> You don’t start from scratch. You sell your existing house, which has benefited from inflation, then buy somewhere with the same mortgage payment over the same remaining duration you had if you choose not to trade up.
In California, Prop 13 means that property taxes are essentially fixed and nonincreasing at the time you purchase your house.
This is sometimes used as a defense of Prop 13, but all it really means is that any increase in total tax burden has to fall disproportionately (in fact, almost exclusively) on new purchasers and their tenants.
Forcing someone to relocate means giving up that privileged tax status and starting over "from scratch".
Wouldn't that be priced into the relocation package you negotiate? It is a problem but no different than buying a home in a flood plain, if it's something you have to do.
Or maybe not, I have never negotiated relocation and the only industry I have to base an example off of is oil and gas and they pay ridiculous amounts of money so you get a comparable house/mortgage to your old one
> Wouldn't that be priced into the relocation package you negotiate? It is a problem but no different than buying a home in a flood plain, if it's something you have to do.
I can't imagine a relocation package pricing in foregone tax benefits.
But even if it did, that's a one-time payment in exchange for giving up a benefit that exists in perpetuity. There are ways in accounting to discount the benefit of indefinite/perpetual annuities and compare them against current cash value, and in practice they almost always undervalue the former, often by limiting the future time window.
California is only one state, I would also be upset to lose my 3% interest rate. Oil and gas companies will price that in and goes 1-2% over what you would lose. So maybe I just have a skewed perspective of relocation packages since I only have o&g to compare to
There is one limited exception: once you’re 55, you can transfer your existing property tax base (but only if the county you’re moving to allows it), but only once.
This is a ridiculous system, and there really needs to be property tax reform in CA, but it needs to be done in such a way that it doesn’t fuck over existing property owners, which is really difficult.
> but it needs to be done in such a way that it doesn’t fuck over existing property owners
This is impossible. The current system is such an extreme and unsustainable transfer of wealth towards property owners that there's no way to create a sustainable (let alone equitable) system that doesn't involve current property owners giving something up.
End Prop 13 protections for all property purchases. Stop grandfathering in existing property when it's inherited. It'll really fuck over new buyers in the short-term. But it's one way to get less resistance from existing owners - who are largely voters. And the skyrocketing property taxes on new purchases might put a damper on prices.
One of the main reasons behind Proposition 13 was to constrain rapid growth of local government expenses, and it has been effective in that. We do need to reform it so that the tax burden is distributed more fairly, but I won't vote for ending it without some guarantees on limiting government spending.
How do places without something like Prop 13 constrain the rapid growth of local government expenses?
Why is limiting government expenditure a goal in and of itself? If the government is able to raise enough tax money to support that spending, and voters agree with it, why shouldn't the government spend more?
In California, Prop 13 means that property taxes are essentially fixed and nonincreasing at the time you purchase your house.
This is sometimes used as a defense of Prop 13, but all it really means is that any increase in total tax burden has to fall disproportionately (in fact, almost exclusively) on new purchasers and their tenants.
Forcing someone to relocate means giving up that privileged tax status and starting over "from scratch".