Comment by qdog | Hacker News Reader

Comment by qdog | Hacker News Reader

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Marfa is in the middle of nowhere, the jobs seem to be of the landscaper/service industry type unless you are arriving with money from somewhere else.

Sounds more like a touristy set of rich estates at this point, I expect the laborers live in the surrounding area and drive into town just like a large city. I did some labor during HS and in the summer it was driving 20-40 miles from our small town in nowhere Texas for the jobs we did.

During the early 80's oil boom there were several small towns in Texas that kinda looked like OP's model, but once the boom went to bust they started dying and never recovered. Probably around the Austin area in the 60's a lot of places looked more idyllic (there were no stoplights between downtown Austin and I think Lampasas at that point), but it's all sprawled out and become a Metropolis at this point.

Not clear that any sufficiently attractive area would not end up being encompassed in suburbia or a high-end enclave (Westlake by Austin comes to mind).

Eh, I don't know about that re: Marfa demographics. There's certainly been tension about property values forcing some out of town -- but the town is still majority Hispanic (67%) and the median household income is $39k. It's got attractiveness to tourists driving up property values, but it is very much still a real town with real people.

https://datausa.io/profile/geo/marfa-tx/

I mean the people paying $150,000 for a lot in Marfa (looking at listing on Zillow) are probably not locals from those $39k income households. Perversely, the way property taxes in Texas work, this likely means that anyone under 65 is watching the property taxes climb faster than their income, increasing pressure to sell and move to a cheaper property.

It's a real town, but the service folks are largely priced out at this point (although I'd expect this real estate bubble might not last as there might not be that many people willing to buy at Austin prices in Marfa).

> Perversely, the way property taxes in Texas work, this likely means that anyone under 65 is watching the property taxes climb faster than their income, increasing pressure to sell and move to a cheaper property.

What's perverse about that? When there's suddenly high demand for a limited housing supply, we should encourage those who happened to randomly live in a particular place to consider selling to those who especially want to live in that place.

If you look a the overhead map of Marfa, you'll see it isn't particularly land constrained. However, people living in trailer houses on small lots in town are seeing their taxes go up, so they eventually have to move. Also perversely, the land around there you see with cows or crops on it is almost assuredly in an agricultural tax exemption status, so the excess land has little pressure to be sold for new housing.

It's perverse because it effectively forces poorer people to sell to rich people.

I will also note Texas has a homestead exemption, originating in 1876, so this is a well-known issue. It does not appear to be inflation or value indexed, and does not provide relief to low-income people when their house suddenly appreciates. There is a limit on how much the appraisal goes up every year, but it's certainly more than wage growth.

Regardless, the point is OP's ideal town this is not, the people moving there are not moving for the local jobs and economy in a nice little town. The incomes certainly don't support the high house prices.

If you own a house that's become so valuable, you're already above the median. Exempting rich people from taxes so that they don't have to sell to even richer people doesn't seem like a good policy to me. Any kind of tax makes it easier to be richer than poorer, that's just life.

I'd agree that the agricultural exemption is perverse (as is the whole notion of taxing property value rather than unimproved land value - but ad-hoc exemptions aren't the way to fix that).

I'm finding it remarkable that people getting chased out of houses they've lived for years - maybe all their lives - by property taxes is "non perverse".

Bonus points for using the phrase "happened to randomly live". I mean, the whole sentimentalism about people's hometowns can be taken a bit far, but seriously?

HN comments like this put me in mind of that great quote:

"All of us have sufficient fortitude to bear the misfortunes of others." -Francois de La Rochefoucauld

I've been forced out of homes I loved multiple times, because I can't afford to buy even though I'm working my ass off[1] at a job that pays far above average, and a big part of that is people who bought when it was cheap but won't sell at any price. So yeah, when the idle rich complain that they need a tax break so that they don't have to go through the same thing that I do and can keep piling it all on me instead, cry me a river.

[1] I'm quite conscious that I'm lucky to have the skills I do, and I'm sure I have better working conditions than many people, but I do work hard

You should never be taxed out of a paid off house. I’m in Texas and our property tax system was built for 2-3% annual appreciation. It’s been running 3x that or more in many places, for many years now.

Also, people living in their home for years, being a part of the community, raising families, etc is not random at all. What’s random is the guy who just shows up one day from another state and decides houses are cheaper here so he can pay $100K over ask.

There's a certain irony that the urbanists who advocate high density big city living are also the kind of people who escape at the first sign of trouble or rising cost, which they themselves contributed to, and run off to suburbs, small towns, and country sides and drive up property costs and price the much poorer locals out. Living in a suburb in NJ I can't help but notice increased traffic in the direction of NYC, even compared to prelockdown, coinciding with the rapid rise in housing costs

I doubt most people making 38k would be that annoyed if their house gained 700+k in value and property taxes forced them to move somewhere else. The elderly can even do a reverse mortgage and stay in their homes while receiving extra income.

This is a generalized assertion about a large number of people, made without any evidence. Even if it is true for some subset of "urbanists" (which could be true, but it isn't incredibly obvious that it is), it isn't likely to be true for the entire set of people who advocate for high density big city living.

Judd made Marfa and died before it ever became what it was today. Secretive group of artists and the like came later and in the end, all good towns need an industry and Marfa’s real industry is tourism of people coming to see the art and related art that has sprung up.

Even terralingua has a restaurant with a two hour wait now. Tourism is the only real driver of a small town booming imo.

Marfa also does not have a lot of services that are needed for anyone older than 50, like a hospital.

a friend from the area insists that judd was involved in drug trafficking and that the (frankly mundane) art was a pretense or money laundering mechanism. i've spent time in the region and it is not difficult to spot people who are obviously involved.

the same friend's relative was recently interviewed for a soon-to-be-released podcast about the former sheriff of presidio, who was recently released from a multi-decade bid for bringing heroin over the border in his official trailer and putting it on trains hauling cattle feed to houston: https://www.presidiosheriff.com/

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