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Comment on ‘My Property Tax Went From $15K to a Life-Altering $91K a Year’

LovableSidekick@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

Like almost every issue, property taxes aren’t a binary issue - it’s not a matter of either having them or not having them. There’s the sub-issue of how the rates are set. Simply tying property taxes to home value isn’t fair, because the burden you put on city services doesn’t increase just because the perceived value of your home rises. You don’t see any of that value until you sell your house and leave. Being taxed at that time would make perfect sense to me, because that’s when you actually reap the benefits of your property value.

The argument that people in high-priced neighborhoods are rich and can afford or deserve to pay higher property taxes is unrealistic. Recent newcomers, yes, but not people who bought homes when they were still cheap because the area wasn’t so desirable. Those people are no different from people who buy cheap houses today, they just did it a long time ago. But they get charged premium rates because the perceived value of their home sent up. That way of assessing property taxes isn’t fair, it’s just bureaucratically easy.

I think property tax should be heavily weighted by the original price you paid for your house, and should go up with inflation and the cost of services. It should not be flatly tied to what you would get for your house if you hypothetically sold it.

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WoodScientist@sh.itjust.works ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

I think property tax should be heavily weighted by the original price you paid for your house, and should go up with inflation and the cost of services. It should not be flatly tied to the price you would get for your house if you hypothetically sold it.

That is how you end up with California, where the old generations get wealthy, and the young generations are driven out of the state completely.

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- LovableSidekick@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  Yes ,the economic conditions in a state with 40 million people are probably due to one specific factor. Carry on with the meme-level thinking!
  
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  - Barbudo@lemm.ee ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    Prop 13 is real, yo
    
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    LovableSidekick@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    So are about a million other things that have happened in the 40 years since prop 13 yo.
    
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grue@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

Simply tying property taxes to home value isn’t fair, because the burden a person puts on city services doesn’t increase just because the perceived value of their home rises.

It depends how much home value correlates to house size and lot size. A $1M 1500 sqft bungalow on a 1/4 acre lot in a gentrified neighborhood may not burden city services more than a $100k 1500 sqft bungalow on a 1/4 acre lot in a bad neighborhood, but a $1M McMansion on a 2-acre lot on the edge of the city absolutely will. That’s because the cost of city services scales with things like increasing the length of pavement and sewer pipe across the lot frontage and decreasing the number of homes emergency services can reach within a reasonable distance/time from the station.

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- LovableSidekick@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  Yes, you an come up with edge cases like McMansions next to golf courses, but houses on identical lots right next to each other can have different values and pay different property taxes even though they take the same amount of city services. Remodeling a house, or even just painting it frequently and keeping the yard nicer than others, doesn’t make you consume more city services, but it will raise the home’s assessed value and property taxes. That’s a false link.
  
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  - grue@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    Putting a second story on likely includes increasing the number of bedrooms, which theoretically increases the number of people who could be living there and thus increase the burden on city services. Renovating for quality and building additions to the square footage aren’t equivalent.
    
    I think lot sizes are still a much bigger factor, though: a house renovated/rebuilt to max out the allowed FAR (floor-area ratio) on a 1/4 acre lot still ought to get taxed less than a modest-sized house on a 2-acre lot.
    
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    LovableSidekick@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    You don’t have to remodel. Just living in an area that becomes more desirable makes your home value go up, and your taxes go up in step with that. I’m not talking about inflation, I’m talking about areas taking turns being the trendy place to live. Just because you’ve been there for a long time, you pay the same tax on the house you paid $100k for as somebody who buys the house next door for $500k, because their willingness to do that makes your house worth $500 too.
    
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michaelmrose@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
They are actually rich. They have earned in many cases more money in real estate than many people have earned working

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- LovableSidekick@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  Uhhh… whe your house goes up in value, that’s how much somebody might pay to buy it IF YOU SOLD IT. Until then you don’t get the money, and you’re not rich. Srsly what grade are you in?
  
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  - michaelmrose@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
    They are paying money based on wealth they can obtain at any time directly by selling. So if you pay $50k and end with a 4M home you can sell it and live on the millions of dollars.
    
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    LovableSidekick@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    What if the real estate market cools off and they never get their millions of dollars - do you think they should get a refund for all the years they paid the higher tax on the expectation of getting rich which never happened?
    
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  - WoodScientist@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    
    Now it’s true that you can borrow against your home value - this is known as a home equity loan or a line of credit.
    
    That is literally how every billionaire funds their lifestyle, just borrowing against stocks instead of home equity. If people with $4 million homes are not rich, then neither are most billionaires.
    
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    LovableSidekick@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    It’s also NOT literally how a typical homeowner lives their life. Those are the people I’m talking about, who are being taxed on money they don’t have.
    
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