A Boring Dystopia

Yeah some serious boomer logic going on here.

"We thought that if we kept the foundation and the outer walls of the house and we just took the roof off, it was our understanding that we were going to preserve our Save Our Homes and our homestead,” says Debbie."

"the renovations—removing the roof, adding a second floor —ultimately triggered a full reassessment of the home’s value. Under Florida law, once a property is deemed substantially improved, it can be treated as new construction, removing the protections that had capped the home’s assessed value for years."

They basically rebuilt their home and are sad it's appraised at market value.

That's at least what I got from it.

Rich boomers who haven't worked in 30 years want to keep property values high without paying the property tax to go with it

Hahahahahahaha

Oh no, their taxes went up with the value of their property

🎻

I'm not entirely unsympathetic since property values have skyrocketed ridiculously mostly due to the super rich and hedge funds buying up housing like it's candy.

However, these people got an assessment for doing some renovations without replacing the walls or a major overhaul of the property, then promptly added a whole second floor to the building when they said they were just replacing the roof. They gambled that the assessors wouldn't take note and lost.

How were they supposed to know real estate law being… checks notes…

a real estate attorney?

Debbie, who had worked for a real estate attorney for nearly 25 years

Lol, a real estate attorney didn't see this coming? I feel sorry for any clients of hers.

The homeowners have two options, and both options suck.

• sell
• don't sell

Both alternatives carry costs. But they own a home worth 4.4mil and have to pay 2% of that each year. That's pretty low.

Having your home valued at $4,400,000 is what most of us would call a nice problem to have.

basically what happens when you create and support a housing system whose goal is to make profit. doesnt matter if you yourself plan on living in it, people voted for the system that approved the nonsense of longterm profiteering of a basic need.

Okay I know it's not such a popular opinion but I'm still on the notion that you shouldn't pay taxes for holding on to the place that you live.

Yeah yeah local governments need income and all that and their house is assessed over 4 million dollars and many people can't even afford a home at a 10th of that and they should have known and blah blah blah but come on, commodified housing is bad enough. Paying what amounts to a rent to the state just to hold on to the property, actual repairs and upkeep and other naturally occurring costs aside is insane.

Tax the sales of property. Tax the legal transfer of control of LLCs that "own" property. I'm not even saying never charge property tax on properties not occupied by the owner, but you should be able to have a house to live in without paying the state for the privilege of them not taking it.

So you were house rich but they never reassessed meaning last year you paid 15k on a 3.9m home nicw

You’d think a real estate attorney would know better.

Anyway, property –with the improvements they made, has appreciated over $163,000 on average every year since they bought it. Ya, $75k more than they planned on sucks, but they can take it from the value of the house no?

It's always funny when looking at the tax-system in the US from an EU perspective. Americans looking at any receipt they get in an EU country and immediately pointing out the huge VAT tariff.

Then one only needs to point to the property tax in the US.

Yearly property taxes never made sense to me. So you supposedly bought and own something, except if you don't pay the government then they can just take it away.

Fuck off and sell the home. Why is this a sob story.

That sucks, but I also think the era of the single family home is ending. No regular person can afford these home prices. Even if you can afford a one time renovation on your $650,000 house does not mean you can afford a $90,000/year tax bill. Single family home values have gone off the charts and regular people cannot afford them. We need to increase housing supply.

Sure must be nice having a house to remodel.