specifically exist so that there isn’t a perpetual inheritance of land with no incentive to relinquish it.
- fortran77 6y ago> You’re not entitled to live where you want just because you were born first. And you're not entitled to send men from the government to take my house. (As was done to my grandparents in 1929. See: https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/history-of-jewish-settlements-in-gaza https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/history-of-jewish-settl... )
- bronson 6y agoYour Sunnyvale house is worth significantly more than the median house price in NY State. Your post confirms that Prop 13 is very good for long-term homeowners. What are you getting away with? Paying less for schools and common infrastructure than your neighbors who bought in the last decade. They're probably paying 3X more tax than you are, right?
- fortran77 6y agoIt's still a 3/2 house. An equivalent house on, say Long Island, would have lower taxes.
- refurb 6y agoWell looking at voting records of Nevada, Arizona, Texas and Colorado, I’d say say yes. Those moving into those states are bringing their politics with them.
- cbozeman 6y agoAnd once they're thoroughly shitted up, there'll be some other place to move. I like what Matthew McConaughey said about people moving from California to Austin - "Remember why you moved here, and understand you're going to have to vote a certain way if don't want to move again in the future."