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Comment by nickgrosvenor | Hacker News Reader

Something that is never brought up, the lack of recessing property values for property tax purposes.

It really punishes new young families.

example. say an old couple lives in a home presently valued at 2.5 million dollars in California, say they bought the home for 75,000 in the 1970's. So they pay about 750 bucks a year in property tax.

New family, buys the exact same home today, owes 25,000 in property tax a year. Over 2k a month just in property tax that doesn't exist for the older home owners that have been grandfathered into to low property taxes on a house whose value hasn't been reassessed for years.

Why isn't this talked about more?

New families get killed by this.

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ofcourse it is talked about, but is a losing proposition as most homeowners wouldn't stand for it. Renters don't make up enough to oppose it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Proposition_13_(197...

In some cases this keeps rent low as homeowners with 2 houses paying low property taxes can afford to charge lower rents.

It however has the unintended consequences of making housing unaffordable for their CHILDREN when they grow up and have their own families.

But I don't think many house owners stop and think about that when trying to avoid that property tax.

Not 'their' children. It appears you can pass the home to a child or grandchild and the home is not reappraised at the actual market value.

So now you've just created a new aristocracy based on hereditary privilege.

Rent control can be similarly inherited, as demonstrated by a court case in SF last year.

I am interested in this case, can you share the details?

The Proposition 13 tax assessment can be inherited. If you have at least as many houses as family members, then your family benefits indefinitely from supply restrictions and Proposition 13. See the Legislative Analyst’s Office Report on the Property Tax Inheritance Exclusion (http://www.lao.ca.gov/Publications/Report/3706) and my own how-to (https://blog.yonathan.org/posts/2017-10-transferring-prop13-...).

The problem though is that most children need their parents home before the parent wants to depart theirs.

> It really punishes new young families.

The mistake rather is to found a family under such circumstances.

>The mistake rather is to found a family under such circumstances.

Eventually this kills your city.

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