Assuming neither property was a steal (roughly based on the collective feedback in this thread), then the one thing you can’t do is compare the impact of the Mello-Roos between the two.

If instead, that’s a bad interpretation and the Stonebridge property was something approaching a steal, then still don’t let the M-R equivalence fool you. You saved the money on the purchase price of the house plain and simple. M-R didn’t suddenly become awesome. (and if you really think about it, as a percentage of purchase price, the M-R is even higher!)

If you’re still thinking, hey sdcellar, you’re nuts, the houses in Stonebridge sell for less because they’ve got that Mello-Roos hit, so you do have to look at payment, etc, blah, blah, blah. I’ll just counter with there you go, then you’re still not ahead of the game, you have a property with intrinsically less value. And when you sell it, you’ll just feel it on the other side. As a matter of fact, it might be worse, as it won’t be “new” anymore, which I think is the only thing that really makes people feel a little bitter about exorbitant M-R tax rates.

The *only* thing that will fix it is inflation. Which, I’m sure, will eventually come to pass. Could be a long time though until $500 or so a month seems like a rounding error.

Maybe we can dispense with any notion that Mello-Roos is a good thing now?