9 ms·

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

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 is so expensive that you can't afford the property tax, downgrade. Those of us who can't afford property will shed no tears.

gedy 4y ago
> 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.)
- rjbwork 4y ago
  And the same politicians that those homeowners vote for. And lobby. Especially retirees who have time to do things like endlessly harangue their local councils to implement NIMBYist policies to prevent increasing housing supply in order to drive their housing prices higher. Of course, couched in language like "preserving the historical character of the neighborhood" and "keeping the riff raff out".
- dangerlibrary 4y ago
  One can very convincingly make the argument that state and national governments are undemocratic and difficult for individuals or local groups to influence. But on the scale of a county, small town, or city government, that's less the case. Individual voters who have repeatedly NIMBY voted against densification have absolutely caused their own home values to inflate.
- lijogdfljk 4y ago
  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 looking to buy land to build a home on, i've noticed quite a lot of property seemingly being used purely for investment. Flipped through the years for profit with no real added value, in an area of the country (PNW) that is very, very expensive due to limited supply. It is very cheap to keep land, tens of dollars a year for 10 acres (the lot size i'm familiar with) iirc. Inhibiting this behavior seems beneficial. Though i imagine more interesting (than simply "high") taxes could help more. Ie something like a higher tax on unimproved and uninhabited land. Encourage usage, not squatting. But.. i don't know anything here. I just have experience looking to buy land, and watching what goes up for sale.
  - gedy 4y ago
    > Encourage usage, not squatting. 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.
    - zip1234 4y ago
      Just because it was passed for a good reason does not make it a good policy. Prop 13, whatever the good intentions, is a disaster and has created a modern landed gentry in California.
- crisdux 4y ago
  I think you are missing something. It's not about blame, that doesn't matter. People are lashing out. It's about anger at the system. It's becoming increasingly obvious that recently a large part of our personal prosperity is based on incumbency. Our government is routinely breaking social contracts which maintain order. That makes people angry at the system, government and their fellow citizens.
  - gedy 4y ago
    > That makes people angry at the system, government and their fellow citizens. The "system" and governments frequently prefer angry people direct their rage at other citizens instead of them! QED
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
derekp7 4y ago
But the absolute home value shouldn't affect property taxes. It should only be the relative home value. The county takes the entire budget, and divides it by the total of all the home values in the county to determine the basis for assessing taxes. The problem comes when a given home goes up in value more then their neighbors, or when one neighborhood increases more than other ones.
jherskovic 4y ago
If there was a supply of cheaper housing, I'd agree with this wholeheartedly. Part of the problem is that, in a lot of places (SF, NYC, Seattle, etc) you can price folks into homelessness. Sure, no one is entitled to live in a specific area, but for those who built their lives there, have a community, family, it's cruel to tell them "move to Nowheresville, OH so you can afford a roof"
- Workaccount2 4y ago
  And who are the ones that voted against building that cheaper housing?
- igorkraw 4y ago
  I mean, either you are cruel to home owners who have capital or you are cruel to poor people. I know where my priorities would be. Or we could of course try to remove the cruelty completely by not using a market system to manage a natural monopoly (space in a community). But if you choose cruelty, at least be cruel to those that can choose to suffer as opposed that cannot really escape
  - cableshaft 4y ago
    > I mean, either you are cruel to home owners who have capital or you are cruel to poor people. False equivalence. There's no reason you have to be cruel to either. You can always build more housing or provide financial services to help poorer people buy homes. Or just, you know, lower the cost of homes so property taxes don't have to be astronomical and force older people out of their homes to begin with. If housing costs and property taxes are so high it forces older people out, I don't see how that somehow benefits poor people anyway. They still can't afford those stupid expensive houses.
    - igorkraw 4y ago
      If you disincentivise individual ownership of expensive land and buildings, building dense housing becomes more profitable. Also, you can pay for social programs with the tax revenue.
francisofascii 4y ago
Or, they can simply get a reverse mortgage using the $300K free appreciation they realized.
et-al 4y ago
Who would want to settle down in an area that is trying to churn you out though? Sure, the "fuck 'em" attitude has been used by NIMBYs forever. But now we're using it to deprioritise the existing residents that might've sculpted the community. E.g. "Artists who can't the 200% rent increase? Fuck 'em." Most folks like some sense of stability with their housing. Not everyone's a 20 y/o digital nomad.
flyingfences 4y ago
> you can always choose to live in a cheaper home I'm not sure if you've looked around northern New England recently, but there are practically no cheaper homes left.
throwaway9980 4y ago
> Fuck 'em. Progressive taxation. At least you’re honest about how you want to wield the cudgel.
stephencanon 4y ago
Over here in Hanover they've gone from $500k up to $1M, and honestly the 2% tax rate is the only thing that kept prices somewhat in check in the presence of near-zero interest rates.
woofyman 4y ago
//Those of us who can't afford property will shed no tears. Move somewhere cheaper.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
happytoexplain 4y ago
There's a reasonable and holistic argument to be made for the generalized version of your position, but specifically wanting people to be removed from their homes by forces they can't control under the rationale, "fuck 'em", is counterproductive and - I don't think it's uncalled for to say - immoral. It's important to have a base level of humanity for people, regardless of what side of which broken social dynamic they are lucky or unlucky enough to be on. Choosing not to do so will in fact hurt our chances of fixing systems in most cases, regardless of how righteous it feels. >you can always choose to live in a cheaper home Here also - you're oversimplifying. Yes, you can always choose to engage in all manner of frustrating, saddening, and burdensome life changes. But it's unfair to imply it is easy. You may cite the burdens of others as justification for forcing such a change, but it's a complicated, emotional, difficult, subjective argument that you do no justice by abbreviating into hostile quips. You sound like you're sure this group of people you're imagining is the enemy, and not simply equal human beings, some of whom may have voted in a selfish way on some policy that arguably increased the strain of the situation. It's simply not enough to justify your tone. It's unrealistic to attack every individual who does not always act in perfect unselfish harmony with the greater society, especially when such balance is impossible to objectively define. I.e. it is reasonable to expect individuals to make various concessions for society, but it is not reasonable to expect people not to fight as hard as they can to keep their home (even though it may ultimately be that they must lose it).
- Victerius 4y ago
  > removed from their homes by forces they can't control A caveat here is that many of these people vote against denser zoning in their neighborhood. So, in a way, the appreciation of their primary home is due to factors that they do control.
  - cjmb 4y ago
    "in a way" -- the region in question is northern New Hampshire. on balance, the housing price appreciation, and therefore tax burden, on "these people" is functionally entirely due to external macroeconomic factors, which you can clearly see on the Zillow Housing price index by typing in "New Hampshire" or any relevant zip code: https://www.zillow.com/home-values/ https://www.zillow.com/home-values/ The average NH home increased $7k-$10k in value per year linearly for the last 10 years! Then it increased $25k Jan '20 -> Jan '21. Then it increased *$53k* Jan '21 -> Jan '22. 10 years worth of price appreciation, and therefore tax appreciation, occurred in a 2 year window. I understand many people have a pet housing policy issue they care about, but trying to attribute this step-function change in tax burden to "New Hampshire zoning laws" and "these people" as opposed to the massive increase in demand caused by Covid urban flight/WFH & relaxed monetary policy is completely unreasonable.
exclusiv 4y ago
I disagree. The local budget shouldn't change much from year to year, but when values go up, they are quick to reassess high on, many times, artificially inflated values. When values go down, then they aren't too quick to reassess accurately downward. In this situation, you just end up displacing retirees which is not good. I'm not talking about having special rules for retirees, just saying the politicians feast when home values skyrocket and cities need to have a reasonable balanced approach to be able to have great services and departments for the community, but not try to optimize for their budget. So many great cities have been destroyed from high property taxes. They jack up prop taxes, then lose families and are left with mostly older citizens, and there's a breaking point and they leave. Home values plummet along with property taxes. So what they thought might be good for the community ended up being a poor decision. Also property taxes are not perfectly progressive. Only areas with nice homes have good schools.
toomuchtodo 4y ago
Alternatively, have them pay for an appraisal and finance the progressive property taxes out of home equity. Upon death, the property is sold and the equity used to pay progressive taxes is repaid. This prevents the generational wealth transfer of subsidized senior housing tax rates with the benefits going to next of kin, who sells the asset and receives the proceeds.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
bombcar 4y ago
Strange, around here property taxes are allocated based on proportional value, true, but the total amount collected is set by the township budget. 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.
- ceejayoz 4y ago
  This is how they work pretty much anywhere; the locality aims to collect a certain amount in total taxes, and sets a per-$1000 tax rate based on the total value of all taxable property in their jurisdiction. People think doubling house value doubles property tax, but the bill could go down if double is less than the average increase for the area.
fundad 4y ago
I'd say Fuck the idea of making it cheaper to live forever in the exact house when you could downsize and make the home available for a family. 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.
- vanilla_nut 4y ago
  Thank you -- this is a more concise version of my thoughts. If your house goes up in value, you just earned likely hundreds of thousands of dollars in the resulting windfall when you sell. Why on earth should I feel bad for you? I understand that communities change when this sort of thing happens, but pushing out the retired couple living in a multi-bedroom apartment for a small family is a healthier thing for the community. You don't want to freeze communities in time, they need to grow and evolve.
chadash 4y ago
> You can always choose to live in a cheaper home. So your 90 year old grandpa has been living in a two bedroom apartment on the lower east side for 65 years. When he moved in at age 25, it was considered a crummy but affordable neighborhood, but now it's expensive and desirable. You want a 90 year old to have to move? I agree that maybe a 65 year old couple no longer needs to be in a 3,000 square foot home, but there are a lot of cases that make this complicated.
- BlargMcLarg 4y ago
  Grandfathering until the chickens come to roost hasn't helped the vulnerable either, yet that same party largely consists of individuals proposing that solution to the vulnerable. It's cruel, but that same cruelty is deemed acceptable towards 'have nots'.
- yellowapple 4y ago
  If Grandpa rents that apartment instead of owning it, he'd if anything stand to benefit (especially if we tax land value specifically and not the building).
  - chadash 4y ago
    My point is that a lot of (and maybe most) 90 year olds are not really capable of moving. Moves are a pretty big pain in the ass in your 20s and 30s, but doing the process of finding a new apartment and physically moving are much harder at that age. And then you move to somewhere cheaper because the whole point is you can't afford the city anymore, but now you need to find all new doctors (many 90 year olds have multiple doctors they see regularly), figure out how to see family (perhaps you remained in your old place because your family lived nearby), get to the grocery store (you're 90... you likely can't drive). It's not practical.
    - yellowapple 4y ago
      > My point is that a lot of (and maybe most) 90 year olds are not really capable of moving. And mine is that a lot of (and maybe most) 90 year olds wouldn't need to move. The ones who would be motivated to move are also largely the ones who are wealthy enough to do so.
lettergram 4y ago
Almost anyone can afford property… provided you’re willing to move. I’m where I live it costs $40-$50k / acre up to $150k / acre. 30 min away it’s $3-4k / acre. I personally am opposed to property taxes. I think it basically implies rent of the land. Then again, I’m basically opposed to all taxes except tariffs and perhaps licensing fees. For instance, you could implement a licensing fee to use the public roads. Or add a tax on import / export of goods across the protected border(s). But beyond that I view all taxes as far too intrusive. Why should my land be assessed? Why should I provide any details to the government so they can tax me? The “government” is infact my “neighbors” and I simply don’t think it’s their business what my assets are.
- yellowapple 4y ago
  > I think it basically implies rent of the land. That's already implied from the existence of land deeds and the enforcement thereof: you're renting a subset of a nation-state's sovereign territory.
- int_19h 4y ago
  Do you expect the government to protect your assets if someone threatens them?
scifibestfi 4y ago
Yeesh, lack of empathy much? Imagine you bought a house and worked diligently for 30 years to pay it off. Now in retirement your cost of living skyrockets, through no fault of your own, such that you can no longer afford to live there in your 70s and 80s. How is that in any way fair or just?
- medvezhenok 4y ago
  Now imagine the same exact thing but instead of buying a house, the person rented for 30 years (probably would have been forced out of the neighborhood much sooner). Are you still empathizing? What about the people who couldn't get a loan in the 1940s-70s because of redlining and ended up having to rent for the same amount of time? All of this "empathy" talk hides real wealth redistribution towards property owners. Just holding on to a piece of property should not increase your share of real productive capital disproportionately.
HWR_14 4y ago
I thought: a) NH (like CA) didn't revalue land for property tax purposes as long as you continue to own it. b) NH had a generous homestead exemption based on the median of the area in which you live.
mutatio 4y ago
Isn't your envy/entitlement misplaced, by your own argument "you can always choose to live in a cheaper home".
- fundad 4y ago
  Low taxes incentivizes a retiree to stay in possible a more spacious home than they need instead of selling to a young family. If you are a retired couple or a single without any large adult children living with you, you're better off with less to maintain.
googlryas 4y ago
If the only thing that changes are home prices going up, why wouldn't property taxes(as a percent of home prices) go down? It's not like the city is offering new services because housing prices are rising?
ahallock 4y ago
That's a very callous attitude, especially for people who have put a lot into their property. Being forced out due to taxation is no choice at all.
tclancy 4y ago
Southern NH here and I would be interested to see if NH's eye-watering property taxes (when you only have one lever, it gets used a lot) have a similar effect as Chicago. Personally, being somewhat involved in city politics, while I appreciate your take, it does mean pricing people out of their forever homes when they've done nothing more than retire to a fixed income in the middle of a bubble. I don't have the answer, but I can definitely imagine the fear of the unknown seeing you will not only be forced out of your home but your town and region to find something affordable.
- corpMaverick 4y ago
  I lived in Nashua. There is zero new construction going on, lotes are very big so there is a lot of wasted space. The result is that housing is too expensive.
commandlinefan 4y ago
> you can always choose to live in a cheaper home ... Those of us who can't afford property If there are cheaper homes for these privileged retirees to move into, why don't you buy those homes yourself?
unethical_ban 4y ago
So, politicians get voted in, raise property taxes to extort established neighborhoods into selling because they can no longer afford the government's shakedown of their residence, so the corrupt politicians' business associates can purchase the properties and rent them.

gedy 4y ago

> 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.)

rjbwork 4y ago
And the same politicians that those homeowners vote for. And lobby. Especially retirees who have time to do things like endlessly harangue their local councils to implement NIMBYist policies to prevent increasing housing supply in order to drive their housing prices higher. Of course, couched in language like "preserving the historical character of the neighborhood" and "keeping the riff raff out".
dangerlibrary 4y ago
One can very convincingly make the argument that state and national governments are undemocratic and difficult for individuals or local groups to influence. But on the scale of a county, small town, or city government, that's less the case. Individual voters who have repeatedly NIMBY voted against densification have absolutely caused their own home values to inflate.
lijogdfljk 4y ago
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 looking to buy land to build a home on, i've noticed quite a lot of property seemingly being used purely for investment. Flipped through the years for profit with no real added value, in an area of the country (PNW) that is very, very expensive due to limited supply. It is very cheap to keep land, tens of dollars a year for 10 acres (the lot size i'm familiar with) iirc. Inhibiting this behavior seems beneficial. Though i imagine more interesting (than simply "high") taxes could help more. Ie something like a higher tax on unimproved and uninhabited land. Encourage usage, not squatting. But.. i don't know anything here. I just have experience looking to buy land, and watching what goes up for sale.
- gedy 4y ago
  > Encourage usage, not squatting. 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.
  - zip1234 4y ago
    Just because it was passed for a good reason does not make it a good policy. Prop 13, whatever the good intentions, is a disaster and has created a modern landed gentry in California.
crisdux 4y ago
I think you are missing something. It's not about blame, that doesn't matter. People are lashing out. It's about anger at the system. It's becoming increasingly obvious that recently a large part of our personal prosperity is based on incumbency. Our government is routinely breaking social contracts which maintain order. That makes people angry at the system, government and their fellow citizens.
- gedy 4y ago
  > That makes people angry at the system, government and their fellow citizens. The "system" and governments frequently prefer angry people direct their rage at other citizens instead of them! QED
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]

derekp7 4y ago

But the absolute home value shouldn't affect property taxes. It should only be the relative home value. The county takes the entire budget, and divides it by the total of all the home values in the county to determine the basis for assessing taxes. The problem comes when a given home goes up in value more then their neighbors, or when one neighborhood increases more than other ones.

jherskovic 4y ago

If there was a supply of cheaper housing, I'd agree with this wholeheartedly. Part of the problem is that, in a lot of places (SF, NYC, Seattle, etc) you can price folks into homelessness. Sure, no one is entitled to live in a specific area, but for those who built their lives there, have a community, family, it's cruel to tell them "move to Nowheresville, OH so you can afford a roof"

Workaccount2 4y ago
And who are the ones that voted against building that cheaper housing?
igorkraw 4y ago
I mean, either you are cruel to home owners who have capital or you are cruel to poor people. I know where my priorities would be. Or we could of course try to remove the cruelty completely by not using a market system to manage a natural monopoly (space in a community). But if you choose cruelty, at least be cruel to those that can choose to suffer as opposed that cannot really escape
- cableshaft 4y ago
  > I mean, either you are cruel to home owners who have capital or you are cruel to poor people. False equivalence. There's no reason you have to be cruel to either. You can always build more housing or provide financial services to help poorer people buy homes. Or just, you know, lower the cost of homes so property taxes don't have to be astronomical and force older people out of their homes to begin with. If housing costs and property taxes are so high it forces older people out, I don't see how that somehow benefits poor people anyway. They still can't afford those stupid expensive houses.
  - igorkraw 4y ago
    If you disincentivise individual ownership of expensive land and buildings, building dense housing becomes more profitable. Also, you can pay for social programs with the tax revenue.

francisofascii 4y ago

Or, they can simply get a reverse mortgage using the $300K free appreciation they realized.

et-al 4y ago

Who would want to settle down in an area that is trying to churn you out though? Sure, the "fuck 'em" attitude has been used by NIMBYs forever. But now we're using it to deprioritise the existing residents that might've sculpted the community. E.g. "Artists who can't the 200% rent increase? Fuck 'em." Most folks like some sense of stability with their housing. Not everyone's a 20 y/o digital nomad.

flyingfences 4y ago

> you can always choose to live in a cheaper home I'm not sure if you've looked around northern New England recently, but there are practically no cheaper homes left.

throwaway9980 4y ago

> Fuck 'em. Progressive taxation. At least you’re honest about how you want to wield the cudgel.

stephencanon 4y ago

Over here in Hanover they've gone from $500k up to $1M, and honestly the 2% tax rate is the only thing that kept prices somewhat in check in the presence of near-zero interest rates.

woofyman 4y ago

//Those of us who can't afford property will shed no tears. Move somewhere cheaper.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

happytoexplain 4y ago

There's a reasonable and holistic argument to be made for the generalized version of your position, but specifically wanting people to be removed from their homes by forces they can't control under the rationale, "fuck 'em", is counterproductive and - I don't think it's uncalled for to say - immoral. It's important to have a base level of humanity for people, regardless of what side of which broken social dynamic they are lucky or unlucky enough to be on. Choosing not to do so will in fact hurt our chances of fixing systems in most cases, regardless of how righteous it feels. >you can always choose to live in a cheaper home Here also - you're oversimplifying. Yes, you can always choose to engage in all manner of frustrating, saddening, and burdensome life changes. But it's unfair to imply it is easy. You may cite the burdens of others as justification for forcing such a change, but it's a complicated, emotional, difficult, subjective argument that you do no justice by abbreviating into hostile quips. You sound like you're sure this group of people you're imagining is the enemy, and not simply equal human beings, some of whom may have voted in a selfish way on some policy that arguably increased the strain of the situation. It's simply not enough to justify your tone. It's unrealistic to attack every individual who does not always act in perfect unselfish harmony with the greater society, especially when such balance is impossible to objectively define. I.e. it is reasonable to expect individuals to make various concessions for society, but it is not reasonable to expect people not to fight as hard as they can to keep their home (even though it may ultimately be that they must lose it).

Victerius 4y ago
> removed from their homes by forces they can't control A caveat here is that many of these people vote against denser zoning in their neighborhood. So, in a way, the appreciation of their primary home is due to factors that they do control.
- cjmb 4y ago
  "in a way" -- the region in question is northern New Hampshire. on balance, the housing price appreciation, and therefore tax burden, on "these people" is functionally entirely due to external macroeconomic factors, which you can clearly see on the Zillow Housing price index by typing in "New Hampshire" or any relevant zip code: https://www.zillow.com/home-values/ https://www.zillow.com/home-values/ The average NH home increased $7k-$10k in value per year linearly for the last 10 years! Then it increased $25k Jan '20 -> Jan '21. Then it increased *$53k* Jan '21 -> Jan '22. 10 years worth of price appreciation, and therefore tax appreciation, occurred in a 2 year window. I understand many people have a pet housing policy issue they care about, but trying to attribute this step-function change in tax burden to "New Hampshire zoning laws" and "these people" as opposed to the massive increase in demand caused by Covid urban flight/WFH & relaxed monetary policy is completely unreasonable.

exclusiv 4y ago

I disagree. The local budget shouldn't change much from year to year, but when values go up, they are quick to reassess high on, many times, artificially inflated values. When values go down, then they aren't too quick to reassess accurately downward. In this situation, you just end up displacing retirees which is not good. I'm not talking about having special rules for retirees, just saying the politicians feast when home values skyrocket and cities need to have a reasonable balanced approach to be able to have great services and departments for the community, but not try to optimize for their budget. So many great cities have been destroyed from high property taxes. They jack up prop taxes, then lose families and are left with mostly older citizens, and there's a breaking point and they leave. Home values plummet along with property taxes. So what they thought might be good for the community ended up being a poor decision. Also property taxes are not perfectly progressive. Only areas with nice homes have good schools.

toomuchtodo 4y ago

Alternatively, have them pay for an appraisal and finance the progressive property taxes out of home equity. Upon death, the property is sold and the equity used to pay progressive taxes is repaid. This prevents the generational wealth transfer of subsidized senior housing tax rates with the benefits going to next of kin, who sells the asset and receives the proceeds.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

bombcar 4y ago

Strange, around here property taxes are allocated based on proportional value, true, but the total amount collected is set by the township budget. 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.

ceejayoz 4y ago
This is how they work pretty much anywhere; the locality aims to collect a certain amount in total taxes, and sets a per-$1000 tax rate based on the total value of all taxable property in their jurisdiction. People think doubling house value doubles property tax, but the bill could go down if double is less than the average increase for the area.

fundad 4y ago

I'd say Fuck the idea of making it cheaper to live forever in the exact house when you could downsize and make the home available for a family. 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.

vanilla_nut 4y ago
Thank you -- this is a more concise version of my thoughts. If your house goes up in value, you just earned likely hundreds of thousands of dollars in the resulting windfall when you sell. Why on earth should I feel bad for you? I understand that communities change when this sort of thing happens, but pushing out the retired couple living in a multi-bedroom apartment for a small family is a healthier thing for the community. You don't want to freeze communities in time, they need to grow and evolve.

chadash 4y ago

> You can always choose to live in a cheaper home. So your 90 year old grandpa has been living in a two bedroom apartment on the lower east side for 65 years. When he moved in at age 25, it was considered a crummy but affordable neighborhood, but now it's expensive and desirable. You want a 90 year old to have to move? I agree that maybe a 65 year old couple no longer needs to be in a 3,000 square foot home, but there are a lot of cases that make this complicated.

BlargMcLarg 4y ago
Grandfathering until the chickens come to roost hasn't helped the vulnerable either, yet that same party largely consists of individuals proposing that solution to the vulnerable. It's cruel, but that same cruelty is deemed acceptable towards 'have nots'.
yellowapple 4y ago
If Grandpa rents that apartment instead of owning it, he'd if anything stand to benefit (especially if we tax land value specifically and not the building).
- chadash 4y ago
  My point is that a lot of (and maybe most) 90 year olds are not really capable of moving. Moves are a pretty big pain in the ass in your 20s and 30s, but doing the process of finding a new apartment and physically moving are much harder at that age. And then you move to somewhere cheaper because the whole point is you can't afford the city anymore, but now you need to find all new doctors (many 90 year olds have multiple doctors they see regularly), figure out how to see family (perhaps you remained in your old place because your family lived nearby), get to the grocery store (you're 90... you likely can't drive). It's not practical.
  - yellowapple 4y ago
    > My point is that a lot of (and maybe most) 90 year olds are not really capable of moving. And mine is that a lot of (and maybe most) 90 year olds wouldn't need to move. The ones who would be motivated to move are also largely the ones who are wealthy enough to do so.

lettergram 4y ago

Almost anyone can afford property… provided you’re willing to move. I’m where I live it costs $40-$50k / acre up to $150k / acre. 30 min away it’s $3-4k / acre. I personally am opposed to property taxes. I think it basically implies rent of the land. Then again, I’m basically opposed to all taxes except tariffs and perhaps licensing fees. For instance, you could implement a licensing fee to use the public roads. Or add a tax on import / export of goods across the protected border(s). But beyond that I view all taxes as far too intrusive. Why should my land be assessed? Why should I provide any details to the government so they can tax me? The “government” is infact my “neighbors” and I simply don’t think it’s their business what my assets are.

yellowapple 4y ago
> I think it basically implies rent of the land. That's already implied from the existence of land deeds and the enforcement thereof: you're renting a subset of a nation-state's sovereign territory.
int_19h 4y ago
Do you expect the government to protect your assets if someone threatens them?

scifibestfi 4y ago

Yeesh, lack of empathy much? Imagine you bought a house and worked diligently for 30 years to pay it off. Now in retirement your cost of living skyrockets, through no fault of your own, such that you can no longer afford to live there in your 70s and 80s. How is that in any way fair or just?

medvezhenok 4y ago
Now imagine the same exact thing but instead of buying a house, the person rented for 30 years (probably would have been forced out of the neighborhood much sooner). Are you still empathizing? What about the people who couldn't get a loan in the 1940s-70s because of redlining and ended up having to rent for the same amount of time? All of this "empathy" talk hides real wealth redistribution towards property owners. Just holding on to a piece of property should not increase your share of real productive capital disproportionately.

HWR_14 4y ago

I thought: a) NH (like CA) didn't revalue land for property tax purposes as long as you continue to own it. b) NH had a generous homestead exemption based on the median of the area in which you live.

mutatio 4y ago

Isn't your envy/entitlement misplaced, by your own argument "you can always choose to live in a cheaper home".

fundad 4y ago
Low taxes incentivizes a retiree to stay in possible a more spacious home than they need instead of selling to a young family. If you are a retired couple or a single without any large adult children living with you, you're better off with less to maintain.

googlryas 4y ago

If the only thing that changes are home prices going up, why wouldn't property taxes(as a percent of home prices) go down? It's not like the city is offering new services because housing prices are rising?

ahallock 4y ago

That's a very callous attitude, especially for people who have put a lot into their property. Being forced out due to taxation is no choice at all.

tclancy 4y ago

Southern NH here and I would be interested to see if NH's eye-watering property taxes (when you only have one lever, it gets used a lot) have a similar effect as Chicago. Personally, being somewhat involved in city politics, while I appreciate your take, it does mean pricing people out of their forever homes when they've done nothing more than retire to a fixed income in the middle of a bubble. I don't have the answer, but I can definitely imagine the fear of the unknown seeing you will not only be forced out of your home but your town and region to find something affordable.

corpMaverick 4y ago
I lived in Nashua. There is zero new construction going on, lotes are very big so there is a lot of wasted space. The result is that housing is too expensive.

commandlinefan 4y ago

> you can always choose to live in a cheaper home ... Those of us who can't afford property If there are cheaper homes for these privileged retirees to move into, why don't you buy those homes yourself?

unethical_ban 4y ago

So, politicians get voted in, raise property taxes to extort established neighborhoods into selling because they can no longer afford the government's shakedown of their residence, so the corrupt politicians' business associates can purchase the properties and rent them.