Biden to call for 5% cap on annual rent increases, as he tries to show plans to tame inflation
Biden to call for 5% cap on annual rent increases, as he tries to show plans to tame inflation
President Joe Biden is ready to propose a 5% cap on annual rent increases for tenants of major landlords.
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Cool, but also cap property tax increases as well. Mine have increased over 10% for the last 3 years.
They did this in California and Oregon, then the schools went to shit.
Also, property taxes are a good way to encourage density, which is necessary to fight climate change
Can they even cap that? That's a state tax, I feel like that's one that you would need to deal directly with your state to resolve. As someone who lives in one of the highest property tax states, I also wish this could happen...
Be careful what you wish for. California capped property tax increase since 1978 with prop 13 and most experts say this is a major factor in their insanely expensive housing market. Most people are heavily incentivized to never move to keep their low property tax rate, but this in turn prevents most new development and upzoning while simultaneously leading to the worst sprawl in the nation.
It also starves the state of tax revenue requiring them to levy the tax further for new buyers and seek other income streams like heightened income and sales tax. Policies like this somewhat unintuitively only benefit those who are already well off. Renters and younger people gain no benefit and ultimately pay higher property taxes than those who already are financially established enough to own a property.
A healthy property tax disincentivizes housing as a speculative investment, improving the overall market for people who actually live there. There should certainly be breaks for poverty and financial distress but capping or cutting rates broadly encourages speculation. For a basic human need such high degree of speculation benefits nobody.
Isn't that due to the reassessment of property tax when a new owner purchases the property? And wouldn't that be solved if the cap persists regardless of ownership change?
That just puts an insane value premium on older housing stock
That's how it's done in Oregon and we also have high housing costs. The housing costs are more likely tied to the massive demand of people moving to the coasts and lack of housing than property tax rates. The above argument doesn't even make sense to me as someone who moves within California is still only going to own one house so how does that make housing cheaper and more available whether they move or not? It only works if they move out of state and if that's the case, they aren't going to be affected by the property tax increase on a new purchase anyway.
Did those "experts" note that the rest of the country, that people want to live in, have the same insane high prices and yet don't have that cap? No, don't bother I already know the answer and so do you.
Economics isn't a science, it is playtime daydreaming. Which is fine, I enjoy my weekly D&D session. The thing is I know I am not a lvl 12 mountain dwarf fighter.
Is the property tax rate that's increasing or your home's appraised value? My home has doubled in appraised value since we bought it in 2016, so our taxes have doubled as well.
No, property tax is basically the only direct motivation in place for home owners to vote for politicians and policies that will keep housing affordable for future generations and people who don't already own a home. Otherwise why wouldn't home owners want to see housing prices skyrocket in value if there's no financial downside for them (and a giant payout when they do sell)? As mentioned in other comments, some states have tried property tax caps, and the result is creating a system of haves and have nots based entirely around who was lucky enough to buy into the market before it shot to the moon.
I agree that’s the problem. Property taxes go up, rent has to go up to cover it. If property taxes go up by X amount but you can’t raise rent the appropriate amount then there’s a problem.
We need to cap both.
You could just make slightly less money. It is allowed. It isn't like chemical reaction balance thing. It isn't even that they are losing money, they are just making less than they want.
Make slightly less is one thing. Going negative is another. Many landlords work on a shoe string budget.
Oh darn. Maybe they should get jobs if money is so tight!
I am sure with all the lawyers and accountants that work in Washington DC they can easily structure it to deal with a few edge cases. I am pretty sure my dumbass could figure it out. Maybe a tiered system looking at the last few years, ones that are on there verge of failure have more control compared to ones doing well.
These two things are not linked. Rent already is as high as the market will bear, property taxes will come out of landlord profits.
How are they not linked? The taxes have to be paid. The money comes from the rent.
Likely not, I think if taxes go up 10% rent will go up 10%+ percent.
Yeah, that doesn't math out.
Also, my rent got hiked 13% last year, despite the taxes remaining the same. Which is why I threw everything I had into getting out of renting.