Explain Why I shouldn't Vote "NO" on Proposition 5 (Los Angeles: new house, transfer)

[NoMoreSnowForMe]

Originally Posted by 1AngryTaxPayer

Houses here in beach cities originally sold for 12-16 grand in the 1960s. I'm sure many people thought as you that no way would house beach houses be selling for 700-1 million in 2018.

Just to put a little perspective on these numbers. At my first job in 1972 for pay (other than babysitting), I earned the minimum wage in CA, which was $1.10/hour. I remember when we had the gas shortage crisis in the 1970's and gas increased to the unheard of amount of - 33 cents per gallon! And that was with gas stations running out of gas, and people parked in long lines for hours to fill up. I couldn't believe that it cost a full $3.00 to fill up my VW bug!

Not sure what the minimum wage was when my parents bought our first little family home in San Leandro around 1960 for $16,000 using the GI Bill (my dad was a Korean veteran) - but, you can imagine what the annual salary was back then for a new Oakland police rookie.

So, using a base price of $16,000 as any kind of point of reference to our 2018 real estate market, as any kind of comparison to today's market - is just not reasonable.

And, as was mentioned, taxes have still gone up around 2% per year, since Prop 13 was passed.

But, I remember that there were people like my folks who bought a home for around $16K, only to have it shoot up in value to say $500K in the 1970's, and they couldn't afford to pay the taxes on their little GI Bill homes, which were now assessed at an unheard of amount and they were expected to pay the taxes on that amount. Maybe they even had the home paid off, but my folks didn't have theirs paid off. And, their salaries didn't shoot up accordingly. And maybe some folks were like my parents who still had kids in high school. I graduated high school in the mid 1970's - so my folks still had 20 years to pay on their mortgage, more or less, when Prop 13 was passed.

And many people were facing foreclosure due to not paying their taxes because they couldn't afford them - or - leaving their families and maybe their jobs, if they could even find another job at their age in another town, and facing taking their kids out of school to move them to some other state, where they could hopefully get a job.

Sure, they could sell it at a profit, but then what? Move to Alaska? Leave their families and their communities? Put their kids in new schools in a completely different cultural environment? Go live somewhere in some small town when they hate small towns? Hate humidity? Hate snow? And move somewhere where they absolutely hate Californians who move there because they can't afford CA anymore, and drive the price of real estate up in their area?

Money isn't everything, that's for sure -- not when it's not enough to really be able to choose what you really want.

So, when people say, heck, just sell your home and move somewhere cheaper - that's not taking into account the reality that that entails, which includes uprooting kids, finding a new job, dealing with a different culture and environment where they probably hate Californians, possibly having to move away from decent healthcare and educational options, etc. - it's no small thing.

[CA4Now]

Voting no on this one. The 55 and over crowd--and I'm one of them--receive enough property benefits. This is a real grab by the real estate industry.

[davidt1]

Originally Posted by CA4Now

Voting no on this one. The 55 and over crowd--and I'm one of them--receive enough property benefits. This is a real grab by the real estate industry.

This is the same wordings used by the LA Time. Do you get your information from anywhere else other than that newspaper? Something tells me you are a renter.

[CA4Now]

Originally Posted by davidt1

This is the same wordings used by the LA Time. Do you get your information from anywhere else other than that newspaper?

Hmmm....I do not see any of that wording in the L.A. Times article on Prop 5. Obviously you have not read many of my posts.

http://www.latimes.com/opinion/endorsements/

Originally Posted by davidt1

Something tells me you are a renter.

Nope; we bought our first (very tiny) home here in the early 1980s.

[CA4Now]

Originally Posted by davidt1

This is the same wordings used by the LA Time. Do you get your information from anywhere else other than that newspaper?

I think we already know how you feel about the L.A. Times, right? //www.city-data.com/forum/calif...s-me-vote.html

[evening sun]

I thought the old prop 13, meant anyone can take the lower tax rate with them?? How is this different?

[Ultrarunner]

Originally Posted by evening sun

I thought the old prop 13, meant anyone can take the lower tax rate with them?? How is this different?

Prop 13 allows this within the same county AND counties that have RECIPROCAL agreements...

Over the years the list of counties with reciprocal agreements has shrunk... Eldorado County has been a destination for seniors from the SF Bay Area and this is about to end...

PRO 5 would take away individual county discretion to opt out

[NoMoreSnowForMe]

I'm going to read the actual text and then make my decision and I'll let you all know what my opinion is then, FWIW. Until I actually read the text of the proposals, I don't trust anything I read about it. So, I'll get back to you...just got my voter stuff in the mail.

[NoMoreSnowForMe]

Here are a couple of resources on this proposition. This one is a 1 minute video that is unbiased (scroll down to the video):

https://elections.calmatters.org/201...ate-tax-break/

Here's a good article on it from the San Francisco Chronicle:

https://www.sfchronicle.com/business...t-13300888.php

This one is tricky, but I've decided to vote no on it, after researching it and this is why:

Prop 13 was voted into law in 1978. This law enabled people to stay in their homes without getting taxed out of them, due to their properties being reassessed. The idea was that people should be able to pay off their homes and afford to live in them forever. So, the law was changed, so that the tax base remained at the purchase price, with an average yearly increase of only around 1.5%.

I think this is a great law.

Then, there were a couple of propositions that passed that allowed certain people to be able to take their tax break with them if they sold and moved into a home of equal or lesser value within CA - if you were a senior and/or disabled, you could move within your county or to one of the 11 counties that agreed to let you do this.

Now, included in the counties that let you transfer into another home are Orange County and Alameda County and Santa Clara County - so LA and the SF Bay Areas are included. So, seniors and/or disabled folk are already able to relocate to a home of equal or lesser value and keep their cheap tax break - even to really desirable and expensive areas in the state.

This new proposition was written by California realtors. They would love to be able to get commissions on a bunch of homes that are now assessed at high values. So, we must consider who wrote this proposition and their incentive.

The fallout from this proposition would be a LOT less money coming into counties to pay for things like schools. And, my fear is that because of that, the people who campaign against Prop 13 now, unrealistically thinking that repealing it would solve the housing situation and result in cheaper housing -- will end up successful in repealing Prop 13 because of the possibly funding crisis we could end up in at the local level, due to lower property tax revenues.

So, my conclusion is that this proposition doesn't give us anything new or necessary -- and would cost local government too dearly, and the only people who really want this to happen are realtors who are already making money hand over fist in this market, as it is.

I know the selling point is that seniors will move out of larger homes that will then be available to families, and I can understand that argument to a point. But, I don't think the market will change enough to really make housing more affordable for anyone, and the families will still have to pay property taxes based on current sales prices -- and their kids will be going to schools that have even less funding than they do now.

So, after doing my homework and learning that seniors and disabled people can already transfer their tax breaks to a home of equal or lesser value, and thinking seniors certainly don't need or deserve to be able to buy a more expensive home and still get the Prop 13 tax break, in my opinion, I just don't see the need for this proposition -- and I don't like the idea of local government having significantly less money, in order to benefit realtors, who seem to be the only real beneficiaries of this proposition.

In conclusion, I'm voting no on Prop 5, too.

Would love to hear your opinions, too.

[NoMoreSnowForMe]

Hmmm, for some reason my poll didn't post, and I can't seem to add one now. So, please feel free to give your opinions anyway.