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Comment by supreme_sublime | Hacker News Reader

> eliminating property tax only incentives blocking all new development to drive up property values and encourage rent seeking

I'm quite interested to see your reasoning behind that statement. Don't people still want their property values to go up even with property taxes? Except in a no property tax scenario, people who own their homes outright would still be able to stay if they wanted to. Perhaps no property taxes would more highly encourage local owners to restrict newcomers. Isn't the government also interested in increasing property values so they can receive more revenue? In that case I suppose they would in a sense be "earning" the taxes they levy.

- Edited for clarity

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>Perhaps no property taxes would more highly encourage local owners to restrict newcomers

Bingo. Rampant NIMBYism. Also growing the local economy should be the priority for local governments not creating a housing bubble

There is an argument that can be made that people who cannot afford to live in prime real estate in an economic powerhouse should sell their house and move somewhere else to enable growth or allow more housing to be built. But picking neither is not a productive outcome

With property taxes though, don't the incentives for government and property owners align in the desire for higher property values?

No, as a property owner who doesn't plan to sell in the near future I want my properties values low: I pay taxes on the value of the land, so the lower that value the lower my costs. When I decide to sell I want low property taxes because I know the future buyers of my land will consider property taxes, I just want high property values.

Sure, that's the ideal situation. Paying no tax and having high property values. Ultimately I'd assume you still want the property to be worth more than what you paid for it. You and the government's incentives are aligned in that sense. Of course you still are moderately adversarial since they are taxing you.

I was just trying to point at that local governments are also encouraged to have high property values for tax revenue. They also tend to have a bit more power to be able to affect large areas property values by force. If people cannot/don't utilize the government to enact policies to force people out, it seems to me that it would be pretty difficult for people to enact those policies without governmental power.

What we see in places like San Francisco are property owners and governments teaming up to drive property values up in a mutually beneficial relationship.

Edit - It could be said that the government itself is rent-seeking in such an arrangement.

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