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by souprock
2444 days ago
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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. |
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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. :)