With a runup in home values sparking higher property taxes for many Georgia homeowners, there is a groundswell among state lawmakers in this election year to provide relief.
Georgia’s Senate Finance Committee plans a hearing on Monday on a bill limiting increases in a home’s value, as assessed for property tax purposes, to 3% per year. The limit would last as long as the owner maintained a homestead exemption. Voters would have to approve the plan in a November referendum.
Meanwhile, Republican House Speaker Jon Burns of Newington proposes doubling the state’s homestead tax exemption, a measure likely to cut tax bills by nearly $100 million statewide.
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Maybe it’s because I’m a lowly rentoid and don’t understand these complex, home-owner things, but the rest of us have to ‘live within our means’, and don’t even get reimbursed for it by selling a piece of property significantly above what we paid for it when we get priced out of an area.
Those who own a house can have our budget changed by things outside of our control. If my neighbor builds a mansion that makes my house more valueable and thus worth more and so I have to pay more taxes - nothing has changed about my house though. This means I have less money in my budget to do my own remodeling, go on vacation or whatever.
I know as a homeowner I will have expenses, but most are somewhat predictable - I replaced my furnace this fall but I started budgeting for it 2 years ago. My roof is getting old and so I’m already starting to budget for replacing it. However if my house goes up in value by more than inflation that is hard to budget for.
… okay? Join the rest of us? Do you think that doesn’t happen to people who don’t own homes? The only difference is that we don’t own the property, and thus we not only pay more, but we have no equity gain from it in addition.
It is easier to move if you rent (it still isn’t easy). In fact if you rent the ease of moving is one way to control rent increases. One consideration on the rent vs buy choice is do you want to stay in the same place for many more years. The advantages of buying generally only happen after 5-10 years in the same location. Thus I expect this to hurt owners more than renters because I expect renters to move more often anyway.
The above is in general. I know renters who have been in the same place for years, that is okay so long as your landlord isn’t taking advantage of you. I know homeowners who move every couple years - though I’m not sure I’d call that a good decision.
Crab mentality.
lmao, least bougie tankie.
Communism is not a poverty cult. You’re just describing crabs dragging each other back into the bucket.
We should be housing everyone, not dropping more people into the rental market to be exploited by landlords.
Instead of just raising taxes evenly, tax the fuck out of landlords and real estate investors. They’re the problem.
“Poverty cult is when you suggest people who own a literal million dollars worth of property should pay taxes that equate to less than the most bottom-of-the-barrel studio apartment”
Critical support for rugged individualism, huh?
“Join the rest of us” is, in fact, a poverty cult. You’re demanding that people who have been priced out of their homes be thrown to the wolves like we have been. I don’t want more people to be victimized by landlords. The goal isn’t to drag lucky people into the mud with the rest of us and fight over scraps. The goal is to target the people who are causing the problem and remove them from society.
That’s landlords and real estate investors. They’re the ones driving up costs and they’re the ones exploiting people without property. A home owner losing their home because prices rose in their area due to gentrification is just the crabs dragging them back into the bucket.
I still love that you’re calling a price far, far below rent for a studio apartment for a million dollar home as some kind of cruelty to the proletariat. But I guess ‘join the rest of us’ is a scary thought to middle class tankie larpers, who fear that they might not be ‘more equal’ than others someday.
Okay. They don’t have to be. A home half that price would have under half of that property tax. A home a quarter of that value would have no property tax. Sorry that you believe in the untaxed and unlimited accumulation of value by market forces without input of labor?