fountainofage

So that's your anecdote - and now mine: the building I live in is worth well over $5 million, and the property tax is currently $3500 a year.

Edit: just to add - I don't know where people get the idea that we need to evict people from their homes over property taxes. Just put a lien on the property for the tax bill. This isn't rocket science.

Not sure if you know this, but you're not pressing 4 keys at once. The ctrl + b part is the prefix sequence to let tmux know you want to send it commands. The order of key presses would be:

1) press ctrl + b

2) release

3) press shift + 7

You may already know this, and the RSI concerns still stand (I'm not sure what all goes into RSI risks), but wanted to clarify if the concern is over pressing 4 keys at the same time that are all over the keyboard.

I'm very much for private ownership of property, not sure why you would think otherwise. All I've said is to do what just about every other state does: if your property is worth $200k, you pay $2k that year in property taxes. If it's worth $2 million, you pay $20k. This isn't hard, and it isn't controversial.

Edit: just to appeal to authority: every single legitimate economist agrees with me on this as well.

I know why they're doing it, I'm arguing density isn't getting forced on them. Rather it's saying "hey, you should pay for that."

Eh, those same folks against density happily vote in another office park that brings in 20,000 new jobs. So I'm a bit hesitant to say they're getting density pushed on them. More like they're finally expected to pay for their free lunch.

I'm trying to understand: are you saying landlords should be able to not pay property taxes on the current value, not get their property seized by the state if they don't pay property taxes, collect market rate rents from tenants, and also keep all of the profit from property value gains once they sell?

But ignoring that absurdity - property taxes are usually 2% of the property value. So you'd need to what... Not pay any property tax at all for 100+ years for that scenario to play out?

But let's say we allowed that to happen, and we're somehow sympathetic to that owner. You still don't evict anyone over property taxes. The next buyer will just have to work it out. See Detroit and its $1 homes with $20k in back taxes.

I guess the problem here is I don't see housing as something anyone should expect a guaranteed profit from. I view it just like anything else - there's real risk, and if you're going to privatize the profit, you damn sure better privatize the risk, too.

Who said eviction? I said to charge to the property tax as it's valued today. Put a lien on the property and collect at time of transfer. There's no reason to evict people based on property taxes. Texas handles this just fine.

My landlord's building is worth $5 million ($5,000k) and he pays $3k a year in property taxes. He can evict all tenants and wait for someone to pay him $10 million for the property. He can wait for generations and never pay more than $4k a year because of how prop 13 is structured.

But you do you.

Then they shouldn't vote in the office space?

I mostly agree, but we should get rid of prop 13 completely. Just put a lien on the property rather than having the state seize the property if the "concern" is that we don't want people kicked out of their homes for property taxes.

Well, what you do is get rid of prop 13 and do yearly appraisals. Then you just tax the property on what it's worth, and if a landlord refuses to rent, then the tax is now a vacancy tax.

The real problem is we're not taxing these properties at the true value they could provide to society, so a massive market inefficiency exists.

What units go into the vacancy rate? The comment seems to be saying these units aren't even listed as available. Would they still show up in the vacancy calculation? How do they get in there?

I want to highlight very few Uber drivers make more than minimum wage once the total costs are taken into account.

The other option is to pay 110% of your prior year taxes. As long as you're on track to do that, then you also don't get hit with penalties.

Private investment is absolutely where the money is these days. Look at how the media claims an IPO that doesn't pop 30% or more on day one is a "failure." No one who actually contributed to that company's value benefits from that pop, and best case scenario is really to either have the IPO be flat or even go down a little. But those elite that buy their way to the front of the line demand to have that 30% pop for contributing nothing.

I'll just point out there's the argument about market makers and underwriting and blah blah blah. If that's such an issue just price that into the underwriter fees to begin with. No reason the public markets should lose out on a 30% gain to people that didn't actually take a risk and invest early in the company, and only intend to hold the stock for 8 hours at most.

And isn't the fundamental truth of investing: optimize returns based on your tolerance for risk? For the vast majority of the population, the optimal way to get the highest returns with the lowest risk is to put the money into either the S&P 500 or a total market index.

Every study has shown that people do not get rewarded appropriately for the risk they take on when they move away from diversification.

Did anyone else notice the reframing the article ends on? It spends every paragraph on 7-figure donations, then concludes with a quote that no one cares about families that make $100k donations.

Clearly Mr. Brunold wants people to focus on the $50k to $100k donation range that doesn't grant an admissions advantage, but no one seems to care about those other than him (and maybe the WSJ).

The only way to beat corruption is by shining a huge spotlight on it and remove every spot people have to hide.

I'll say the opposite - all college donations and income should be publicly available as soon as the ACH transaction clears. Questionable sources immediately flagged. Make every single dollar within the education system completely transparent. Then if some kid gets admitted, and we also see their parents made a $5 million donation, we can go ahead and appropriately stain that kid's admission.

What about the kids who really earned that admittance and their parents made a sizable donation? Then the parents donate their funds to another educational institution. Or the kid attends another institution. Wherever these two actions overlap - immediately assume fraud over anything else.

On bribes directly to individuals - their funds are all publicly available as well. If that's a problem, there are millions of other jobs they could pursue rather than being a useless parasite on the education system.

I realize this is a tired trope, but I firmly believe it:

If California got rid of prop 13 and allowed by-right zoning, market forces absolutely would build what we want.

The thinking is also that the gauntlet is just plain wrong, so that would go away as well once their cartel (AMA) loses its power.

Lots of comments, but no one has just come out and said it:

Fuck. That. Manager.

They care about butts in seats more than results, and they've deliberately sought out the metrics to justify it.

Sounds like they're not a stellar performer then? Unless they're a solo founder with no funding, they don't work in a vacuum.

Edit: changed you's to they

Could you expand on this? I've never met a couple that could afford a 4 bedroom apartment on their own, so I'm not sure how allowing even larger apartments solves anything?

Well, are you in support of a suburb or a small town? A suburb is wildly distinct from a small town. Most would agree that a suburb solely exists to house people that work in a nearby city, whereas a small town is self-sufficient (in the sense any area can be "self-sufficient").

Lots of people agreeing, so I just want to say this: if people don't want neighbors, then they should buy the land surrounding them for the FMV. Abusing various laws to get the benefits of purchasing the property/land without having done so is a complete jerk move. And there's no debating that.

Source: from the Midwest in a very rural area. Someone moved in right next to my parents. They aren't happy, but nothing they could do about it (while remaining a responsible human, a productive member of society, and not a worthless mooch) - they didn't have the money to buy the lot, so it is what it is.

Before people start talking about strip clubs next to schools or factories dumping waste into the aquifers. These neighbors are well within their by-right zoning regulations. They just have a house, and they just happened to buy the lot right next to my parents'. In California, it would have been perfectly acceptable for my parents to tie that development up for 20+ years with all sorts of ridiculousness. But in by-right zoning states, you just get housing built and move on because that's how the real world works.

I guess another way to look at it is how much office space has Mountain View approved to be developed? If they're super happy to have a Googleplex expansion that will fit another 5,000 Googlers, but only approve 1,000 more units... how do you reconcile that?

I'm not necessarily disagreeing with you - every single place should want to build more housing! But when has MV said "You know what? take your fancy office complex and move it somewhere else."?

Quick Edit: My point is mainly that all of these Bay Area governments are more than happy to get more lucrative office space built that employs thousands of employees, but suddenly hem and haw about "neighborhood character" when it comes to housing that lucrative workforce.

Have you checked out advancedrunning or artc subreddits? Might be what you're looking for.

I hope so, but everyone I know who is under 40 and owns property also loves Prop 13.

I guess it depends on what question you're asking. You seem to be pointing out that you think the real question is: "what is the median rent for anyone living in San Francisco?" whereas Zumper seems to be more answering the question: "if someone moved to San Francisco today, and has zero connections, what rent would they pay?" Both are valid questions, but I think it's good to set the context for if you're having a conversation about "general median rent" vs "newcomer median rent."

It could also mean the demand for these items is very elastic, so manufacturers will have to eat the tax or higher manufacturing costs.