High property taxes keep many people in the same homes. I am not moving and tripling ( or worse) my property taxes…..therefore the supply of older homes is somewhat frozen. If the goal is to increase the supply of homes and have people move up to newer or bigger homes taxing the activity of ownership higher and higher works against that. Tax and regulation cannot be excessive or the activity is suffocated.
I'm so glad you brought up the point about taxes! This is my favorite paper on the 3 biggest reforms that would help with housing affordability - and "tax reform" is one of them. The idea is to shift taxes from the buildings (like houses) to the land itself. It's called a split-rate tax or land value tax. It's far more equitable than the current structure. https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/Schuetz_Policy2020_BigIdea_Improving-Housing-Afforability.pdf
Great article! Very well thought out.
Thank you!
High property taxes keep many people in the same homes. I am not moving and tripling ( or worse) my property taxes…..therefore the supply of older homes is somewhat frozen. If the goal is to increase the supply of homes and have people move up to newer or bigger homes taxing the activity of ownership higher and higher works against that. Tax and regulation cannot be excessive or the activity is suffocated.
I'm so glad you brought up the point about taxes! This is my favorite paper on the 3 biggest reforms that would help with housing affordability - and "tax reform" is one of them. The idea is to shift taxes from the buildings (like houses) to the land itself. It's called a split-rate tax or land value tax. It's far more equitable than the current structure. https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/Schuetz_Policy2020_BigIdea_Improving-Housing-Afforability.pdf
Funding it via property tax abatement makes sense to me, but it does have a bad rep since it's been abused in larger cities.
inclusionary wont cut it. we must build! rental units only. this is the way