Real estate General topic

[4570Man]

Even if house prices stay the same, inflation is going to push up salaries for road workers, police officers, teachers, etc. And push up retirement benefit. And the cost of building materials.

Once infrastructure is in place, the cost to keep it going, and maintained, is going to increase. It's only very loosely connected to real estate value.

Look at the opposite-- when house values go down, do the local teachers get paid less?

Property taxes are paid based on assessed value. Property values have rising drastically so of course taxes are going to be higher. My town has lowered the tax rate so taxes actually haven’t increased as much as the value has. I’m not following the thought process that more homes equals the existing homes paying more taxes. I would really think the opposite is true. More homes equals more revenue as well as more sales tax because more people live there. The town probably has to add more employees but I’m not sure the town’s expenses would be a linear graph compared to population.

 

[Jstpssng]

This discussion is starting to sound like the definition of an enviromentalist... somebody who already has their place in the woods.,

 

[paulsharvey]

As someone who likes property, ag, and rural stuff, as well as hunting property; BUT also makes their money on construction/growth/development, it's always a bit of a conflicted opinion for me. Every rural town is constantly trying to balance all this. No growth, and they die, or at the very least, stagnate and become a mix of retired people who have money, mixed with impoverished locals. Completely uncontrolled development is also bad.

There is a lot of shades of grey between those extremes. The people making the decisions are sometimes good at stricking a balance; other times, complete idiots who make dumb rules to win votes. Bad decisions of these types take Decades to undo.

I built an addition on a small charter school in Micanopy FLa back in 07/08. Micanopy hadn't had a single new construction permit in like 4 years prior. Sure, it had it's historic buildings, retired college professors, artist kinda group, and then like 40% unemployed local population. They fought like heck over a simple Dollar General trying to build there. Now, would it be reasonable for the town of like 800 to maybe have a cap of some sort, like; we have 125 existing residential structures. and 15 commercial in the city limits; so we only grant 15 new building permits per year? IDK; but their knee jerk reaching to to say No to everything.

 

[ning]

This is so true.

I once saw what I describe as the "cheesiest" pre-qual letter ever written. To "pre-qualify" a buyer as being financially qualified. I knew the prospective buyer was *not* qualified at all, but it said something like:

"we have spoken with Mr. xxx, and we may be able to provide a loan on the property he is viewing based on provision of further information such as a review of credit and income history."

basically "for what it's worth, we have pre-qualified Mr. xxx to apply for a loan"

 

[WinterDeere]

Your house is worth 2-3 times what it was worth 5 years ago. How would you expect your taxes to not increase regardless of what anyone else builds? I’m not following the idea that more building equals higher taxes either.

Taxes are not tied to change in property value, hence the use of a standard assessment year. Our house has doubled in value over the last 12 years, if one is to believe the comparative estimates provided by sites like Zillow, but our taxes have gone up only a small fraction of that.

 

[kenmbz]

In my old town they added over 1000 apartments and 800 condos.
They estimated 1 child per 2 apartments, and none for the condos.
The actual increase was over 1600 new children in the school system. Just the first year.

Apartments pay much much less than a house in taxes.
So the high school had to expand.
4 elementary schools were expanded.
a new middle school and admin building were built.
Then there is roads, lighting, sewer, water, another 20 police officers and an extension to the police and court buildings. More equipment for the fire department.

So taxes when I moved in $9000, when I left &17000, now up to $20,000 for the new owners.
They just built some more condos.
The next town over where they had more apartments built, got an increase of 20% the year after the apartments with built and then another 25% 2 years later.

Traffic increased, more traffic lights, round abouts added , roads widened.

The list of costs went up and bonds were sold to pay for all this. Which means interest payments to the bond holders on top of the actual costs. Plus building loans etc.

The Mayor at the time retired quite comfortably in another state.

Oh, and pensions and medical benefits for most town officials, lifetime after 2 years in office.

They had to turn down another development, they could not get right of ways to build more roads and the main artery forecast was double what it could handle.

But the smaller 100-200 unit build outs are still happening. We drove through there last weekend and the field on route one is sprouting more apartment/condos.

I will need to call my friends there to see how much their taxes go up next year once these are completed and the new leader roads and infrastructure are in use.

 

[paulsharvey]

Taxes are not tied to change in property value, hence the use of a standard assessment year. Our house has doubled in value over the last 12 years, if one is to believe the comparative estimates provided by sites like Zillow, but our taxes have gone up only a small fraction of that.

Ok, here in FLa, all property taxes are based directly on the property value. Yes, the 'Save Our Home' amendment Max's assest3d value for your primary residence at something like 3% per year, but that value gets a new base line when it sells. Sure, there is also ad valorem or whatever taxes of like $50/year for trash pick up, that is same for a $1m or $50k home; but the vast majority is directly tied to the home value.

 

[paulsharvey]

My mom is from Penn, and if I remember correctly, she said up there, property tax was based on footprint square footage of a home; which encouraged 2nd story and/or basements, as they didn't add to the footprint.

 

[JasperFrank]

Oregon seems to have a pretty good system for keeping farmland in farms. Each town or city has to declare an urban growth boundary following state guidelines. Outside that, it's usually tough to change the zoning or subdivide though that depends some on the county. It seems to have greatly reduced the kind of suburban sprawl on what was formerly good farmland that has happened a lot in California.

Oregonians complain that the regulations are why housing is expensive, but I don't think it's a major factor. In most places I have seen there are still a lot of parcels to build on within the growth boundary, and the availability of land is just one factor of many that determines how expensive it is to build a house.

Uhm.... this is not the case anymore. The land use restrictions in Oregon are basically meaningless. At least they are meaningless in Lane County.

 

[fishheadbob]

More housing means more families needing need more schools, services, and other tax gobbling items. We need businesses. Unless your local government gave them a multi-year tax break to locate in their community, businesses pay a lot more in property taxes than they consume.