Comment by than3 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by than3 | Hacker News Reader

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You clearly don't understand the impact of your proposed change.

The laws for building new homes haven't changed much in a few decades. The houses being built are a result of equilibrium with profit and secured funding. Every single action you have proposed creates no new homes.

Your proposed change is to devalue all existing homes further, incentivizing people to not own and leave the state, while allowing the state to price people out of their existing assets by forcing an increase in higher property taxes every single year that is based upon the entire amount of the loan, rather than any equity they might have.

This is no less than state mandated stealing from who you perceive to be rich (homeowners), while creating no new homes; because homeowners aside from developers do not build homes.

Do you know what happened in San Fran areas where they created and enforced the rental boards? Property values dropped, rentals dropped, everyone with options didn't invest in the area, business left, no jobs available, police couldn't be funded, and people regularly get killed as crime increases.

Do you even know how much the price of real estate fluctuates over longer periods of time? Some years it increases, other years it stays the same or decreases. That additional property tax is based upon appraisals that don't happen regularly, and the percentage increases every single year.

For a regular home, it already increases each year by at least 7,000 dollars in property taxes. If you have a well paying job of say 50,0000, roughly 32,000 goes to food right now, more if you are not single; and if they got the funding for a house they wouldn't be able to pay property taxes in less than 3 years at existing rates, regardless of the equity they had since its about appraised asset value. Increasing that further and the economics say the asset class is no longer an investment but a negative cash-flow cost.

Honestly I don't get where you people seem to come up with these things being a good idea. Did you do any research before you actually proposed something to see if it was viable?

Or is this just mindless indoctrination speaking?

> The laws for building new homes haven't changed much in a few decades

Not exactly true; the local ADU ordinance was added 2015-2017 (207(c)(4) https://codelibrary.amlegal.com/codes/san_francisco/latest/s...), and the state added an ADU law in 2016 (https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySectio....). And San Francisco has just passed the state-mandated Housing Element which promises to upzone more in the next 3 years (https://sfplanning.s3.amazonaws.com/archives/sfhousingelemen...). Moreover, I would support a virtuous cycle of incentivizing development and further upzoning.

> This is no less than state mandated stealing from who you perceive to be rich (homeowners), while creating no new homes; because homeowners aside from developers do not build homes.

That is a norm that can and should change. In a housing shortage, everyone and their mom should be figuring out how to add square footage to their house. All departments of the government should be oriented toward encouraging small homeowners to accommodate more residents.

> Do you know what happened in San Fran areas where they created and enforced the rental boards? Property values dropped, rentals dropped, everyone with options didn't invest in the area, business left, no jobs available, police couldn't be funded, and people regularly get killed as crime increases.

Huh? That sounds nothing like the present day. Property values are still near all time highs, particularly on single-family houses. Violent crime rates are near all time lows (although they could be better).

> For a regular home, it already increases each year by at least 7,000 dollars in property taxes

No, Proposition 13 (which I oppose) caps the tax rate to 1% and caps increases to min(CPI, 2%) per year. For the property tax to increase by $7000 in one year, your property would have to be worth at least 7000 / 0.02 * 100 = $35 million. Your numbers make no sense.

> roughly 32,000 goes to food right now

Again you’re off by about an order of magnitude.

> Property values are still at an all time high.

In a national demographic sure, in the areas where these things were being tested locally, look at Oakland or Richmond and compare those property gains over the last housing cycle. They are at an all time high, but what was the percentage of gain compared to other areas that didn't suffer from those rental boards where if you do a remodel you have to first offer it back to the previous tenant at the same rent (with no allowance for CPI increases or improvements)?

Tax Caps guarantee the collector must charge the maximum increase allowed every year regardless.

People are being priced out of their homes because they are being taxed on the property value, not their equity.

Your math is way off. I know people who live there who pay almost 20,000 in property taxes on their properties, and these certainly are not million dollar homes.

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