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I don’t know what’s sadder the giant Safeway sandwiches going from $9.99 to $13.99 or my mortgage about to go up like 200 goddamn dollars…
My mortgage has gone up like $300 in the last 14 years due to taxes & insurance... but if I were still a renter it'd have gone up by $1000 (or more?) so I'm not complaining.
You should complain. We’re all getting ripped off.
I mean, my house value quadrupled during that time, so it's kinda fair that I'm paying more property taxes. As for the insurance... I gotta admit I haven't paid much attention.
Unless you are selling the house (which still means you have to buy another one…) it’s paying for unrealized gains which the rich fucks making the rules tell us is so unfair whaaaa whaaaa whaaa (insert child crying noises here)
On the contrary: as a single-family homeowner, I'm being massively subsidized compared to the amount of city services and infrastructure I consume. (It could be worse: I could have a large lot in a car-dependent suburb instead of a small lot in a streetcar suburb and therefore be even more of a leech -- i.e., like those rich fucks you're talking about -- but still, I'm definitely not paying my fair share of taxes.)
If you want to know who's really getting ripped off, it's all the renters in dense apartments. Not only are they paying extra so their landlords can profit, they're paying even more because they're the ones funding the subsidy for single-family homeowners like me. Basically, I'm exploiting them via the skewed way property taxes are assessed. Thanks for funding my privileged lifestyle, people too poor/unluckly to be able to buy a house! 🤑
(But seriously, it really is very unfair and we need to reform the property tax code and, even more importantly, the zoning code.)
It is so messed up how every part of our society is secretly tuned to make being poor trapped yet every rung up the ladder to being wealthy, the journey gets a little easier by hidden subsidies like this.
The problem is that property value of homes has nothing to do with cost of building out city services. In many areas the value of homes is going up much faster than the cost of maintaining the roads and services around them.
Property taxes should be tied to things like acreage, road access, zoning type, and the city's budget. Not the free market value of the home, which is unrelated.
Housing prices have gone up roughly double in the last 10 years, while inflation has only gone up 35%.
It is extremely unfair to single homeowners to be paying for the housing demand increase, and I say this as someone who's only able to rent. Those property taxes get passed right along to me through rent increases.
I watched the entire linked Not Just Bikes video, but I only read the first few paragraphs of that article. Linking to a full article like that is like the opposite of TL;DR.
I think we can agree urban sprawl is a problem. It forces a cities resources to get spread thinner and thinner as things are built out, and like your link video stated, it leaches from the downtown areas that are self-sustaining.
In my opinion the taxes should exactly reflect the expenses such that it incentives more efficient land use. What that would actually look like from a legal sense, I'm not going to pretend I know enough to write.
I only read the first few paragraphs of that article. Linking to a full article like that is like the opposite of TL;DR.
It's even worse than you realized: each word was a separate link. 😅
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_value_tax
- https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/22951092/land-tax-housing-crisis
- https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2019/3/8/if-the-land-tax-is-such-a-good-idea-why-isnt-it-being-implemented
I did write this relatively-short comment about land value taxes yesterday though, if it helps:
No, [land value taxes are] not like property taxes.
The important difference is that when you tax only the land and not the value of the improvements on top, it doesn’t discourage improving the land to its highest and best use the way that property taxes do.
For example, downtown properties with surface parking lots on them (or similarly underdeveloped uses, like self-storage warehouses) ought to pay the same tax as the skyscrapers next door. That’s how you make it stop being profitable to build shitty surface parking lots and self-storage warehouses on prime real estate.
Ditto for building McMansions on 1-acre lots instead of bungalows on 1/9-acre lots (or better yet, townhouses or small apartment buildings) in neighborhoods just outside of downtown.
The insurance is based on the cost to rebuild the home, which has also drastically gone up, so it makes sense that it has risen too
Yes and no: yes in that the real cost has indeed drastically gone up, but no in the sense that the cost that the insurance company would actually pay would be based on the policy's coverage limits, and I'm not sure if those have actually been adjusted to keep up...
Housing should be free. At least the rent of a coffin 6 feet underground is still affordable.
As a renter, I don't pity the mere $200 increase you're dealing with.
escrow went up that much?
Yes, your escrow can go up that much if your property tax, school tax, or in some cases insurance had a sudden jump in value or changes in what can be claimed. It varies by area and loan, but isn't unheard of.
interesting, based on Zillow info my house doubled in price in the last 5 years, but my escrow only went up $20 in that time, mostly insurance, don't tell my county tho 😂
The saddest part is the beefy 5 layer burrito being what people that worked at Taco Bell would order and ask for it grilled for a reasonable cheap meal to now resulting in “WTF is there any ground beef here? WTF is there real cheese? Are these ‘beans’ safe to consume?”
Edit: my friend who previously worked there when in college asked if it was even beans on the thing…
My car insurance has doubled in less than 8 years. But don't worry, it has less coverage too! Oh, but I'll get a teeny tiny discount if I let them install a lowjack!
My car insurance went up like 20% from last year to this year. Exact same shitty "coverage" as before.
At least you're not just throwing away money like those of us who have seen rent double in 3 years.
My retirement plan is a intentional heroine overdose.
Yep mines about to go up $200 because my insurance is over $1,000 more this year.
How do you have a mortgage change price? I don't get that? Both of mine haven't ever changed.
Mortgage payments cover insurance and taxes in addition to the mortgage itself. Unless you have a variable rate mortgage the portion of the payment going to the loan doesn't change but the amount needed to cover taxes and insurance can.
Oh okay. So I could just include the other charges when I say mortgage here in the states and I could say the same thing then.
I think it's typical to get a 5 year contract and having to renegotiate a new mortgage at the end of said contract. At least, it is here in Canada. Rate goes up, monthly payment goes up.
Do you have 10, 15, and 30 year loans up there?
They exist, but from what I hear, they're very hard to get. I would've loved to get 30 years with the interest rates I had five years ago.