Hacker News Reader

Real estate taxes don't bother with purchase price and many times lag behind market value (for better or worse).

It's even worse than that. In California, Prop 13 has de-coupled property taxes from market value altogether, essentially subsidizing landlords in perpetuity: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Proposition_13_(197...

>The proposition decreased property taxes by assessing property values at their 1975 value and restricted annual increases of assessed value of real property to an inflation factor, not to exceed 2% per year.

Sounds pretty insane.

This is why you don't really want to live under a democracy (always assuming you can find a non-democracy that respects human rights). California's government-by-referendum has made it impossibly dysfunctional, because the populace consistently votes for two types of referendum: "spend money on things I like" and "don't raise my taxes."

Yeah, it's hard to argue that 20% yearly increases in SF rent are fine while property owners get limited to 2% .

> In California, Prop 13 has de-coupled property taxes from market value altogether

Incorrect; there are limits to annual increases in tax basis value outside of qualifying events (changes of ownership, new construction on property, etc.), but tax basis isn't divorced from market value altogether.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com