Middle class pays higher tax in Texas than California (Los Angeles: insurance, crime rates)

[earthisle]

Originally Posted by aslowdodge

The average is 1.81 percent. A home in Texas at 300k is a nice house with the equalvalent in California at 1 million with a tax of 1.2 percent.
That’s Texas at 5400 a year and California at 12k a year. In 20 years California costs more than Texas at 132,000. How is that better than Texas for a retiree?

That's not accurate. The 1.81% you're seeing is excluding school tax. That's a pretty common trick in Texas. They could also be including agricultural land

I put in $500,000 house value in the Travis County estimator and it came up with an absurdly low value, $3,800. Trulia says a $275k house in Dallas has $2750/yr property tax which is 1%.

I looked up that $275k house in the Dallas County system and the appraised value is $241k. The actual taxes owed after the exemption are $5058 and that's on the old value http://www.dallascad.org/AcctDetailR...00763582000000 https://www.trulia.com/p/tx/dallas/1...38--2066565765

[aslowdodge]

Originally Posted by earthisle

That's not accurate. The 1.81% you're seeing is excluding school tax. That's a pretty common trick in Texas. They could also be including agricultural land

I put in $500,000 house value in the Travis County estimator and it came up with an absurdly low value, $3,800. Trulia says a $275k house in Dallas has $2750/yr property tax which is 1%.

I looked up that $275k house in the Dallas County system and the appraised value is $241k. The actual taxes owed after the exemption are $5058 and that's on the old value Detail Error https://www.trulia.com/p/tx/dallas/1...38--2066565765

No I think the 1.81 includes the school tax. Even at 5058 a year that is still way less than 12, 000 in California. Are you saying the tax on that 275k house in Texas is more than 12,000?

I just looked up a house I used to own in Houston. It’s worth about 202k today and taxes are about 5300 a year. That’s a rate of about 2.61 percent. I remember before that the school portion was the higher part of the bill. The same house in my old home town of 2100 sq ft in California would cost you about 1.2 million. Tax on it would be about 14,400 a year. Again, how does Texas cost more for property tax?

[capoeira]

Originally Posted by earthisle

California has flat taxes, Texas has regressive taxes. Which do you think is better?

Texas is better since I would save a lot of money in taxes if I was living in Texas.

[earthisle]

Originally Posted by aslowdodge

No I think the 1.81 includes the school tax. Even at 5058 a year that is still way less than 12, 000 in California. Are you saying the tax on that 275k house in Texas is more than 12,000?

I just looked up a house I used to own in Houston. It’s worth about 202k today and taxes are about 5300 a year. That’s a rate of about 2.61 percent. I remember before that the school portion was the higher part of the bill. The same house in my old home town of 2100 sq ft in California would cost you about 1.2 million. Tax on it would be about 14,400 a year. Again, how does Texas cost more for property tax?

You would have to compare apples to apples as much as possible. A $202k house in Houston city limits is in a bad area.

The part of Houston where I went to middle school was pretty bad but even those are $300-400k houses!


Here's a neighborhood we can use for comparison, Dallas west of Whiterock Lake https://www.trulia.com/for_sale/Dall...ME_type/15_zm/

It's a good but not exclusive urban neighborhood with decent commute to downtown. A few houses are $300k but the vast majority are over $400k and they go all the way up to the millions.

I picked a lower end $514k house at 5818 Vickery. The school scores on Zillow are 5/10 and 4/10.
https://www.zillow.com/homes/5818-vi...26690193_zpid/
DCAD: Residential Acct Detail

Improvement:
Land:
Market Value: $208,000
+ $280,000
=$488,000

Total Estimated Taxes: $10,024.45


Can you post a similar house in a similar city in California? I'm guessing LA would be the most similar to Dallas

[mlb]

Here's my question - why on earth would you WANT to live in Texas?

Nopeity nope nope nope.

[Amy WJ]

[quote=JoeSmow;55119808]Yep, Fascinating

Well, it was until it took a major detour along the way. That's fine, you can have ALL the popcorn!

[expatCA]

[quote=JoeSmow;55121936]

Originally Posted by Amy WJ

LOL, honestly Amy, this thread has never been fascinating. It's actually been a bunch of hogwash from the start. And it continues on with the cherry picking directly above.

I'm not going to waste my time responding to the OP at this point for obvious reasons. I will tell you and others that I live in the same neck of the woods as he does. My wife and I are going to be buying a house in the August time frame as soon as we sell an investment property (estimated to be in July). I would say that the most logical fit for someone from the San Francisco Bay Area is the Austin area (for obvious political reasons). My wife and I don't care about that...we just enjoy the area. I gave a comparison a few pages ago on home prices here and a comparison (but it was in the different direction...basically the crap you can buy in CA for the price of the nice home in the Austin suburbs).

Anyway, we are looking at homes in the $300k-$350k range. We are looking at areas in the 25-30 miles range from Austin (Pflugerville, Round Rock...where Dell is located, and Georgetown). The most comparable homes in the Bay Area would be on the Peninsula (Palo Alto, Menlo Park..and a little further out if you want to look at Mountain View). I don't consider the East Bay much of a comparison (and there is a bridge you have to cross that makes the commute that much worse). All the homes on the Peninsula are roughly 4x the price.

This thread should have ended on the first page. The fact that it has now gone on for 13 pages is just a testimonial to BS that get bandied about on the internet.

One of the homes we were looking at for $325k

I'm not going to show our home (that we still currently own) in the Bay Area because it's a piece of crap compared to this (and yet someone is happy to pay us just under $4k in rent for it...and we're happy to take it).

The total taxes on this home is just under $9k (and as you know, there is not a state tax bill that goes with that). There is no comparison when you look at total taxes a resident pays and what they get for their money here, and the disposable income they have. The main driver of the median income in the SF Bay Area is Tech. But that is not a huge percentage of people. As was stated earlier, 85% of the residents in San Francisco can not afford a median house there. This is the biggest no-brainer ever and yet the nonsense continues.

Some barely getting by in CA or trying to buy a $600,000.00 dump, can't admit it.

[hikernut]

If things are so terrible in Texas, how does one explain this?

From 2010 through 2017 net domestic migration out of California was 556,710, while net domestic migration into Texas was 944,018 (source: U.S. Census Bureau).

It seems that ordinary Texans are not feeling so oppressed after all.

[aslowdodge]

Originally Posted by earthisle

You would have to compare apples to apples as much as possible. A $202k house in Houston city limits is in a bad area.

The part of Houston where I went to middle school was pretty bad but even those are $300-400k houses!


Here's a neighborhood we can use for comparison, Dallas west of Whiterock Lake https://www.trulia.com/for_sale/Dall...ME_type/15_zm/

It's a good but not exclusive urban neighborhood with decent commute to downtown. A few houses are $300k but the vast majority are over $400k and they go all the way up to the millions.

I picked a lower end $514k house at 5818 Vickery. The school scores on Zillow are 5/10 and 4/10.
https://www.zillow.com/homes/5818-vi...26690193_zpid/
DCAD: Residential Acct Detail

Improvement:
Land:
Market Value: $208,000
+ $280,000
=$488,000

Total Estimated Taxes: $10,024.45


Can you post a similar house in a similar city in California? I'm guessing LA would be the most similar to Dallas

The house was in a nice neighborhood with a great school district. Schools rated 9 out of 10 on Zillow. Located about 20 miles from downtown Houston.
The house in California was also in a suburb located 28 miles from Oakland and 40 miles from San Francisco.
While I agree tax rate is higher, you make up for it by buying a house that is much cheaper in Texas.

[expatCA]

Originally Posted by hikernut

If things are so terrible in Texas, how does one explain this?

From 2010 through 2017 net domestic migration out of California was 556,710, while net domestic migration into Texas was 944,018 (source: U.S. Census Bureau).

It seems that ordinary Texans are not feeling so oppressed after all.

True and for good reasons. CA has a lot that is nice, but the COL and QOL are not included.