[conanbatt]

> I would posit that the best solution is state level control + an infrastructure tax on new development. Charging ~30k per SFH might seem to make things more expensive but by allowing new entry to pay their own way let market forces work while adjusting for externalities.

Why should the new pay the burden of the new and the old together?

[Retric]

The old has already paid for a lot of infrastructure or their would be no roads etc. New people need both new and old infrastructure their property taxes offset the use of old infrastructure, but the added cost of new should be paid for by the people who need it.

[conanbatt]

The idea that the current residents have a right to extract a tax on the future ones is the basic motivation of nimbysm. Then come zoning controls, come construction controls, all those that make the new buildings more expensive to make, and the old ones more and more increasing in value, even at the decay of services or population.

[Retric]

This tax is not going to increase the cost of a new home 1:1 as markets still exist. It's going to reduce the profit of a new home construction and thus the value of existing land. As the tax is very much levied on the person building the house not the person buying the house the person selling land is also going to take a hair cut.

Really I am saying local governments lose the ability to limit growth.

The ideal amount of growth is where the total cost of new construction balances the demand for new construction. I am simply including externalities as part of that cost. Any other system makes some group richer at the cost of everyone else.

[conanbatt]

> This tax is not going to increase the cost of a new home 1:1 as markets still exist. It's going to reduce the profit of a new home construction and thus the value of existing land.

Reducing the profit of new construction increases the value of land, as it reduces the supply of housing. Study case, san francisco. It has a 0.1 supply elasticity: if rental prices went up 100%, construction units move by 10%.

Any tax that is put on construction reduces construction.

> The ideal amount of growth is where the total cost of new construction balances the demand for new construction. I am simply including externalities as part of that cost. Any other system makes some group richer at the cost of everyone else.

Your system makes local homeowners with very old large houses very rich: not for the house, but the land they have that appreciates because it is harder to build around it.

[Retric]

I think you are confused about actual housing prices and infrastructure costs in the US. In SF for example a ~30k tax per new home would be meaningless until the price of a new home crashed enough for it to become meaningful.

In small towns on the other hand the infrastructure cost would be much lower.

[conanbatt]

Its even more meaningless to increase property taxes on everyone than to focus the pain into the new construction. a 30k tax on any new unit might be like 10 dollar tax on all units.

The effect of concentrating a tax on something is to make it happen less, and less construction means higher home prices and higher rentals. San Francisco needs to build 1000 units to bring rental prices down 50 bucks. What you need is not to punish, but to make people responsible for the infrastructure they use, and everyone is responsible for the usage, and new construction even less so: until the building is used, the increased infrastructure usage is less. And once its built, all the dwellers pay sales tax and income taxes as well. They will be brining more than their fair share.

Perhaps you believe that the new construction represent a minority that can be exploited, after all, they found a way to profit from the city. But the ones that exploit it the most are the state and the current residents. SF has one of the highest budgets in the world, per city per inhabitant. It doesnt need more money, it needs more discipline.

But there you have the actual issue of SF and california, things like prop 13 that make it impossible to raise taxes on property owners but it makes it easy to apply sales taxes which are known and accepted to be regressive.