8 ms·

California Property Taxes Mapped

28 points by vqc 6y ago

twblalock 6y ago
This is a good illustration of bad tax policy, specifically Prop 13. Zoom in on a residential street, particularly in the Bay Area, and you will see a row of houses which are roughly equivalent in value. Some homeowners pay several times as much annual property tax as their neighbors, because they bought their homes more recently and paid more for them. That's kind of insane, and nobody would design the property tax system that way if they were starting from scratch.
- nathanvanfleet 6y ago
  America is so setup for people who already have theirs. It's mind boggling
  - babesh 6y ago
    Do you know who voted it in? It’s not an officeholder. The voters of California voted for it. You want it changed? Go get a proposition to repeal it into the ballot and get it approved by the voters. It’s as simple as that. It wasn’t designed this way. There was a complaint that elderly were being driven from their homes by high property taxes.
    - lambdaops 6y ago
      Whenever you hear someone bring up the "elderly being priced out" issue, please point out the property tax postponement program: https://sco.ca.gov/ardtax_prop_tax_postponement.html https://sco.ca.gov/ardtax_prop_tax_postponement.html
- seiferteric 6y ago
  Counterpoint: Why should your property taxes go up just because the market around you skyrockets, when this is completely outside of your control? The bay area is a prime example of this.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - SamReidHughes 6y ago
    Because everybody else's does. If ownership transfer didn't reset the rates, it would be a slightly different story. Edit: In that, it'd still be something that makes an economist cringe, and it'd still be "unfair" but in fewer ways.
  - twblalock 6y ago
    Maybe the solution is to stop making property tax the main way that cities are funded. Among other things, this method of taxation tightly couples school funding to local home values. Areas with expensive homes have the best schools. (And areas with cheap homes have bad schools, which is not really what you want if you are trying to do something about inter-generational poverty.) This is self-reinforcing because now parents compete with each other to buy homes that are located in the best school districts, which drives up prices even more. When home values drop, such as they did in 2008, property tax revenue drops too (Prop 13 is not a one-way ratchet, you can get re-appraised and lower your taxes, and 2008-2009 was a pretty convenient time to do that). It doesn't seem like a good idea to base city revenue on something that is so undependable, especially something that is so often treated as a speculative investment. What I would rather do is come up with a system where a simple tax is paid per parcel, perhaps a flat tax or one based on the size of the parcel, and which is not based on the market value of the parcel. The rest of city funding can be covered by income tax -- unlike the current system, at least that has a chance of being progressive. No old people will be priced out of their homes by tax increases, and school funding would be distributed somewhat more evenly because not all high earners live in the most expensive areas. And if you are worried about an influx of high earners flooding into your area and driving up the prices, a local income tax would certainly discourage them.
    - bradlys 6y ago
      > It doesn't seem like a good idea to base city revenue on something that is so undependable, especially something that is so often treated as a speculative investment. Isn't property tax a pretty reliable source of income?? I thought the income tax was an unreliable source of income because people can't always be relied on to generate income... but they do tend to pay their property tax.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- toast0 6y ago
  It's kind of insane. But it's also kind of insane that when the housing prices double or triple, you can expect your property tax to go up quite a bit as well, which makes it hard to plan for the future. I think if the value increase cap was raised (gradually) to something like 4-5% per year, you would still have assessed values trailing market values, but not by nearly as much. People could still make worst case projections of taxes to see if they could afford things. Washington state has a different system, where the total property tax of each taxing jurisdiction can only increase by 1% each year (subject to exceptions and what not), and then that amount is apportioned to each property based on the assessed value. This provides a limit on government spending as CA prop 13 does, but it doesn't limit changes in tax on any individual homeowner; if your property becomes more relatively valuable than others in your taxing districts, your bill goes up and theirs goes down. Which I'm sure causes assessments to be a lot more contenious.
  - cameldrv 6y ago
    The solution is to let people run a tab with the government. Make the minimum payment the Prop 13 rate, but if there's a change in ownership, you have to pay back the difference plus a fair rate of interest. This ensures that no one has to move because their home appreciated, but it also ensures that no one gets to pay taxes like their home never appreciated, but then pocket appreciation at sale time.
    - danhak 6y ago
      This seems like it might introduce a different perverse incentive for people to remain in their homes indefinitely even if they’d prefer to downsize / move. Might further exacerbate supply / demand issues.
      - deepakhj 6y ago
        You can allow people to carry it with them if they purchase another home. They should not be able to pass it to their children. It should also only apply to a primary residence. No investment properties or 2nd homes+.
- ladberg 6y ago
  I found a few places in Beverly Hills where people were paying over 100x less than their neighbors, which is insane. I wonder if posting screenshots of this map up in various neighborhoods showing nearby inequality would be enough combat the "poor old grandma getting kicked out of her house" counterpoint that's pretty much entirely fictional.
  - lambdaops 6y ago
    Note: seniors can use the property tax postponement program https://sco.ca.gov/ardtax_prop_tax_postponement.html https://sco.ca.gov/ardtax_prop_tax_postponement.html
- nullc 6y ago
  Many, ... most? states have some kind of homesteading tax relief. For example, in Florida property tax increases are capped to the lesser of 3% or CPI. 25k of value is also exempted from property taxes and 50k is exempted from non-school property taxes. But only for a single primary residential property. Where CA13 is different is that it applies to everything: commercial property, industrial property, rental property, second homes, third homes, etc. I think there is a pretty good case to be made that there is a massive public interest in keeping people from being pushed out of their homes by taxes. Capping tax increases is also necessary to make it possible to financially plan for them (e.g. I can invest enough so that my investments will pay the taxes w/ increases for the rest of my life, and just add that to the 'cost' of the home-- given historical market returns this requires investment of 25x your annual property taxes, so long as they can't grow faster than inflation). One could also make the case for a public interest in not letting some businesses get pushed out (primarily small, single location businesses). But prop 13 goes far beyond that-- applying to all property and with extremely expansive portability-- and as a result creates a massive windfall for existing property owners at the expense of new property owners. I'd like to see at least a rule that for rented properties that assessments should be allowed to increase as much as rents have. There is little to no prevent-displacement justification for not tracking rents.
  - twblalock 6y ago
    > But prop 13 goes far beyond that-- applying to all property and with extremely expansive portability-- and as a result creates a massive windfall for existing property owners at the expense of new property owners. It's even worse than that -- it creates a massive incentive not to sell homes. People who have owned homes for more than just 10 years would see their property taxes double if they sold their homes today and bought another home for the same price elsewhere in the state. The longer you have owned your home, the worse the tax increase becomes. It's kind of crazy that the people who bought their homes a long time ago, and therefore have realized the most return on investment, pay the least taxes. Meanwhile, people who bought their homes this year, and have made little to no investment return, pay the most taxes of anyone.
bradlys 6y ago
I think I've seen this map before (it isn't loading as I write this). However, what I'd love to see is: What the property taxes are and what they would be if the property was purchased today. I'm not sure if an absolute amount or a percentage would be more impactful when comparing the two. I'm sure it hits hard to see your neighbors paying 10% of what you pay - but probably just as much seeing $2,000 vs $20,000 in assortments.
- twblalock 6y ago
  I think you can pretty much look at the highest tax being paid on a particular street and assume that everyone else would pay the same. Most of the time, all the houses on a street in California are roughly similar in value, because they were all built around the same time by the same developer and are very similar, barring extreme examples like Atherton or Beverly Hills where everyone has a custom home.
  - bradlys 6y ago
    I know you think that's true but we have houses on my street varying by ~2x in value and I'm not in Atherton, Palo Alto, or Woodside. It's not extremes like 10x or 5x but these kinds of maps don't really give you great detail. I think the comparison is still needed because there are streets where nearly everyone bought a long time ago.
- nullc 6y ago
  There is another site which tells you the tax subsidy based based on redfin estimated prices. I'm not especially inclined to link to it because it falsely claims that no other state has non-mark-to-market property taxes, and for residences that is simply untrue.
- foogazi 6y ago
  > I'm sure it hits hard to see your neighbors paying 10% of what you pay No one should be surprised by this since it’s public information. Plus if you hang around long enough your taxes also stay frozen
buss 6y ago
Best way to change this is to vote with YIMBY. Check out https://yimbyaction.org/endorsements https://yimbyaction.org/endorsements Also, check out this organization I'm part of: https://techworkers.vote https://techworkers.vote
jedberg 6y ago
On my block we have five nearly identical houses. My house, which I bought 12 years ago, my neighbors house, which they have been in for 22 years, my other neighbor, who has been there 45+ years, the neighbor two over who bought about five years ago, and the neighbor two over the other way who bought two weeks ago. If my tax bill is X, the rates are as follows, for nearly identical houses, all valued nearly the same on Zillow/Redfin: 2.3X 0.4X 1.0X 0.1X 2.0X The two lowest payers don't have kids in school, so an argument could be made for them to have slightly lower taxes, but they still use the police, fire department, parks, and they have access to the senior center, which I do not. The rest of us have kids roughly the same age. So basically the people who just moved in are subsidizing the rest of us significantly. It's completely unfair.
- andy-x 6y ago
  I don't think so. You lived there for a number of years and you already paid fair taxes and when you bought the property you knew what the taxes are going to be and that allowed you to plan your life. People who are buying it now also know what their taxes are going to be now, and they should thank you for your share of the taxes that you paid over the years to keep community in good shape.
  - jedberg 6y ago
    And yet, in the other 49 states without Prop 13, somehow people are able to plan their lives and pay their taxes too. Keeping the taxes artificially low doesn't help with tax planning. > and they should thank you for your share of the taxes that you paid over the years to keep community in good shape. After four years, I'd already paid more in lifetime taxes than my neighbors. After eight years, I've paid more than they will ever pay in their lifetime. After twelve years, my new neighbor will have paid more than my lifetime tax bill. It's completely out of line.
- lambdaops 6y ago
  I grew up with the schools here back in the 90s and we largely couldn't pass new parcel taxes because "their kids already went through school and they didn't need it". They were more concerned with all the growing crime, which you would think that maybe the lack of after school programs and growing unaffordability for everyone else was part of the issue.
jjav 6y ago
A see some data in my neighborhood which is weird. Comparing same model houses only (same as mine), tax rates are in the range of 5K to 8K. But just a couple of the same model houses are shown as $800 to $900! If I didn't know this neighborhood I would jump to the conclusion that those houses have been owned for so long that their taxes are so low and curse prop13. But, I've been in this neighborhood since it was built so I know the tax was never below 2K even on the first year of constructed. So either these outliers are just errors in the published records, or is there some tax exemption program in CA for people who qualify to some criteria? In any case, it does give the impression that the tax range for this model house is $800 to $8K (10x) when that is not true. It is really 5K to 8K.
- umeshunni 6y ago
  > is there some tax exemption program in CA for people who qualify to some criteria? There are exemptions which allow some people (seniors and people with disabilities I think) to be "portable" with their property taxes. I.e they can buy a new property and the taxes of their old property transfer over to the new one.. Edit: found this https://www.boe.ca.gov/proptaxes/prop60-90_55over.htm https://www.boe.ca.gov/proptaxes/prop60-90_55over.htm
  - jjav 6y ago
    Thanks, I was aware of that. I'm not in any of those counties, so that can't explain the outlier tax rates on a few houses here being far lower than the tax on them when first constructed. Might just be errors in the reported data.
foogazi 6y ago
The solution of course is to remove prop 13 protection for commercial real estate
- deepakhj 6y ago
  And remove it from anything but your primary residence that you live in. Allow the homeowner to roll the tax until sale, or keep it if they stay in the state by buying another house. Make it income based as well. If you’re making good money, you’re not a senior that can’t afford to stay in their home.
  - xtiansimon 6y ago
    "senior that can’t afford to stay in their home." Thank you for conceding this exception.
xtiansimon 6y ago
I support prop 13, and raising the tax on golf courses. Revisionist History A GOOD WALK SPOILED SEASON 2 - EP1 http://revisionisthistory.com/episodes/11-a-good-walk-spoiled http://revisionisthistory.com/episodes/11-a-good-walk-spoile...

28 points by vqc 6y ago

This is a good illustration of bad tax policy, specifically Prop 13. Zoom in on a residential street, particularly in the Bay Area, and you will see a row of houses which are roughly equivalent in value. Some homeowners pay several times as much annual property tax as their neighbors, because they bought their homes more recently and paid more for them. That's kind of insane, and nobody would design the property tax system that way if they were starting from scratch.

nathanvanfleet 6y ago
America is so setup for people who already have theirs. It's mind boggling
- babesh 6y ago
  Do you know who voted it in? It’s not an officeholder. The voters of California voted for it. You want it changed? Go get a proposition to repeal it into the ballot and get it approved by the voters. It’s as simple as that. It wasn’t designed this way. There was a complaint that elderly were being driven from their homes by high property taxes.
  - lambdaops 6y ago
    Whenever you hear someone bring up the "elderly being priced out" issue, please point out the property tax postponement program: https://sco.ca.gov/ardtax_prop_tax_postponement.html https://sco.ca.gov/ardtax_prop_tax_postponement.html
seiferteric 6y ago
Counterpoint: Why should your property taxes go up just because the market around you skyrockets, when this is completely outside of your control? The bay area is a prime example of this.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- SamReidHughes 6y ago
  Because everybody else's does. If ownership transfer didn't reset the rates, it would be a slightly different story. Edit: In that, it'd still be something that makes an economist cringe, and it'd still be "unfair" but in fewer ways.
- twblalock 6y ago
  Maybe the solution is to stop making property tax the main way that cities are funded. Among other things, this method of taxation tightly couples school funding to local home values. Areas with expensive homes have the best schools. (And areas with cheap homes have bad schools, which is not really what you want if you are trying to do something about inter-generational poverty.) This is self-reinforcing because now parents compete with each other to buy homes that are located in the best school districts, which drives up prices even more. When home values drop, such as they did in 2008, property tax revenue drops too (Prop 13 is not a one-way ratchet, you can get re-appraised and lower your taxes, and 2008-2009 was a pretty convenient time to do that). It doesn't seem like a good idea to base city revenue on something that is so undependable, especially something that is so often treated as a speculative investment. What I would rather do is come up with a system where a simple tax is paid per parcel, perhaps a flat tax or one based on the size of the parcel, and which is not based on the market value of the parcel. The rest of city funding can be covered by income tax -- unlike the current system, at least that has a chance of being progressive. No old people will be priced out of their homes by tax increases, and school funding would be distributed somewhat more evenly because not all high earners live in the most expensive areas. And if you are worried about an influx of high earners flooding into your area and driving up the prices, a local income tax would certainly discourage them.
  - bradlys 6y ago
    > It doesn't seem like a good idea to base city revenue on something that is so undependable, especially something that is so often treated as a speculative investment. Isn't property tax a pretty reliable source of income?? I thought the income tax was an unreliable source of income because people can't always be relied on to generate income... but they do tend to pay their property tax.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
toast0 6y ago
It's kind of insane. But it's also kind of insane that when the housing prices double or triple, you can expect your property tax to go up quite a bit as well, which makes it hard to plan for the future. I think if the value increase cap was raised (gradually) to something like 4-5% per year, you would still have assessed values trailing market values, but not by nearly as much. People could still make worst case projections of taxes to see if they could afford things. Washington state has a different system, where the total property tax of each taxing jurisdiction can only increase by 1% each year (subject to exceptions and what not), and then that amount is apportioned to each property based on the assessed value. This provides a limit on government spending as CA prop 13 does, but it doesn't limit changes in tax on any individual homeowner; if your property becomes more relatively valuable than others in your taxing districts, your bill goes up and theirs goes down. Which I'm sure causes assessments to be a lot more contenious.
- cameldrv 6y ago
  The solution is to let people run a tab with the government. Make the minimum payment the Prop 13 rate, but if there's a change in ownership, you have to pay back the difference plus a fair rate of interest. This ensures that no one has to move because their home appreciated, but it also ensures that no one gets to pay taxes like their home never appreciated, but then pocket appreciation at sale time.
  - danhak 6y ago
    This seems like it might introduce a different perverse incentive for people to remain in their homes indefinitely even if they’d prefer to downsize / move. Might further exacerbate supply / demand issues.
    - deepakhj 6y ago
      You can allow people to carry it with them if they purchase another home. They should not be able to pass it to their children. It should also only apply to a primary residence. No investment properties or 2nd homes+.
ladberg 6y ago
I found a few places in Beverly Hills where people were paying over 100x less than their neighbors, which is insane. I wonder if posting screenshots of this map up in various neighborhoods showing nearby inequality would be enough combat the "poor old grandma getting kicked out of her house" counterpoint that's pretty much entirely fictional.
- lambdaops 6y ago
  Note: seniors can use the property tax postponement program https://sco.ca.gov/ardtax_prop_tax_postponement.html https://sco.ca.gov/ardtax_prop_tax_postponement.html
nullc 6y ago
Many, ... most? states have some kind of homesteading tax relief. For example, in Florida property tax increases are capped to the lesser of 3% or CPI. 25k of value is also exempted from property taxes and 50k is exempted from non-school property taxes. But only for a single primary residential property. Where CA13 is different is that it applies to everything: commercial property, industrial property, rental property, second homes, third homes, etc. I think there is a pretty good case to be made that there is a massive public interest in keeping people from being pushed out of their homes by taxes. Capping tax increases is also necessary to make it possible to financially plan for them (e.g. I can invest enough so that my investments will pay the taxes w/ increases for the rest of my life, and just add that to the 'cost' of the home-- given historical market returns this requires investment of 25x your annual property taxes, so long as they can't grow faster than inflation). One could also make the case for a public interest in not letting some businesses get pushed out (primarily small, single location businesses). But prop 13 goes far beyond that-- applying to all property and with extremely expansive portability-- and as a result creates a massive windfall for existing property owners at the expense of new property owners. I'd like to see at least a rule that for rented properties that assessments should be allowed to increase as much as rents have. There is little to no prevent-displacement justification for not tracking rents.
- twblalock 6y ago
  > But prop 13 goes far beyond that-- applying to all property and with extremely expansive portability-- and as a result creates a massive windfall for existing property owners at the expense of new property owners. It's even worse than that -- it creates a massive incentive not to sell homes. People who have owned homes for more than just 10 years would see their property taxes double if they sold their homes today and bought another home for the same price elsewhere in the state. The longer you have owned your home, the worse the tax increase becomes. It's kind of crazy that the people who bought their homes a long time ago, and therefore have realized the most return on investment, pay the least taxes. Meanwhile, people who bought their homes this year, and have made little to no investment return, pay the most taxes of anyone.

bradlys 6y ago

I think I've seen this map before (it isn't loading as I write this). However, what I'd love to see is: What the property taxes are and what they would be if the property was purchased today. I'm not sure if an absolute amount or a percentage would be more impactful when comparing the two. I'm sure it hits hard to see your neighbors paying 10% of what you pay - but probably just as much seeing $2,000 vs $20,000 in assortments.

twblalock 6y ago
I think you can pretty much look at the highest tax being paid on a particular street and assume that everyone else would pay the same. Most of the time, all the houses on a street in California are roughly similar in value, because they were all built around the same time by the same developer and are very similar, barring extreme examples like Atherton or Beverly Hills where everyone has a custom home.
- bradlys 6y ago
  I know you think that's true but we have houses on my street varying by ~2x in value and I'm not in Atherton, Palo Alto, or Woodside. It's not extremes like 10x or 5x but these kinds of maps don't really give you great detail. I think the comparison is still needed because there are streets where nearly everyone bought a long time ago.
nullc 6y ago
There is another site which tells you the tax subsidy based based on redfin estimated prices. I'm not especially inclined to link to it because it falsely claims that no other state has non-mark-to-market property taxes, and for residences that is simply untrue.
foogazi 6y ago
> I'm sure it hits hard to see your neighbors paying 10% of what you pay No one should be surprised by this since it’s public information. Plus if you hang around long enough your taxes also stay frozen

buss 6y ago

Best way to change this is to vote with YIMBY. Check out https://yimbyaction.org/endorsements https://yimbyaction.org/endorsements Also, check out this organization I'm part of: https://techworkers.vote https://techworkers.vote

jedberg 6y ago

On my block we have five nearly identical houses. My house, which I bought 12 years ago, my neighbors house, which they have been in for 22 years, my other neighbor, who has been there 45+ years, the neighbor two over who bought about five years ago, and the neighbor two over the other way who bought two weeks ago. If my tax bill is X, the rates are as follows, for nearly identical houses, all valued nearly the same on Zillow/Redfin: 2.3X 0.4X 1.0X 0.1X 2.0X The two lowest payers don't have kids in school, so an argument could be made for them to have slightly lower taxes, but they still use the police, fire department, parks, and they have access to the senior center, which I do not. The rest of us have kids roughly the same age. So basically the people who just moved in are subsidizing the rest of us significantly. It's completely unfair.

andy-x 6y ago
I don't think so. You lived there for a number of years and you already paid fair taxes and when you bought the property you knew what the taxes are going to be and that allowed you to plan your life. People who are buying it now also know what their taxes are going to be now, and they should thank you for your share of the taxes that you paid over the years to keep community in good shape.
- jedberg 6y ago
  And yet, in the other 49 states without Prop 13, somehow people are able to plan their lives and pay their taxes too. Keeping the taxes artificially low doesn't help with tax planning. > and they should thank you for your share of the taxes that you paid over the years to keep community in good shape. After four years, I'd already paid more in lifetime taxes than my neighbors. After eight years, I've paid more than they will ever pay in their lifetime. After twelve years, my new neighbor will have paid more than my lifetime tax bill. It's completely out of line.
lambdaops 6y ago
I grew up with the schools here back in the 90s and we largely couldn't pass new parcel taxes because "their kids already went through school and they didn't need it". They were more concerned with all the growing crime, which you would think that maybe the lack of after school programs and growing unaffordability for everyone else was part of the issue.

jjav 6y ago

A see some data in my neighborhood which is weird. Comparing same model houses only (same as mine), tax rates are in the range of 5K to 8K. But just a couple of the same model houses are shown as $800 to $900! If I didn't know this neighborhood I would jump to the conclusion that those houses have been owned for so long that their taxes are so low and curse prop13. But, I've been in this neighborhood since it was built so I know the tax was never below 2K even on the first year of constructed. So either these outliers are just errors in the published records, or is there some tax exemption program in CA for people who qualify to some criteria? In any case, it does give the impression that the tax range for this model house is $800 to $8K (10x) when that is not true. It is really 5K to 8K.

umeshunni 6y ago
> is there some tax exemption program in CA for people who qualify to some criteria? There are exemptions which allow some people (seniors and people with disabilities I think) to be "portable" with their property taxes. I.e they can buy a new property and the taxes of their old property transfer over to the new one.. Edit: found this https://www.boe.ca.gov/proptaxes/prop60-90_55over.htm https://www.boe.ca.gov/proptaxes/prop60-90_55over.htm
- jjav 6y ago
  Thanks, I was aware of that. I'm not in any of those counties, so that can't explain the outlier tax rates on a few houses here being far lower than the tax on them when first constructed. Might just be errors in the reported data.

foogazi 6y ago

The solution of course is to remove prop 13 protection for commercial real estate

deepakhj 6y ago
And remove it from anything but your primary residence that you live in. Allow the homeowner to roll the tax until sale, or keep it if they stay in the state by buying another house. Make it income based as well. If you’re making good money, you’re not a senior that can’t afford to stay in their home.
- xtiansimon 6y ago
  "senior that can’t afford to stay in their home." Thank you for conceding this exception.

xtiansimon 6y ago

I support prop 13, and raising the tax on golf courses. Revisionist History A GOOD WALK SPOILED SEASON 2 - EP1 http://revisionisthistory.com/episodes/11-a-good-walk-spoiled http://revisionisthistory.com/episodes/11-a-good-walk-spoile...