Just let property owners declare a value for their land, and give anyone the right to buy it for 120% of that value at any time, with the existing owner given a grace period where they can restate their estimate.
It also requires property owners to do EXTENSIVE research and information gathering CONSTANTLY to ensure that the number they put down is reasonable.
Many of them literally can't (ex: my 87 year old Neighbor Phylis doesn't care what her house is worth, because she plans to die in it, and isn't seeking to maximize utility. Instead she wants to pass peacefully in the house she remembers raising her kids in, and has lived in for the last 50 years. She has no car, is in a wheelchair, and uses basically no online services - how is she going to go evaluate the right value for her house?).
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Basically - this plan sounds great for 5 seconds and then you realize people would literally revolt the second you pass it.
Every year in Chicago.
My house has been, and still is, assessed for 600K over what I paid in Nov. 2021. It had been on the market since 2016, until I bought it. The price I paid is the value of the house.
First assessment appeal denied.
Second appeal lost in the system.
We have to fight against an unfair and arbitrary tax system EVERY year.
Now they are going to index the tax rate to inflation.
Maybe other communities are under-taxed, but mine is not.
AFAICT, hiring an attorney is the way to go. Then you still have to pay, but much less overall. I’m about 80% convinced that the tax assessors are in it with the appeal attorneys to almost literally write themselves checks. Not that such misdeeds would ever occur in Chicago/Cook…
what you paid for it is irrelevant if people are buying the neighboring places for double or triple the price.
if it's worth so much more than you think, sell it
This is how free markets work.
Guaranteeing that people can take up the same space that they did when the population was half its current level is a great way to ensure that future generations have nowhere to live.
Money is a medium of exchange. There are items that are literally not for sale, and the excuse of "but they got money!!!!" is completely unacceptable as a replacement.
How are you going to value the writing on the walls of the home my neighbor from her now-deceased son?
How are you going to value the 6 (six!) graves of the dogs she's buried in her back yard, Each with a custom stone statue.
How are you going to value that she's memorized her current home layout, so that large cataract in her right eye doesn't bug her as much when she's in the familiar layout?
How do you value the extra time and expense it would take her to find a new home, given she's wheelchair bound?
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and your "new plan" is devolving into trying to add all sort of extra conditions and rules around this - which gets us right back to: implement this and people will literally try to kill you.
> and they decline by raising their declared valuation to match the neighborhood average.
First - this is not in line with the previous posts. What stops me from simply declaring my value is 0 until someone makes an offer and then suddenly it's the right value. Until next year when it's 0 again because that buyer has gone away. If I only have to declare at time of potential sale, the declaration is useless.
Second - having lived in a transitional neighborhood, if your house is valued at the neighborhood average, it will be bought in 30 seconds, sight unseen, usually by a corporation that plans to rehab it (because it was last updated in the 70s) and then rent it forever.
And that second point isn't a hypothetical, it's literally already happening: https://www.cbs46.com/2022/06/03/its-an-everyday-occurrence-...
Basically - money isn't everything, and maximizing utility in a purely capitalistic sense is not a set of values shared by enough people to make this work.
If you limited this to only commercially zoned land, then maybe - but you have a social contract with all those people who bought their houses, and violating that social contract, especially in a way like this, is a recipe for disaster.
> Until next year when it's 0 again because that buyer has gone away.
Why would the buyer go away? The state itself could maintain offers on any properties lowballing their property taxes. But that wouldn't be necessary, because at any time, there would always be ample interest in purchasing real estate for discount prices. You say this yourself:
> if your house is valued at the neighborhood average, it will be bought in 30 seconds
...but again, it sounds like you misunderstand my proposal. In 30 seconds, someone would offer to buy, and then the current property owner would have the choice of either selling, or keeping their property but raising their property-tax assessment to either that amount, or the local average, whichever is lower.
There is no such thing as a "standing offer" to buy a house. They're a contract with very clear start and end dates (most offers are good for between 72 hours and two weeks).
This is because both parties have to agree at time of exchange on the value of the good, and the person making the offer usually needs to have financing lined up - They literally cannot make an offer that will be good for long periods, because the financier won't agree to that.
As for this...
> ...but again, it sounds like you misunderstand my proposal. In 30 seconds, someone would offer to buy, and then the current property owner would have the choice of either selling, or keeping their property but raising their property-tax assessment to either that amount, or the local average, whichever is lower.
Ok - follow along... now the next offer comes in 2 days later at the current value. The owner STILL has zero desire to sell. What now? Do they get to raise again?
Dude - this whole thing is ending up with more rules and regulations that the current market, which is exactly why pushing this kind of thing simply doesn't work.
In theory you're optimizing land efficiency, but you're fucking with other efficiencies ALL along the chain, and the net result is that people hate you.
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Also - taking you at face value: "raising their property-tax assessment to either that amount, or the local average, whichever is lower."
This is fucking already how taxes work. At least in my area, every house is taxed at the local average (fulton county does average assessed value tax for land). So you're literally gaining nothing for all this additional complexity.
Also false. Maybe stop with the ad hominems?
> There is no such thing as a "standing offer" to buy a house.
There is in my proposal. Go back and reread it.
> This is fucking already how taxes work.
Not in California.
People will revolt anyway. For instance, in California they revolted when we attempted to remove Prop 13 for businesses.
People who are hoarding a huge house in a desirable area to do nothing but slowly die in need to be fucked over. They're worse than speculators.
> Many of them literally can't (ex: my 87 year old Neighbor Phylis doesn't care what her house is worth, because she plans to die in it, and isn't seeking to maximize utility. Instead she wants to pass peacefully in the house she remembers raising her kids in, and has lived in for the last 50 years. She has no car, is in a wheelchair, and uses basically no online services - how is she going to go evaluate the right value for her house?).
She should quote how much someone would have to pay to make it worth her moving out - that's something she should be able to figure out for herself. If she wouldn't move for less than 3 million, quote it at 3 million.
I don't even think the author is fully behind it, seemed more like a thought experiment as a reply to grandparent.
Regarding grandma: I don't want to kick her out of the house. But there is a real issue here: young families can't find affordable places, while old families live in places, that are too big for them because the kids left. If they rent, they also pay significantly less than the younger family, since they are on older contracts. Once new people move in, rent is raised to the new level. The older people don't want to move out, because they would have to pay more for their new, smaller place, than the old, bigger place. Meanwhile the young family also has to finance the pensions for that old family.
Noone is being evil here, but ... it sucks. And every idea to work on it is shut down as being unfair to the people who already own houses. Even building new houses is usually opposed by the people who already have houses in the area. If I never get the chance ever to own one, I don't really feel like I have to protect the interest of house owners.
Right now, NIMBY tries to prevent taller buildings.
A land value tax incentivizes more effective land uses-- as opposed to property taxes that include improvements, which reduce the incentive to build high density.
It's simple: eliminate NIMBYism. It only exists because local governments and laws allow it. Don't do that.
Housing shortage is due to unions and govts that refuse to establish public infrastructure for everyone. This is done on purpose to create UTism .. Us VS Them..between property owners and those who don’t own property. Divide and Rule strategy. It has never failed over centuries.
Maybe this will force the governments to spend some of our accumulated tax dollars to actually improve public transport and efficiently network cities and towns.
Zoning rules exist for a reason. People need infrastructure and water and services and power grids to live well. High density is not desirable nor will it be affordable. It behooves the govt to encourage high density where there are jobs to create artificial scarcity and inflate housing value.
Because higher the home value, more property tax can be extracted. This is the oldest con in the world. This is also why all high density cities are all expensive and housing is unaffordable and everything from water to power is expensive and public services are woefully inadequate.
No, they aren't. I live in Tokyo; it's very high-density, quite affordable compared to anything in America, and public services are all excellent. High density is how you get high efficiency.
>Shouldn’t every American city deserve top notch infrastructure that the states only reserves for high density unaffordable cities where jobs are concentrated.
No, because spreading everyone out means your infrastructure cost per capita balloons, and it's unaffordable for the government. If you want "top notch" infrastructure, you need to live near other people, not out in the boonies.
>Zoning rules exist for a reason.
No, they don't: they just make everything far away from everything else and prevent density. Here in Japan, schools, light industrial, residential, and commercial all coexist in mostly the same spaces. So it's not that hard to live within walking distance of work.
Maybe you should try traveling outside America sometime.
Marginally shorter cycles before property becomes more useful in exchange for completely fucking over the elderly, marginalized groups, and those without free capital.
It's a bonkers bad idea.
As others point out, most LVT schemes have significantly improved treatment for owner-occupied housing.
The big idea here: land value is something that is established publicly and collectively rather than by any individual owner. It makes sense to tax use of this public good to reduce deadweight losses .... instead of primarily taxing improvements which disincents investment and increasing DWL.
A land value tax can be expected to reduce the cost of housing. That is, it incentivizes more effective land uses-- as opposed to property taxes that include improvements, which reduce the incentive to build higher densities.