There’s a better way to handle this, though, than the Prop 13 approach of limiting taxes. You just allow a certain amount of property taxes to optionally go unpaid and accrue as a lien against the property that must be settled when the property changes hands. Old widows never get forced out of their houses, but they don’t get to leave them to their kids without paying the tax.
It's not either/or. The old lady (old guys don't like to be kicked to the street either) argument was very real and causing a lot of pain for real regular people.
It's also true that the special corporate interest saw an opportunity and sneaked in to a law that never should've applied to them.
That's the Prop 13 lobbyist's excuse. In reality, these old widows are never at risk of being kicked out of their house at all. I'm sure plenty of investors would be willing to pay off the widow's taxes in exchange for ownership of the property after they pass.
If you want to invest, go solve a problem that isn't creating a predatory pressure on the real estate market. Homes and property should be affordable. Not investment vehicles, or somewhere to hide cash from that nasty inflation.
>Not investment vehicles, or somewhere to hide cash from that nasty inflation.
Exactly, which is the point of disincentivizing people of treating it as an investment...
Oops.
Which is pretty terrible if the folks are little old ladies settling down to avoid the cruel harsh world, and now need to find somewhere else to live when they are least capable of doing so (being on a fixed income and all).
The 'can't put old widows out of their homes' scenario is why California's Prop 13 came to be, btw. Even without Georgist taxation, property taxes got too high to pay. I imagine a lot of folks in Texas and other less dense areas are going through this right now due to the rapidly increasing property values and less controlled changes in taxation.
It does cause change and turnover instead of stagnation in an area though.