(sorry if this is hijacking the thread too much away from the tax proposal)...
I think this is a way a lot of people feel, but I think it's misguided. It's too easy to be overly influenced by your own point of view. Your taxes are way higher than if you bought ten years before you actually did - but why use your experience as the baseline? Why is that level 'reasonable' while newer buyers pay too much and earlier ones too little? Prop 13 is a dumb solution to the problem. If the problem is that your income can't keep up with the increased valuation, find a different solution. I'm sure everyone would prefer if their income -did- keep up, but there's other answers. Like allowing the taxes to be deferred until the property's sold. Prop 13 protected too many who didn't need protection, and unfairly shifts costs to newcomers.
As far as 'obsession' with low-cost housing is concerned, again it's biased by one's position. If you're barely affording your house, the problem you want to solve is how to keep it. If you can't afford a place to live, low-cost housing might seem a bit more important.
Without Proposition 13 people who have worked hard all their lives would lose their homes as the real-estate taxes would keep going up. .... We bought our house in Jan. 2002, we actually pay $5,000 in real estate taxes yearly and if there was no Prop. 13, they would probably be around $10,000 by now. ... The obsession with creating "affordable housing", will add population our present infrastructue really can't support.
ChristineL
01-29-2010, 01:46 PM
Let me clarify:
1) My taxes do not stay stagnent, but do increase by 2% every year and
special assessments are added almost every year. Hence the taxes went
from about $4,300 a year to $5,000/yr. since 2002. Without Prop. 13,
imagine how the artificially pumped up market of a few years ago would
have increased those taxes, and how many more might have lost their
homes. We bought within our budget, obtained a 30 year fixed mortage
to stay within that budget, refinanced when we could lower our interest
rates and, yes, part of that budget included that the taxes were
within our means. At one point, within 5 short years of having bought,
the house doubled in value...it's now worth about $175,000 than it
was then. I don't think taxes that depend on a market that can be
manipulated is the answer. I do not resent the fact that my neighbors
have a property worth more than mine, and pay lower taxes...they
bought according to their budget.
2. Once people are retired and on fixed income, there is no solution to
ever-increasing real estate taxes except to sell the house. I guess the
logic is that now that they no longer work and have raised their children,
they no longer have anything to contribute and can live without the
things they've worked all their lives to for.
Trying to buy up businesses, such as resorts, to replace them with low income housing, will not revitalize this area. If the recent influx of people moving up here because of the cheaper rents are any indication, we already
are the lower income area of Sonoma County. If there are no jobs because the businesses are gone, everyone will have to commute and the public transportation is poor. Not a good solutions. Many of the "low income" people who already live here have no cars and work for the resorts, restaurants, etc.
(sorry if this is hijacking the thread too much away from the tax proposal)...
I think this is a way a lot of people feel, but I think it's misguided. It's too easy to be overly influenced by your own point of view. Your taxes are way higher than if you bought ten years before you actually did - but why use your experience as the baseline? Why is that level 'reasonable' while newer buyers pay too much and earlier ones too little? Prop 13 is a dumb solution to the problem. If the problem is that your income can't keep up with the increased valuation, find a different solution. I'm sure everyone would prefer if their income -did- keep up, but there's other answers. Like allowing the taxes to be deferred until the property's sold. Prop 13 protected too many who didn't need protection, and unfairly shifts costs to newcomers.
As far as 'obsession' with low-cost housing is concerned, again it's biased by one's position. If you're barely affording your house, the problem you want to solve is how to keep it. If you can't afford a place to live, low-cost housing might seem a bit more important.
Valley Oak
01-29-2010, 04:03 PM
How about a fixed percentage on the market value of the property? And is calculated at least every year, if not everyday, to adjust for economic changes.
And a retired person's rate that is 50% or less of the rate applied to everyone else. The discount rate can apply to disabled persons and others as well.
Let me clarify:
1) My taxes do not stay stagnent, but do increase by 2% every year and
special assessments are added almost every year. Hence the taxes went
from about $4,300 a year to $5,000/yr. since 2002...
LenInSebastopol
01-29-2010, 06:38 PM
I've yet to find PRACTICES that this gov't may do that would justify giving more money. Like giving junk to a dope fiend. The INTENTIONS and rhetoric are nothing short of magnificent, splendid and inspiring.....but .......the practice falls far from the lips of those that speak the poly-tics
ChristineL
01-29-2010, 06:53 PM
We bought our house for $260,000, it needed some work. A very few years later, it could have been sold for at least $500,000. I requested a low ball appraisal for the refinance that brought our interest rate down, it was appraised for $460,000. It would now sell for around $350,000. We were smart enough to take very little out of the refinance and so still have some equity. So, market value???? Every time money is needed by the Water District, the schools, the hospitals, etc...the solution is to add a special assessment to the real estate taxes. That won't stop, and you can bet that without Prop 13, a way will be found to raise the percentage or eliminate the special rate for seniors and the disabled. Or a way will be found to inflate the values for tax purposes. You can also bet that the market values would be re-avaluated yearly only when property values are on the increase. Honestly, being single, approaching being a senior and having no dependents, I'm already tired of paying so much more in income taxes than those who chose to have dependents.
As I said in a previous post, I'll probably vote for this Fire District Tax, but I resent having to do it as a direct result of Redevelopment taking $300,000 from them in one year and seeing nothing of any value to our community being produced with that money. How can we add housing when we can't increase our Fire Department?
How about a fixed percentage on the market value of the property? And is calculated at least every year, if not everyday, to adjust for economic changes.
And a retired person's rate that is 50% or less of the rate applied to everyone else. The discount rate can apply to disabled persons and others as well.
Valley Oak
01-29-2010, 09:11 PM
Do you have any recommendations then? What kind of public policy would you like to see? A tiny tax? No property tax at all? Something else? Do you feel that you are burdened with the costs of paying for other peoples' children (schools, etc)?
Edward
We bought our house for $260,000, it needed some work. A very few years later, it could have been sold for at least $500,000. I requested a low ball appraisal for the refinance that brought our interest rate down, it was appraised for $460,000. It would now sell for around $350,000. We were smart enough to take very little out of the refinance and so still have some equity. So, market value???? Every time money is needed by the Water District, the schools, the hospitals, etc...the solution is to add a special assessment to the real estate taxes. That won't stop, and you can bet that without Prop 13, a way will be found to raise the percentage or eliminate the special rate for seniors and the disabled. Or a way will be found to inflate the values for tax purposes. You can also bet that the market values would be re-avaluated yearly only when property values are on the increase. Honestly, being single, approaching being a senior and having no dependents, I'm already tired of paying so much more in income taxes than those who chose to have dependents.
As I said in a previous post, I'll probably vote for this Fire District Tax, but I resent having to do it as a direct result of Redevelopment taking $300,000 from them in one year and seeing nothing of any value to our community being produced with that money. How can we add housing when we can't increase our Fire Department?
podfish
01-30-2010, 04:29 PM
Since Barry kindly gave this its own thread, I'll expand a bit :):
Personally I benefit from it, so I'm not grinding my own axe here. I am kind of horrified by the way most people seem to feel about taxes. I suppose if you really want to strangle government in its crib, a 'la Reagan, it make sense to resist them all. But otherwise, we should look at fairness, efficiency, and cost/benefit on social goals (I guess another point of disagreement between people - what social goals??). There was a similar tax change that benefited me a long time ago. Just as I bought my first house, they killed the renters' credit and soon after added the conscionable half-million tax gift to homeowners.
There's such a close relationship between people owning property in a community and those benefiting from good government in that community, that property seems pretty obvious to tax. It's different than economic activity - if you aren't getting a profit from your business activities, you're not taxed. If you own something producing wealth, you do. Homes can be weirdly either. Those seeking to maximize profit from owning property seem fair game to taxation to me. Those who just want a secure place to live should be able to opt out of that. Why not allow people to choose to handle property taxation either way?? But it's human nature to want it both ways - I suspect if you -did- allow taxes to just accumulate against the property (which I advocate as the best choice) most people would hate it at the end when they find the piled-up taxes have eaten any equity. I still say there'd be nothing unfair about that at all.
It also ties tightly into how you feel about private property. If you hold what I consider an extremely selfish point of view about it, it means that dammit, what's mine is mine and I begrudge society claiming any control of it (like the right to tax it). But if it's a way for society to allocate resources to those who will manage them, yielding extra control to those in return for their efforts at maintaining it in such a way that society overall benefits, then there's little to complain about if you accept my imaginary defer-all-taxes plan, and find at the end you have given all its increased valuation back to the taxman. It's really great to find out that just by living in my own house long enough I'm going to have 'earned' a bunch of money. I fail to see how those of us in such a situation can claim personal credit for that, though - if there's anything we've done to help the values go up like that, it's that we helped make sure our communities have thrived.
How about a fixed percentage on the market value of the property? And is calculated at least every year, if not everyday, to adjust for economic changes.
And a retired person's rate that is 50% or less of the rate applied to everyone else. The discount rate can apply to disabled persons and others as well.