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‘My Property Tax Went From $15K to a Life-Altering $91K a Year’
(www.yahoo.com)
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this post was submitted on 15 May 2025
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Like almost every issue, property taxes aren't a binary issue - it's not a matter of either having them or not having them. There's the sub-issue of how the rates are set. Simply tying property taxes to home value isn't fair, because the burden a person puts on city services doesn't increase just because the perceived value of their home rises. You don't actually receive any of that value until you sell your house and leave, but you're taxed on it anyway. Being taxed when you sell the house would make perfect sense to me, because that's when you actually reap the benefits.
The argument that people in high-priced neighborhoods are rich and can afford or deserve to pay higher property taxes is unrealistic. Recent newcomers, yes, but not people who bought homes when they were still cheap because the area wasn't so desirable. Those people are no different from people who buy cheap houses today, they just did it a long time ago. But they get charged premium rates because the perceived value of their home increased. That way of assessing property taxes isn't fair, it's just bureaucratically easy.
I think property tax should be heavily weighted by the original price you paid for your house, and should go up with inflation and the cost of services. It should not be flatly tied to the price you would get for your house if you hypothetically sold it.
They are actually rich. They have earned in many cases more money in real estate than many people have earned working
Uhhh no... the value of your house is what somebody might buy it for IF YOU SOLD IT. Until you actually do sell it, you don't get that money or "make money in real estate". As I said, taxing you at the point where you sell the house would make sense to me - because that's when you're actually getting money. The way property taxes are now, people are being taxed on money they might hypothetically get in the future.
Now it's true that you can borrow against your home value - this is known as a home equity loan or a line of credit. So you potentially have that available - but even that is not "making money in real estate", it's borrowing money that you have to pay back.
Srsly, what grade are you in?
They are paying money based on wealth they can obtain at any time directly by selling. So if you pay $50k and end with a 4M home you can sell it and live on the millions of dollars.
What if the real estate market cools off and they never get their millions of dollars - do you think they should get a refund for all the years they paid the higher tax on the expectation of getting rich which never happened?
It depends how much home value correlates to house size and lot size. A $1M 1500 sqft bungalow on a 1/4 acre lot in a gentrified neighborhood may not burden city services more than a $100k 1500 sqft bungalow on a 1/4 acre lot in a bad neighborhood, but a $1M McMansion on a 2-acre lot on the edge of the city absolutely will. That's because the cost of city services scales with things like increasing the length of pavement and sewer pipe across the lot frontage and decreasing the number of homes emergency services can reach within a reasonable distance/time from the station.
Yes, you an come up with edge cases like McMansions next to golf courses, but houses on identical lots right next to each other can have different values and pay different property taxes even though they take the same amount of city services. Remodeling a house, or even just painting it frequently and keeping the yard nicer than others, doesn't make you consume more city services, but it will raise the home's assessed value and property taxes. That's a false link.
Putting a second story on likely includes increasing the number of bedrooms, which theoretically increases the number of people who could be living there and thus increase the burden on city services. Renovating for quality and building additions to the square footage aren't equivalent.
I think lot sizes are still a much bigger factor, though: a house renovated/rebuilt to max out the allowed FAR (floor-area ratio) on a 1/4 acre lot still ought to get taxed less than a modest-sized house on a 2-acre lot.