Dropbox Engineer: Why you shouldn’t buy a home in the Bay Area right now

Well, Prop 13 is for homeowners and landlords. Mojority are homeowners.

Property tax is paid by owners, younger ones pay more to compensate for older ones who pay less. The inequality is between old and new owners. Renters are not paying so they are not relevant.

As a whole group, owners pay all the property tax. Prop 13 make the distribution uneven among owners. Renters are a neutral party since old owners and new owners charge the same rent.

Prop 13 is very fair to renters since it helps to reduce rent on the whole. It’s not fair to new owners but new owners becomes old every day, so it’s fair for your lifecycle.

If you change every house a $10k additional property tax, rent will increase for sure.

Again property tax should be based on government spending, not home price increase or decrease.

Prop 13 is very fair to renters since it helps to reduce rent on the whole.

Wrong. Market charges what buyers (in this case renters) can bear. You don’t think landlords are NOT trying to charge maximum rent they can, do you? Because that’s dumb. Regardless of what property tax is, landlords try to charge the most they can already. Prop taxes only help recoup some profit to landlords.

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When carry burden increases, marginal players will leave the landlord business. Reduced completion means higher rent.

Public policy is based on long term and aggregate supply and demand analysis. It’s wrong to understand macroeconomics from a short term and individual perspective.

In any case, owners pay property tax and renters enjoy the tax free rental in your opinion. Owners provide free school to tenant for free? If property tax is repealed, you think rent would stay the same, right? Then we can just repeal property tax and charge income tax only, that would be fair to both renters and owners.

Using your logic, renters are getting free school and social service at the owner’s expense. Rent would be the same if property tax is repealed, that means that renters are not paying for school, police, fire and other Sevices.

Sudden increase of property tax due to doing away with Prop 13 would cause an immediate reduction in cash flow of landlords and reduced demand for houses thus lower sale.

Steady state, slower increase of house prices (say, from 6-8% to 4-5% p.a.) and higher yield (higher rent/ market price) not necessary higher cap rate :frowning:

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Hey, hey, hey…

A valid reason for why someone not charging maximum rent is the desire to lessen turnover. Come on, why not charge slightly less than market and POSSIBLY get a tenant who stays beyond just one year. Think about it, if you had to eat a month of rent, well, there goes that wonderful top dollar you were hoping for…

No, renters pay for property tax, pro rata/proportional to how much tax is as part of the cost. Owners/landlords get into the business taking that risk, and they are rewarded accordingly.

WHAT???

That’s exact definition of charging maximum rent/optimizing return :slight_smile: Not on a month basis/absolute value, but by charging slightly below market rate, you are maximizing return on your investment by reducing churn & down time on your rental.

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Smart renters. Why is this bad?

We were debating public policy and you are holding a grudge against the housing market. Just buy a house or else a homeless prevention high income renter tax is coming :japanese_goblin:

We’ll debate property tax repeal thereafter

: )

I have been enjoying all these “buy a house, you’ll understand” argument :slight_smile:

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I realized that a smartie and dummie are exactly the same when discussing politics which involves their interest. That’s why elitism will always be defeated in a democracy.

Become a parent and you will understand more.

No one without a child should be allowed to vote.

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Why would i let 80 years old vote? It’s not their future they are voting.
How about that argument?

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Yup. Old people should not be allowed to vote either.

Btw, this exactly sounded like my mother :slight_smile: “you’d understand when you have your own child”. I assume it’s different for american parents, and i come to this country to adopt a bit more of american way of life, frankly.

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You have erred by adopting the bad American habits. Listen to your mother. She’s right.

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it’s ok, every man for himself :slight_smile:

ok. i guess i am going to stop teasing y’all about prop 13 and rent control. @manch and @hanera gets the argument behind how they are very similar. the rest, not so much :slight_smile:

It’s easy to see the symmetry between rent control and prop 13, from the payer perspective.

Rent control limits the amount payer of rent, aka renter, pays.

Prop 13 limits the amount payer of property tax, aka owner, pays.

What’s the difficulty?

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or pay for anything remotely related to schools right???

(silence in the forum…)

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