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JeromePowellAdmirer t1_jdhwg87 wrote

I'm ready to get down voted into oblivion - I ain't complaining. As a renter this is part of why McGinley Square area in an older building is cheaper than an equivalent older building in Boston. The land portion of a property tax is impossible to pass down to renters because the supply of land is fixed. Only the building portion gets passed down. I wonder what the median value of a property in this metro is? People who can afford to pay high taxes should be taxed to fund social services.

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Blecher_onthe_Hudson t1_jdjulaj wrote

>The land portion of a property tax is impossible to pass down to renters because the supply of land is fixed. Only the building portion gets passed down.

I honestly have no idea what you're talking about. You can charge whatever the market will bear on unregulated housing. You can also structure it however you want. I found including free heat and laundry in the rent was hurting me in the search algorithms, so I broke it out into a fixed surcharge and lowered the rent. Separate water charges are common in some areas of the country. I don't see a legal reason a landlord can't simply break out the tenant portion of the tax and call it a separate charge if they like, and lower the 'rent' charge.

>I wonder what the median value of a property in this metro is?

You seem oddly helpless for an admirer of a numbers wonk.

https://www.redfin.com/graphs/image/regional-housing-market/home_prices/9168/6/All/0/1

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JeromePowellAdmirer t1_jdk8ue4 wrote

You've never read the economics behind how a land value tax can't be passed down?

The supply of land is fixed. You can't pass the burden of a tax onto consumers if the supply is fixed.

This has nothing to do with whether you can charge market rates for the housing. Of course you can charge market rates for the housing. The market rate ain't going to include the land portion of the property tax. As you yourself say they're gonna have to decrease the rent if they want to keep charging the profit maximizing rate with the land value tax. This is not true of the building portion of the tax. Supply is not fixed there.

My question was quite clearly rhetorical.

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Blecher_onthe_Hudson t1_jdkq6dn wrote

Huh. Fascinating. I guess the fact that my tenants pay 100% of the tax on all my properties is just an illusion.

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[deleted] t1_jdlappa wrote

[deleted]

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Blecher_onthe_Hudson t1_jdnaqui wrote

1st, your whole theory is a fiction built upon a fiction. Almost one cares about the proportion of land to improvement in their tax. The tax is the tax. Further, the 'land proportion' is utter nonsense with zero basis in reality. Mine is $400k on a property that is identical to a vacant lot across the street with identical zoning that sold for $3m 5 years ago. Another property has it's land at $225k, while the identical lot next door is at $150k. Appraisals are voodoo at best, criminal at worst. Assessments are even worse.

2nd, you've made a whole lot of erroneous assumptions about me and my politics. I am never NIMBY, never complain about my taxes, and support urbanism at all times.

But you are correct on my Rent Control views, it is theft of private property, pure and simple. Instead of socializing the cost of housing the less fortunate like a civilized society, we have decided that rental property owners alone should bear the cost. Rent control is 2nd only to exclusive zoning in causing the housing shortage that drives up costs.

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