That's not true. It makes it hard to find good help. (That was intended to be humorously ironic, but there's a serious point behind it: everything in the SFBA is more expensive than it would be if housing were more plentiful.)

> you're benefiting through increasing home values

Not really. You only benefit from this if you sell, and if you sell two bad things happen if housing prices are up. First, you take a big hit on capital gains, and second, you lose your prop 13 benefits. So rising prices make it really hard to move within the SFBA even for people who already live here.

Yes, you can sell and move away, but people don't want to do that because everyplace else sucks by comparison. If that weren't true, there wouldn't be so many people wanting to move here driving up our prices!

I have no objections to paying taxes. Quite the contrary.

First you're complaining about "huge" capital gains, which is literally a tax on profit you made for doing nothing. A tax, might I add, that is much less than income tax. Second, you're complaining about Prop. 13, which just means you're upset about the prospect of paying the property taxes you actually owe, as opposed to the wildly deflated ones from when you purchased.

I don't think you understand just how out of touch you're coming across, and nothing in your statement suggests you have anything but objections to paying your fair share of taxes.

Specifically: the house I own is too big for me. I'd like to downsize. If housing prices were flat I could sell my house, buy a smaller house for less, reduce my property taxes, and only pay the transaction costs. But because my house and all the others around have appreciated, I can't do that. The smaller house I want to move in to costs more than the house I'm in when I bought it, so if I downsize my property taxes go up. Also, I have to pay transaction costs on a much bigger transaction plus pay the capital gains tax on a gain which I don't get to realize. The only way I win is if I move out of the area. But I don't want to do that. I like it here.

None of this would be a problem if prices were flat. It costs me more (a LOT more!) to downsize because the market is up. Hence an appreciating market is not necessarily good for you even if you own.

Edit: perhaps not ‘best’, rather ‘preferable if compatible with your financials’

I don't know how to rebut this, because it's such an absurd sentiment on its face.

No, except for housing, most things are less expensive, because more housing would mean more population but not proportionally more infrastructure (at least, without higher maintenance costs per unit, because the cheap choices are already built) for imports to the region, which means supply increases less than demand for anything with external inputs, which means prices go up.

This effect is even worse for things that are limited and local in supply, like unique local features, where you get increased demand with no increased supply, not merely supply increase less than proportional to demand. So prices on those go way up.

Home equity is a benefit. You can borrow against it or otherwise use it as an asset on paper.

> if you sell two bad things happen if housing prices are up. First, you take a big hit on capital gains

Wait, what? You're arguing that it's a "bad thing" if you have to pay a percentage of additional profits? Most primary residences aren't subject to capital gains if you hold them for > 2 years, assuming the gain is less than $0.5million (married, co-owning).

If that happened to enough people, prices would stabilize closer to reality.

At the very least prop 13 should have been restricted to owner-occupied principal residences. But that ship sailed long before my time.

This is completely untrue. I have a house in 94087 where I live about 7 months/year (the other 5 months are in Tel Aviv, where it's also very expensive!) I own the house, bought in in 1989. I don't benefit at all from increased house prices. It just makes everything more expensive.

And even under Prop 13, my property tax goes up 2% a year. That's more than inflation.

I don't benefit at all from the "increased value" in my house. If I could, I'd tear down the house and build a 2-family house on the property. But even if zoning laws allowed it, the house would be reassessed at current market value, and it wouldn't be worth it to pay $32,000/year in property taxes alone. (I've looked into this to the extent of hiring a real-estate lawyer to see if it's feasible).

If there were no prop 13, people would be forced out of their homes because specu-vesters would drive the prices up making just the taxes affordable.

The solution is to BUILD MORE HOUSES. Build apartment buildings. Close by so people can walk or take existing mass transit to work. And allow people with single family homes to tear them down and build 2-family homes without being reassessed.

Prop 13 also induces people to not sell their property, or convert properties into more units like you, so there are less available units on the market, which increases prices even further.

For example go look at SF or LA vs Miami on Redfin and see the stark difference in how many units are for sale at one time.

Higher property taxes encourages people to sell their properties if it's not economically worth it anymore to hold the property and give it to people who would actually use it. And it also encourages them politically to build more housing so their property tax bill does not go up too much.

If the city doesn't make enough money, then it become bankrupt. Roads, schools, sewers and police can't function properly anymore. The money has to come from somewhere!

It only matters if I decide to sell it AND move somewhere else. Which probably isn't going to happen.

You (quite literally) have a million-dollar offer on the table to move to, say, Austin, TX (or dozens of other great cities). The fact that you choose not to accept that offer does not negate the existence of the offer. The offer is always there. And this is a very real asset that you have (that, I hope it's clear, most people don't have), whether you choose to acknowledge it or not.

Value of primary residence isn't even considered part of your net worth. It exists, but it's not fungible like other assets.

Anything you own that has value, but is not your primary residence, is intrinsically different from your primary residence.

And that difference is reflected in standard financial metrics.

So now people buy in and don't move.