Absolutely no one interested in this subject. Well I am and this is why. It reduces supply, stifles mobility, and acts as a disincentive to buy suppressing demand.
There must be quite a few people who have cash available for an outright purchase, either from the sale of a previous home, or from inheritance or any other number of reasons, and who may be too old to obtain a mortgage, or who don’t want debt anymore to feature in their lives. Nothing wrong with any of that, yet it seems one is penalized for this, with a substantially higher rate of tax than other’s who bought just a few years ago. So you either swallow your pill and pay it, or you are compelled to take out a loan for the sake of the deductible. The argument I have heard in favor of Proposition 13 is that it is fixed, so as the years pass the rate effectively reduces. Sorry, I just don’t buy it. This was the goose that laid the golden egg for state coffers, a windfall based on short-termism and a logic subservient to the axis of iniquity and makers of this crisis. I have heard many people, who have owned their homes for years, say that they simply could not afford to pay the current level of taxes on their homes. If they were to cash in their homes to release equity, say in order to retire, they would need to downsize drastically to offset the increase in taxes. There must be many large homes, occupied by elderly couples or singles that are effectively tied to their homes, and it makes you wonder what effect it is having on supply. Why not fix taxes according to rentable values. It beggars belief to base it on market values in this climate, and must act as a disincentive to buy. It is very similar to the “wealth taxes” in Europe.
