CX500T

Prop 13 is the real estate version of "pull up the ladder, I got mine"

DarkSideMoon

As someone who wants to move to California eventually, it does sting. Bigger picture though, I think it’s a good way to retain and reward the people that lived there longest. Why should someone who has lived in a place when it was quiet and relatively cheap be pushed out just because the neighbors built expensive houses and it became a hot area to live?

I am not anti-gentrification by any means, but I’ve seen families living in neighborhoods their whole lives only to be pushed out at the end by rising property taxes. I think that’s a fair way to let those people stay without getting in the way of the natural growth and development of a neighborhood.

Profane Kahuna

Over a decade. Beautiful scenery, decent surf, ridiculous policies resulting in insane cost of living. The entire thing is unsustainable and people are fleeing the state.

Profane Kahuna

I have rentals in the Austin area. I make a killing on them and the property taxes were capped this year by the governor. My friends who have rentals in California can’t get enough rent to cover the mortgage. Oh yeah, the state income tax is zero percent.

full of luv

What I wanted (because I cashed out last year in fact of my rental) is for the voters to quit spending so much money on govt, or at least when they do, agree to make everybody pay for it.

If I were "king" of Cali, I'd make every boondoggle (public train) and prison guard raise come attached with a bill to the taxpayer that they all would see and pay.

If I continued renting my house in that neighborhood, I'd be essentially locked in at that property tax valuation until I died, no matter how many families moved in and enjoyed the services that the "suckers" that bought more recently were forced to pay for. If you don't see the inequity in that, then I can't help you. As a landlord, I'd be able to continually make more money while rents rose, but not have to worry about crazy CA spending....ie taxes.

I benefited from the "system" several years by keeping my house as a rental, enjoying much lower taxes than many of my neighbors and would agree that it's not "fair" from a moral sense, apparently it is from a legal sense.

highfarfast

I agree with this sentiment. I'm not a fan of ANY tax that isn't based on sales... all the rest feel like legalized theft to me. But I can understand and get behind an annual property tax based on the price of the last sale. Raising someone's property tax because the houses around them has spiked in value is just crazy. No one should ever feel the need to sell their home to pay property taxes.

FWIW, I came to this ideology not from Cali, but from Texas. I bought my first Texas home at a price I thought I could afford and factored taxes into that price I could afford. However, for tax purposes, it had not been evaluated by the county tax authority for many years. My buying the house triggered a new valuation. Normally, this valuation increase is limited on a percentage per year but because a certain modification had been made to the home, that limitation did not apply... actually, there was no legal limit to what the county could say the house was worth in this situation. So they determined the house was valued WAY beyond what I actually paid and I had to pay taxes at a valuation rate WAY beyond what I had paid on the open market the first year I paid taxes.

The difference was enough that, while we could still keep our new home, I had to re-budget our finances. Really, that should never EVER happen. And this was in TEXAS. Not California.

Profane Kahuna

Uhhhhhh you should have easily been able to have the valuation lowered to match the purchase price. I had to do the same thing, no problem.

at6d

If prop 13 is repealed and 100% of the property owners would suddenly owe assessed taxes based on million dollar average valuations, the economy would collapse.

highfarfast

This was years ago and I don't remember how all the details went down. I do know that I tried to protest to the county tax assessor and when all was said and done, the property taxes on my house was based on a valuation of more than what I actually paid and the property taxes on my houses went up over 40% from one year to the next.

Omniscient

I can remember as far back as 2000, Texas residents being allowed to appeal your appraisal and arrange a date to argue your case in front of the tax accessors office. There is quite a few business firms that will argue your case for you, in exchange for a percentage of the savings...point being, there is a process in place and it sounds like you missed it and the local government took full advantage of you. Sorry you got hosed but just trying to point out the system isnt as rouge as what happened to you.