38 ms·
> It's more expensive to live in the heart of New York City than in the middle of Nebraska. That's not because construction costs are orders of magnitude more e
by thesausageking 5y ago
> It's more expensive to live in the heart of New York City than in the middle of Nebraska. That's not because construction costs are orders of magnitude more expensive in New York, but because the land is orders of magnitude more expensive.
This is missing a key element: The value of a parcel in NYC is partly from the land itself but most of it comes from the development rights. If you have parcel which a 5 story building could be built on, that parcel is worth 2-5x more if the city grants you the right to build a 100 story building there. The limiting factor in cities tends to be zoning and development rights more than land itself.
- TulliusCicero 5y agoOkay. Does that interrupt their point though? It seems like what would happen with a land tax in this case is that if an area got rezoned to allow buildings 20x the height, the land value would skyrocket and thus so too would the land tax. That would then incentivize actually building a really tall building on that land, which is probably what you want (both in the sense of what land tax proponents want, and what you'd want if you just did that rezone).
- midasuni 5y agoThe problem comes with the city then deciding to rezone as a punitive measure. Rezone 10-19th street to make it unaffordable for the existing 3 story houses and you get rid of that community. Meanwhile 20-29th street isn’t, and they get to stay.
- TulliusCicero 5y agoDoing that only works if the land becomes super valuable. Whoever owns that space gets rich. You’re right, but you can use almost any city policy to punish some group if you wanted. It’s not reason to avoid otherwise sound policies.
- thesausageking 5y agoDevelopment rights are made up by cities and don't have a fixed supply like land, so can't be taxed in the same way. For example, cities often grant development rights over highways, creating them literally out of thin air. This gets even messier in cities like SF or Boston where the zoning rules are basically never followed and instead development rights are granted a on per-project basis, often based on how hard various groups lobby for or against a project. That makes a land tax not make any sense in large cities.
- PragmaticPulp 5y ago> This is missing a key element:... This is where I get frustrated with Land Value Tax articles: They tend to ignore all of the complexity by sweeping it into the idea that Land Value is something that can be accurately and arbitrarily assessed in a vacuum, without influence from politics, zoning or other real-world factors.
- larsiusprime 5y agoPart III will address this.
- pydry 5y agoUsually, such a valuation process commences with a measurement of the most and least valuable land within the taxation area. A few sites of intermediate value are then identified and used as "landmark" values. Other values are filled in between the landmark values. The data is then collated in a database and linked to a unique property reference number. Over time with the use of sales data the map should become more accurate. The assessment will only be close, of course, it'll never be "perfect".
- neilparikh 5y ago> most of it comes from the development rights. I don't think this is true. There are many part of NYC that fairly low density zoned (Long Island, SoHo, NoHo), but housing is still very expensive. New York City unfortunately still has a lot of zoning limitations.