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Re:San Francisco braces for commercial real estate crash by commandlinefan on Tuesday September 06, 2022 @02:28PM (#32741105)
I suspect this will inevitably be blamed on greedy capitalist building owners, but the crazy tax assessors have some blame here, too. They value these buildings in the hundreds of millions of dollars and asses taxes based on that valuation - and that was "ok" because the building owners could extract that kind of value from the buildings by raising the rents. Now they can't - but the valuation and the taxes owed stay the same. If they hadn't tried to squeeze every last tax dollar out of the real estate market in the first place, the buildings wouldn't have become so expensive to begin with.
Re:San Francisco braces for commercial real estate crash by inferiorhuman on Tuesday September 06, 2022 @02:57PM (#32741585)

  I suspect this will inevitably be blamed on greedy capitalist building
  owners, but the crazy tax assessors have some blame here, too. They value
  these buildings in the hundreds of millions of dollars and asses taxes
  based on that valuation - and that was "ok" because the building owners
  could extract that kind of value from the buildings by raising the rents.
  Now they can't - but the valuation and the taxes owed stay the same. If
  they hadn't tried to squeeze every last tax dollar out of the real estate
  market in the first place, the buildings wouldn't have become so expensive
  to begin with.
What?

Prop 13 ensures that most of these office buildings are not being taxed on the market value of the property. Prop 8 ensures that tax assessments go down when the market value of the property declines. Property tax is not the primary reason rent is so expensive in San Francisco.

Re:San Francisco braces for commercial real estate crash by bombcar on Tuesday September 06, 2022 @03:40PM (#32742204)
It's arguably part of the reason things get "stuck" as they are, because selling a property triggers revaluation.

But prop 13 had no reason to apply to commercial property anyway, but good luck ever changing that.

Re:San Francisco braces for commercial real estate crash by mbfg on Tuesday September 06, 2022 @02:56PM (#32741568)
Yes, but there are still "greedy capitalist building owners" willing to sign up for the deal. So the taxes seems to be following supply and demand. At some point as the article claims, that may change. If/when it does, then both parties will change.