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MQ - on a different subject, since you are a mod, I assume you'd know this: is it possible to quote a post from a different thread in this thread? I think I have seen people do that in this forum. If it is possible, how do I do that? I want to respond to some posts in the different thread, but bring the discussion into this thread. Thank you.
You can literally put
Quote:
anything
within the quote blocks. Easiest thing to do is go to the post you want to quote and select quote. It will open the “Reply to thread” box with the text in the QUOTE block. Just cut the whole block, go to the thread you want to post in, and paste the whole thing a response there
You can literally put within the quote blocks. Easiest thing to do is go to the post you want to quote and select quote. It will open the “Reply to thread” box with the text in the QUOTE block. Just cut the whole block, go to the thread you want to post in, and paste the whole thing a response there
I agree - but affording the tax isn't the issue to me. I can afford it in the sense that it doesn't change my lifestyle; it just means less will be there for my heirs and designated charities. The issue to me is I cannot vote in an election. The reason I cannot vote isn't a Federal law; the local jurisdiction could, if it so desired, allow non-resident owners to vote on property tax matters - but they explicitly decided not to do so.
Personally, I think everyone should have the right to vote.
Ok, let's see whether this thread transplant will work... I'm responding here to your post in the other thread, because that thread was allegedly not for people with second homes. I strongly agree with you that anyone who pays property tax to a municipality should be able to vote in municipal elections - at least if the taxpayer is a US citizen (for non-US citizens, it could be impossible legally). I don't see it ever happening in San Francisco, though, because the mindset of the city is amazingly provincial and xenophobic (those lovely mental features are usually associated with the political far right, but in SF they come from the far left, proving that those two extremes move in circular fashion, until they meet at some point :-).
Not sure now whether it was you or the poster from Northern & Southern Utah who argued that there was no logical reason for owners of second homes to be taxed higher than owners of the primary homes. Again, the tax exemption for the primary home, which I think might exist everywhere in the US, alleviates taxation for possession of a basic necessity (sort of the same way the tax exemption for self + number of dependents in the IRS form doesn't tax the amount of income needed for basic survival of the taxpayer + dependents), but then both the full tax and the exemption should be reasonable figures, where the tax does not exceed a certain % of the value of the property.
I do not mind paying extra tax for the second home, as long as this extra is not insanely high. California does limit base property taxes to 1% of the assessed value of the property (which presumably prevents extortionate taxation), but special taxes can bring total property tax higher. Legal wording of this new "empty home tax", however, is such that it evades the 1% limit imposed by the State Constitution, hitting disproportionally hard the smallest condos, such that my total property-related taxes, including this "empty homes tax" in 2026 and afterwards would be almost 5% of the value of my small condo per year - equal basically to appropriation of the entire value of my condo by the city over 20 years. I don't see this as reasonable.
But the stated purpose of this new tax in San Francisco isn't collection of additional taxes (since the city already has a huge tax revenue, and this tax would not be expected to bring significantly more, due to small number of people subject to this tax) - the stated purpose is to "motivate" condo owners to rent or sell condos that are not occupied >182 days per year. Considering, again, a fairly small number of units involved, it seems to me that the only real impact of the new tax is demonization of a certain type of property owner, using envy as an instrument of obtaining votes for certain politicians, and making it look as though this enforcement of full occupation of condos somehow benefits the homeless and low-income people (it doesn't - the number of days someone spends in their condo has nothing to do with the homeless and low income people. It's sort of the way kids were told in my childhood that they had to eat everything on the plate because there were hungry children in Africa. It did induce a degree of shame about not eating the repulsive vegetables that I was fortunate to have, while children in Africa were dying because they didn't have them - but in reality, whether I ate my veggies or not, that was all the same to the hungry children in Africa. Likewise, my sale of the condo, at market price to a different owner who will spend more time in that condo, will do exactly nothing for a homeless or low-income person who can't remotely afford to buy it. But linking this transaction with reduction of homelessness (even though there is no connection between this transaction and reduction of homelessness) seems righteous to envious people, and is therefore good for political posturing. Meanwhile, I am forced to lose something that I loved, but who cares when the "rich" lose something they love, that is not any kind of real problem :-).
Finally, someone (maybe you) brought up an idea that property tax should be flat, ie, the same dollar figure for all properties regardless of their value. That I can't agree with - thinking of owning a property in terms of owning a share of the city, if you own a more valuable share of the city, then I do think you should pay more than someone who owns a less valuable share, meaning that the tax should be a specific % of the value of property (as it indeed is right now) rather than the same figure for each property owner.
You can literally put within the quote blocks. Easiest thing to do is go to the post you want to quote and select quote. It will open the “Reply to thread” box with the text in the QUOTE block. Just cut the whole block, go to the thread you want to post in, and paste the whole thing a response there
Also, I think clicking the " box at the bottom.of the screen, like you do to multi-quote, will bring it wherever you go.
We left SoCal for the PNW 10+years ago, NO regrets, except that I have increasingly bad SADD during winter. I need sun. I literally dream about Yuma, AZ in the Dead of Winter. I have no desire to live in the desert, that is where I grew up, no thanks. Hotels/ motels are out, we have dogs.
We are not in the financial world of owning a 2nd home or even a RV or trailer. I’m puzzling out how to get into the sun for a week or more. I’ve never stayed in an air bnb, do they take pets? My kid tells me that air bnb are not bargains anymore & charge too many extra fees. I don’t want to stay in a tent on BLM land, I did plenty of tent camping in my younger years, no more, thanks.
Has anyone here rented a RV? I see plenty of them around here during the summer. Yes, I know how to google, but am looking for personal experiences.
One idea that I've been batting around is once we downsize into a retirement community and into a paid off home, possibly buying a second home in the same community to use in an Air BNB type of capacity. We could reserve some weeks for our kids/future grandkids to come visit us. That way we wouldn't be on top of each other trying to cram into a small house over the holidays.
I'm batting it around but not convinced that's the way to go for us. If we ever did a rental for investment income it would be good to live near it so that we could maintain and manage it. But, again, I don't really want to spend our days running back and forth, maintaining two properties. So we likely would not do this. It's fun to consider the possibilities, though.
Another idea - buy an RV and do some traveling. You can get a brand new travel trailer for around 20K.
We have decided against a second home. Our grown children are in 5 different locations. As the grandchildren get older, that number will increase. We travel in too many different directions just to see them. Add in our own beach trips and there's really no time or reason to buy anywhere else.
We are just making our home our own little paradise. We've been here 15 yeas and still love it as our forever home.
We maintained homes in CO and AZ for several years (Winter in Tucson is great!), but the hassles of having two sets of everything led us to downsize and we now live year round in AZ. During the summer months we escape the heat in a RV. It has its limitations, but it’s simpler and less expensive than maintaining a second home.
My complaint is not about property taxes per se. Nor, do I want to live in a community without police, fire, garbage disposal, sewers, adequate schools, or a library.
It just rankles me that someone who is using a home as something other than a primary residence is expected to pay twice the property taxes of the population that permanently resides within the community. The argument cannot be made on the basis that non-residents require more services. They require less only using minimal amounts of essential services.
Hi MarkG - not sure whether you'll see this, but I quoted your above comment from a different thread because second-home matters are allegedly not proper to discuss in that thread (but it seems they are only improper to discuss there by ME, since everyone else continues discussing them there with no problem :-). Anyhow, I think your continued input would be interesting, so please chime in if you wish, in this thread. Again, you have a point - an owner of a second home doesn't use more local resources than an owner of a primary home (if anything, a person that spends less time there uses fewer local resources such as water, and contributes fewer overpopulation problems such as traffic). But there is also an argument that a primary home is a basic survival necessity, for which a tax exemption is usually given. So I think the proper taxation should be a reasonable compromise - ie, somewhat higher tax for an owner of a secondary home, but not so high that it disallows having a second home. Both taxes should be reasonably related to the value of the property - for a primary home, towards the lower limit of reasonable; for a secondary home, towards the higher limit of reasonable.
But taxation of second homes gets far out of the realm of the reasonable when the aim is not to collect more tax, but to drive out owners of second homes, due to envious hatred of the lower-income segment of local population towards "the rich" (where sometimes the definition of "the rich" is if you have a refrigerator :-). That type of hateful population always (or at the very least since the French Revolution) claim that decapitating "the rich" solves all problems in the world, although it has been substantially demonstrated that, on the contrary, it always leads to deterioration (sometimes, ie, usually, catastrophic deterioration) of local economy and quality of life for everyone. Someone in the other forum pointed out that driving out second-home owners (who already pay somewhat higher property tax), by raising their tax to impossible levels and thus forcing the owner to sell to someone else who'll use the property as their primary home, actually results in decreased tax collections. If the area remains desirable for living, the competition for it will remain high (whether the homes are occupied by primary home owners only, or there is also some proportion of second-home owners), so forcing second homes to be sold will not decrease the price of homes, ie, will not make them affordable to low-income people (and certainly will not do anything whatsoever for housing the homeless). If the area becomes undesirable, eg, a former resort from which all vacation-home owners pull out, then who wants to live in an undesirable area anyway?
Last edited by elnrgby; 11-29-2023 at 07:10 AM..
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