[quote=no_such_reality]That laborious activity is what is needed. Corporations don’t need prop thirteen. An heir I’m more neutral on. Like the housing authority starting the thread, is the problem less than 1% of owners or 30% of owners?
As for non principal residence, I think those impacts would actually hurt the 99% more than it would benefit them. It would severely impact the rental market quality and availability and I doubt it would lower sales prices as the homes. Net result, desirable areas would become even more income elite with even fewer rentals.[/quote]
Prop 13 has kept many properties of the market because long-time owners are having their profits subsidized by all of the other taxpayers who are paying market-rate taxes. The subsidy is an incentive to hold onto real estate, as opposed to pushing landlords and owners of second (or third, fourth, etc.) homes to sell during market peaks.
Property taxes would rise to unreasonable levels mostly during RE bubbles. If rents don’t keep up with the rising taxes (and they won’t because renters can’t get NINJA mortgages to pay rent…you can only charge what the market will bear), it will incentivize landlords and other owners of non-owner-occupied properties to put these properties on the market to sell. This would put a damper on prices and help offset the bubble’s momentum at exactly the right times — when prices start to become unsustainable.
While I detest gimmicky mortgages and manipulations that are purported to “help people buy their own homes,” I do believe that the rights of people to own their own homes should trump the rights of landlords to profit off of renters. IMHO, society is better served when families control their own homes and housing costs, when they are more engaged in their communities (as owners and more established residents tend to be), and when people can own a paid-off residence as they near retirement age. Ideally, homes should be very affordable to buy, and they should be viewed as shelter, not as “investments” or speculative purchases.
In California, part of the reason that our housing prices are so high is because the majority of our housing units (apartments are included in this) are owned by investors. While I understand that everyone would like to be a mini-Trump, I don’t think it’s good policy to allow the already wealthy to profit from the poorer members of our society.
