[echelon]

> City councils, local govts create this problem with restrictions on buildings and what type of things can go into their city.

Good luck fighting the land owners. NIMBY is more organized and has huge political will.

I honestly don't know what can be done and worry this will always be a problem.

[souprock]

You can find your own land to own.

Back in 1962 my grandma had her house built on some undesirable empty hills, in the city but far from the action. There wasn't a tech industry. That house is in the geographic center of San Francisco and is now worth about $2,000,000. It's still on a lovely tree-lined street with plenty of available free parking.

You would take that from her and the other people who created the neighborhood you now covet. You would change it forever, adding all the charm of a trailer park or housing project. The free parking would be gone.

No. You go make your own desirable neighborhood in a different city.

You're trying to cheat by skipping a step. You don't want to wait half a century. You want that nice neighborhood now, without investing the time to create it.

[ggreer]

Nobody is trying to take your grandmother's house away. She can keep her house until somebody offers her enough money for her want to sell it. What you want is for your grandmother to be able to control what everyone around her is allowed to do with their property. If others want to sell their homes for millions so that apartments can be built (bringing in more people and raising their quality of life), why should she be allowed to stop them? The whole point of property rights is to allow this sort of thing.

And free parking? It's city-funded parking. The city owns the roads and maintains them. Long ago, density and car usage was low enough that the city had more than enough parking spots to go around. Now it's different. You have to drive around for a while to find an open spot. You pay in time instead of money. For many of us, that's not a worthwhile trade.

Also, I do wonder what the property taxes are on that $2,000,000 home. If the owner hasn't changed, it could be ridiculously low. In most states, the outcome of property taxes is that they encourage more economically efficient use of land. This is very important because land is a scarce resource in cities. Sadly, prop 13 has made this not the case in California.

My grandfather fought in the Vietnam war. About a decade after he retired, two new families moved into the houses next door to him: a Vietnamese family on his left and a Russian family on his right. This caused him great distress. Should he have been allowed to stop those families from living next to him? I don't think so, and I think building apartments in the neighborhood causes far less distress than that.

[chimi]

> Nobody is trying to take your grandmother's house away.

Wrong, because of:

> the outcome of property taxes is that they encourage more economically efficient use of land

County assessors routinely change the valuations of real property and the taxes you pay are proportionate to that valuation -- not what you paid for it. If she bought the place for $20,000, which is likely in 1962, then she likely cannot even afford the taxes on the property anymore and would be forced to leave.

[ggreer]

Prop 13 means that property taxes on residences in California cannot increase more than 2% per year. It also mandates that reassessment cannot happen unless ownership changes hands or significant construction is done (such as tearing down the house and building something else).

Basically, the longer you own a house in California, the lower your effective property taxes are.

But your main point is correct: A more productive use of the land would be for grandma to sell her home to a developer who would then build apartments. Reassessing property taxes every few years is a great way to encourage such developments. Again, the end result isn't to take someone's home. It's to tax them commensurate with the value of the land (a scare resource in cities). If they don't think the taxes are worth it, they can sell their land (usually for millions of dollars) and move to a place where land isn't as expensive.

[souprock]

I don't think the neighbors want apartments either. That would instantly crater the desirability of the neighborhood. This matters both for the people concerned about finances and for the people who just want to live their lives in peace.

You can't just move a really old person without increasing the risk of death. She would lose her connections to church and family. She would lose the familiarity of her home, both inside and out. This would likely cause depression and might even cause confusion.

If we're going to be coveting land, what about the park? The land value of Golden Gate Park is immense. People wanting a park can go visit one where the land isn't as expensive.

[njarboe]

California has a law called Prop 13 which sets the valuation of a property, for tax purposes, to what you bought it at. It then can increase at a maximum of 2% per year. This started in 1976, so this person might only have to pay tax on a valuation of say $100k for the $2 million house.

[echelon]

> then she likely cannot even afford the taxes on the property anymore and would be forced to leave.

So you're saying she can't afford it. She can't afford to support the city that she now finds herself the beneficiary of? Perhaps because not enough people are paying property taxes? If there was more housing to go around, there would be more people to share that responsibilty.

If she sells she'll be well compensated. She can move somewhere more affordable and have plenty of money left over to give her kids.

[echelon]

> Back in 1962 my grandma [...]

Good for her. She could actually afford to own. This generation doesn't have the same luxury.

I hope Millennials and Gen-Z will be courteous enough to not defund social security and Medicare. They're growing pretty angry with student loans, cost of living, and inability to afford housing and retirement. They'll be looking for someone to blame when they're 40 and jaded.

> You would change it forever, adding all the charm of a trailer park or housing project. The free parking would be gone.

That's extreme. I was going to say apartment tower, which makes much more sense than single family dwellings with wasted space for parking cars.

> You're trying to cheat by skipping a step. You don't want to wait half a century. You want that nice neighborhood now, without investing the time to create it.

I own a half million dollar condo on the Atlanta Beltline. By all rights I should be a NIMBY too, but I empathize with those that are struggling and hope for densification and affordability. I didn't buy my place as an "investment" - I bought it because I love it and the neighborhood I live in. Lower house prices will mean lower property taxes, so it'd be a win-win. I want them to build more here.

Housing shouldn't be an investment you horde and keep from others because you've already got yours. Housing is an escape from constant shackles of rent-seeking. It should be accessible. People this generation don't even have that as a dream anymore...

> neighborhood you now covet

SF is a smelly and cold quagmire, and I only travel for business. It's a total monoculture without a thriving art or music scene. I've no interest in ever living there.

Tech either needs to pack up and leave, the law needs to enable denser building, or land owners need to see their values drop through steep, progressive taxation.

SF the city is extorting too much from business for not much in return - all of their employees are getting fleeced by the cost of housing. Businesses should shop elsewhere for a better run town that isn't controlled by rent seeking leeches preventing progress because they refuse to work hard and add new value.

I'm hoping tech leaves. My startup will be on the east coast.

[souprock]

This generation also has the luxury of building homes on undesirable hills in cities without a tech industry. Nothing has changed. My grandma might have wished to build in lower Manhattan, but that was already occupied and expensive. She went where the land was affordable.

She also didn't really get her home as an financial investment, and she is unlikely to personally benefit from the increase in value. There was no way to know she'd get lucky. She used the home to raise 7 kids and will probably die there. As you say, it was her "escape from constant shackles of rent-seeking".

It's not smelly on her street.

I also hope that tech moves elsewhere. It's insane to cram everything onto a tiny peninsula. I did go to an east coast start-up, and it worked out nicely. There's also that whole middle of the country. Nebraska, Oklahoma, and Wyoming are all fine places to live.

[nullc]

> She also didn't really get her home as an financial investment,

Probably good thing she didn't. You say the home is worth $2m today... Well if she invested $7397 in the S&P500 in 1962 it would be worth $2m today.

I'm going to guess she spent more than $7397 for the home and a lot more than $0 on taxes and upkeep. :) So if the home had been bought as an investment it wouldn't have been an amazing one.

I think it's important to point this out due to the other comments that seem to think that she's the recipient of some kind of astonishing windfall, she isn't.

The point the other commenters are making about Prop13 is a good one, however. Your central argument is essentially the problem Prop13 is intended to and actually does solve.

And bonus: You can inherit the property from her and preserve its tax level... so rising property values won't even force it out of your families ownership, not at least until you start running into estate taxes.

[Unfortunately, prop13 is also a lot stronger than what would be minimally required to solve the problem of property taxes pushing people out of their homes. E.g. some other states have similar rules but they only apply to a single residential property per person that they're required to live in, and as a result it causes a rather extreme burden shift onto newer residents including ones who opt to live in less expensive locations...]

There are plenty of reasons why nearby development can be a serious taking of an existing resident's property rights... but in California jacking up your property taxes is not one of those reasons.

Your point about parking is an actual argument that you could probably develop further. But I'm guessing that young able bodied posters who are used to living in an urban hellscape won't buy any argument that reliable nearby parking is a quality of life issue. :)

[jadead]

>They'll be looking for someone to blame when they're 40 and jaded.

No need to wait. I'm 23 and I already feel jaded.

I can't comprehend why anyone would want to treat their primary residence as an investment. My mom bought a tiny apartment in an eastern European country 30 years ago for almost nothing that has appreciated and is now worth $35000. The problem? She wants to move and an actually desirable apartment costs twice as much. Two times almost nothing is still almost nothing. Two times $35000 is $70000 which is something she can't afford.

House appreciation ends up being a a net loss because it kills any potential exit strategy. Want to cash out? You will have to sell your house and then rent for obscene prices. Want to upgrade? Better houses appreciate faster than your low end house, so you have to cough up more money. Want to move to a different location that costs the same? Your taxes have appreciated too.

So the only way this investment strategy can pay off is if you want to move away from the place which is obviously what doesn't happen because people buy homes to stay there, not to move away in 30 years after their homes have appreciated.

[throwaway34241]

They can start their own company too for a job, maybe bring their own venture capital firm to fund it, and probably they should also bring a few tens of thousands of like minded employees with them to get a liquid job market going and good network effects. The problem is that it's super hard to do those things, even for nation-states.

It's actually very hard to imagine that your grandma did those things either.

There exist plenty of nice tree-lined streets around the country with free parking. In hardly any of them do houses cost $2,000,000. I think the reason housing is so desirable/expensive has very little to do with your grandma's choices and more to do with historical and economic factors that individuals have little control over.

There are certainly trade offs to be made. Housing has already become unaffordable for middle class people growing up here (that don't inherit a house), and many lower income people already commute multiple hours each day. But solving this problem might involve some homeowners (with already huge financial windfalls), not exactly giving up their homes, but having to look at some buildings and/or people they don't like.

All that being said, strip malls in the south bay would probably make more sense for redevelopment than already-dense SF neighborhoods (and I've been to the area of SF you're talking about and can certainly acknowledge the charm).