| ▲ | Johnny555 an hour ago | |||||||||||||||||||
In the last three years, a number of states have substantially reformed their property tax systems, providing huge tax benefits to owner-occupied homes and shifting the burden of paying for services like schools and police to commercial property owners (including rental apartment buildings) That sounds like shifting the property tax burden from homeowners to renters - homeowners are generally wealthier than renters, so it's placing more of the property tax burden on those less able to afford it. | ||||||||||||||||||||
| ▲ | tomrod 6 minutes ago | parent | next [-] | |||||||||||||||||||
The second order effect will be that rental properties are driven from places where this applies. That has some not-fun generational aspects. (1) If schools have lower taxes, their ability to attract good educators for children is reduced. That in turn leads to lower home values since the school quality factor is reduced. (2) If munis are unable to collect a sufficient tax base, they must reduce services. There will be hemming and hawing about things like cutting the pensions promised decades ago to attract competent service workers, but those are harder to reduce rather than not fixing the fire trucks, the water pipes, and other hidden taxes citizens pay for by reduced services. So your property values will also be reduced in the long term. Small towns are prime examples of this happening, when towns fail. Trying to build a community out of one socioeconomic class works about as well as trying to redline. It leads to a less vibrant community, less adaptable community, and people are poorer in life and in their finances for it. | ||||||||||||||||||||
| ▲ | isityettime 35 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-] | |||||||||||||||||||
I think that's true but in some cases it's also about making home ownership, in the sense of having a home you can't lose short of a destructive disaster, even possible. In a lot of cities property taxes are enough to get in the way of secure housing for, e.g., disabled people. It seems reasonable to want owning the house you live in to be a possibility for planning to eventually live on a fixed or low income. Someone I know is trying to plan such a thing right now. She has a decent paying job and a degenerative, disability-inflicting illness. She'd like to see the possibility of a secure future in the city where she's lived for the past 10 years, but property taxes and HOA fees alone in her city can be multiple thousands of dollars per month in neighborhoods that from the outside you wouldn't think seem particularly new or posh or luxurious. It seems that if she's forced into early retirement by disability, she'll have no choice but to relocate. So instead she feels trapped in a job she hates because she got it before she became disabled because she's reasonably afraid that employment discrimination, which is terrible at her job that nominally espouses inclusive values, will be even worse most other places. And while she's already disabled, her disability will only continue to get more profound for the rest of her life. And property taxes for sole and lived-in-by-the-owner homes is one of the reason that owning a condo or apartment is so much more expensive than renting one for her. | ||||||||||||||||||||
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| ▲ | f1shy an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] | |||||||||||||||||||
That is what I think will happen at the end. | ||||||||||||||||||||
| ▲ | readthenotes1 29 minutes ago | parent | prev [-] | |||||||||||||||||||
It would also place a higher burden on investment home owners so it's not all bad. | ||||||||||||||||||||
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