Being a relatively new transplant to California, I hadn’t given Prop 13 a whole lot of thought. I decided this morning to take a peek at the tax assessor’s website to see what things look like in my neighborhood.
On one side of my house, my neighbor, from what I can tell, she’s lived there since before the dawn of time. The lot size is the same and the house has a similar footprint but without the 2nd story my house had added. On the other side, similar footprint and lot, nobody lives there. The owner died 15 years ago and the daughter that owns it now keeps it up nicely as a shrine to her mother, I suppose.
The occupied house to the west: $945/yr
The unoccupied house to the east: $888/yr
My house: ~$14,000/yr
So much bile and bullshit for one post. Porter Ranch had all kinds of play in the media. Residents of Flint will be dealing with the health effects for decades, and Brown did not stand idly by.
Nothing like a ‘damned if you do, damned if you don’t’ attitude. So, tell me, which is it? Gas is bad because it leaked, or gas is good because it gives us power?
And you really don’t get it about Prop 13. Conservatives don’t want it repealed either. One way or another, you get no fantasyland red state. Sorry about that, Chief.
Guess we’d have to ask him. He had all kinds of good ideas how my mom was supposed to deal with the property tax crisis that she couldn’t have seen coming, so I’d think 40 years to come with a plan would be comparatively simple! I will note that San Francisco is easily among the most expensive places to buy a house in the whole state, and he has stated he makes a good living, so he has resources at his disposal that my mother didn’t.
That’s a pretty lame cop out. He gave a reasonable plan and said he could understand making some government programs specifically to help out people like your mom. Your response is basically it is how it is and mom is happy. Suck it. You should have started planning when you were 3 years old.
No my response is 1) there were none of these hypothetical programs; 2) Mom is dead, but she didn’t have to sell a house that had been in the family for several decades in order to pay her property taxes. I’d love to see 13 amended or replaced with something without all of it’s admitted flaws. I’d love to have some sympathy for Lurker, it sucks to have to move/be unable to live where you want to for the good of the kids. That was kinda my point, too, so we share a lot in common. That’s all my mother wanted, too. I just think people who weren’t here, and look at the current inequities created by 13, have trouble understanding why it passed with over 62% of the vote. He sees his own situation clearly enough, but has seemed to be to be dismissive of the situation people like my mother faced when 13 was on the ballot. There were real reasons, and no better actual options apparent.
He is doing that. He said he’s “surrounded by moving boxes”. His point is that prop 13 kicked the can down the road to the next generation of home buyers.
Do I need to take a selfie in front of moving boxes holding a sign that says “John Mace 5/30/16” for you to believe me that I’m doing just that right now (done packing for today though).
Your mother had, at her disposal, a house worth much more than she paid for it (and, in all seriousness, good for her on that!). She had options at her disposal as a result as I’ve mentioned above. So, again, grandma never had to move.
Yes, had I bought a house when I was a zygote, I would have the same options. But, since I didn’t have that sort of foresight my options were to either go in way over my head financially because I have to pay my neighbor’s property taxes for them, or move someplace slightly less expensive where the subsidization of my neighbors is offset by lower house costs. I chose the latter. I’m still paying my neighbors taxes, but my monthly payment is more manageable.
Your suggestion that I could have planned better when I was born, but grandma couldn’t foresee increasing property taxes, are silly. Are grandmothers in California somehow different from the grandmothers in the other 49 states where there is no prop 13?
Somehow grandmothers are completely incapable of moving, but families with kids in school have no problem just up and moving? I have a mom too. She lives in NY. After the kids all moved out of the four bedroom house we grew up in and my father died, she moved to a much smaller place nearby. A young family bought the house. She wasn’t frozen in her too large for one person house by the tax rate, the family wasn’t priced out due to having to subsidize her neighbors. This is how it’s supposed to work.
I get exactly why it passed with over 62% of the vote. If there was a referendum that everyone today in California has their income tax amount frozen at their current income that would probably pass for the same reason. People saying “I got mine, screw everyone else in the future!” is not exactly difficult to understand. That doesn’t make it a good or equitable law.
That used to not be the fact, but the legislature has changed the numbering so that highly historical proposition numbers won’t be used again. I don’t know what the criteria are, but Proposition 8, for example, will probably never be used again.
Several people have mentioned that Prop 13 passed with 62% of the vote, with the implication that that’s such a large percentage that of course something with such wide support should have become law. Except that Prop 13 itself disagrees with that notion. One of the provisions of the proposition was that tax increases would require a 2/3 supermajority in order to pass. In other words, you could have greater support for a tax increase than Prop 13 itself had, and Prop 13 would still win out. That’s not democratic. And yeah, yeah, nobody wants a tyranny of the majority, but it’s sure as heck better than a tyranny of the minority.
So your house is worth roughly 1.4 mil so you are living in an uppermiddleclass/rich neighborhood. Your house will continue to appreciate. If you keep it for 30 years, your property taxes will be around 20k. Then you (and your heirs) will love it.
Prop 13 is about stability of the tax payment? Yet, everyone whose house lost value in 2008-2011 sure as shit lined up for a reassessment to have their taxes decreased. Because the prop 13 people made sure the taxes could be reassessed downward, but not upward. Because it’s not about stability. It’s about minimizing your own taxes regardless of the consequences to everyone else.
You fail to comprehend that home prices exploded in the 60’s and continued to explode for a few decades. A friends parents bought a house in Fountain Valley for 29,995 in 1964 and sold it for 350,000 in 1988. The extra property tax burden on ordinary homeowners was onerous.
You must also be pissed about people who buy tax free bonds or donate to charity or, gasp, get a tax break for mortgage interest because they are doing the same thing. Prop 13 also hurts speculators. Keep your house for a while and you reap the benefit of a lower property tax bill.
Serious question to people more familiar with the real estate market than I. Should Mr Fiveyearlurker not be more upset at the real estate speculators who helped feul the explosion in real estate prices in the Bay Area? And the politicians who make it difficult to build more housing?