Rising property taxes price some out of market

Beverly Smith has lived in the same house in Flemington, N.J., for 48 years. It's not such a quiet neighborhood anymore.

"Not at all," she says. "It used to be a dirt road, and you saw very few cars going by."

But now she says she's being penalized for staying put. As new developments sprout, the value of her three-acre property has outgrown her modest income. Her property tax payment has grown by 42 percent over the last decade.

"I can't afford the things that are being afforded around me," she says. "Even the deer are leaving."

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When I left NJ, that's what I payed.

I bought it at $242,000 and sold at $420,000

a house that sold for $160,000. That was over $100 a week in property taxes.

have to raise their basis just to keep up with the shortfall from fed funding.

Anyone remember that $300 bribe back in 2001? Well, that $300 will be a drop in the bucket in comparison to the amount that will be yanked from everyone's pockets.

:shakesheadsadly:

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:hi:

sure, local entities can cut spending - let's start with unfunded federal mandates - NCLB comes to mind -

you can also do without garbage collection, city sewer maintenance, police, etc.

Write your local government, show up at meetings, make suggestions :D

tax bill. I have a real problem with house A (with 6 kids) being exactly like house B (with 0 kids) and both pay the exact same amount of tax. Something is wrong here. Gas taxes are paid on how much gas you buy. But with schools it's the size or $ of the property

And the right wingers kept claiming that Shrub's strong economy would keep things moving along to prevent a significant increase on the State and Local levels. The morons even went so far as to say that it was good for the State and Local Governments to be responsible for a change and have to tighten their budgets. I kept telling them, pay now or pay more later and pay a lot more on all levels when Shrub's final credit card bill comes due.

Oh I can imagine the reaction of the morons now:

'How come them damn Democrats allowed this shell game to trick us?'

'Why didn't the Democrats stick up for the people?'

'It's the Democrats' fault for not protecting us little people.'

Never mind that the morons were cheering the attacks on Democrats every step of the way.

NJ is on the losing side of federal funding anyways, we put in more than what we get back. We are also the wealthiest state in the nation. Taxes have always been high here even before the "$300" rebate, it's just that money gets sucked out of here and given to other states while we have to pay higher property taxes. Compare Taxes in East Windsor with a suburb of Atlanta GA, you will see a big difference. A 4 bedroom home in East Windsor pays about $14,000 a year, in Atlanta, less than 3 grand.

I had a thread about it last summer. Basically we started with property tax because it was safe to know that property owners had the means to pay tax to support local government.

But as the voters in California saw in 1978, with Proposition 13, and now everyone sees everyplace, market value of houses rises faster than most people's income.

I think that it would make more sense for a city to find out the income of its residents, say, $5 million. And let's say that the city requires $3 million for operations. The state then can levy extra tax on each of the people living in that city. This way, the tax is progressive. Or, as a hybrid, the city can still keep a base level of property tax that, as with Prop. 13 in California, limits the percentage that the tax can rise each year.

nice to know ya. property size 85x120 and we are paying 6,000 a year. insane. utilites at 500 a month budgeted... SOLONG.

is a nice way to tell minorities to keep out of our town.

In NJ, the ratio of high property taxes and the % of minorites that live in that community is inversely proportional. Trenton is too afraid to equalize the spending for schools for the poorer districts. I would like them to have some guts and if a town charges over a certain $$$ average per family in property tax, the amount the state would have given that town to 'help out', it will instead go to a poorer district. But I won't hold my breath.

tax "rebate" from Bush and ignoring their property taxes shooting through the roof to compensate for all the fed money being drained form the community.

.. He spoke of the hidden tax increases and burdens on the average American. The Feds are funding their pet projects and military contracting cohorts at the expense of State and Local funding.

It's an absolute outrage that local hospices and social organizations are closing their doors because of funding cuts, while the assholes in Congress and the White House are paying billions to the likes of Halliburton.

Average Americans just can't seem to grasp that concept, or are too engaged in American Idol and such distractions to notice.

Supersonic interceptors that are built for a foe that will never exist. Somebody must stop these defense contractors.

Did you read the report at Cato institute about cutting the Pentagon?

Thanks for asking!
http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa539.pdf

He prescribes eliminating these incredibly complex and expensive weapon systems that have no place in a post-soviet world.

His analysis results in a budget of $200 to $300 Billion. Contrast that with the current $400 Billion plus $82 Billion for Iraq.

The area around my little house will be a gold mine in 10 years. I'll be eating peanut butter by then.

with mushrooming RE tax increases combined with poie-in-the sky re-appraisal valuations based on fantasy rather than the realities of the market place.

Sounds like one-acre zoning would fly no problem.

In New Jersey, it is not uncommon to have 3,5,6,10 or even 20 acre zoning, this means one dwelling per x number of acres. This kind of zoning is comon in rural areas, areas that have septics and wells. Where I live, the zoning is now 5 acres minimum, in Hopewell they have areas that have 20 acres minimum. If she is on the rural parts of Flemington, she might be in a 3 or even a 5 acre zone, so a subdivision would not be possible. Zoning is used in NJ to keep builders from building it up. So it also keeps the Real Estate prices high, and helps keeps the taxes from going even crazier because less homes always equal less schools. And Less schools always mean less taxes.

in my state pays for the schools. See my other post. This woman in the story obviously has no kids and is most likely supporting the other people with kids in the schools. I would like to see some system where the people with kids pay far more than people without kids. Then it is a more direct tax,ie, You use the schools, you pay the taxes.

are going to want to have the kids grow up amd get good jobs so they can pay for their ss and medicare?

We ALL benefit from a sound universal education system, regardless of whether we have children or not.


And a belated welcome to DU! :hi:

I do not get a friendly reply to often.

in my other example, when I use water or gasoline I pay taxes on it based on actual gallons used. A very direct equitable tax. With schools, the direct equitable tax would be to tax on number of kids in the schools I would think. Should a person with 5 kids in the schools be paying the same or less than people with no or 1 kid in the school because house size and value is the determining factor, not the number of children being educated. I am not anti public school; I am anti being robbed silly on my tax bill. (Just recently the school board was kicking around buying 2 sets of books for each kid so they didn't have to carry "heavy books" home and possibly be hurting their backs. Primal scream)

Let me put it this way too, would the same people with kids in the schools be willing to pay a portion of my gasoline I put in my car? I bet not...they'd say that's not fair...they're not using the gasoline (just like I am not using the grade, middle and high schools) .

Whites will be in minority in 2010.

the fairest solution...But If they were to tax extra on the amount of children attending per family... you'd see those parent pull the children out and home school...the city and the school system damn well know this ...and they would lose big on matching funds...so the tactic is to soak everyone.

I think it is in everyones best interest to properly educated the next generation. But how is it fair that a family making $200K with a few kids in school pays the same propery tax as an elderly couple living off of their savings? (In NJ, they would be paying about $8,000 average, some towns AVERAGE pay as high as $18,000). I think if a household makes over a certain amount, they have to pay a little more per child. A simply 'fee' to the school of $500 per child would be very helpful to the town & school and would help the poorer & elderly in a community.

BTW - in NJ, about 80% of the property tax goes to the towns schools. I know other states work differently.

The problem with school funding is that almost a 100 percent comes out of local property taxes. One solutions was to tax wages more, that might help out poorer districts and even the property tax issues. Some towns don't have large rateables so the homeowners pay the whole bill. Also NJ is famous for it's "home rule" and has about 600 munincipal government and about 650 different school districs, about 20 of those school districts do not have any schools. And the schooless districts refuse to merge with a larger district, because they local politicians do not want to give up control. Control of what, I really don't know.

There is a reason we ALL pay for our universal education system, and that is that we ALL benefit from having an educated populace. Regardless of whether one has children or not, we should all be interested in the education of the next generation- who are, after all, the ones who will be running the country in the near future.


What you are rightly complaining about however, is the use of theoretically proportional but in reality regressive taxation being used to fund the public school system. There is really very little reason to have anything other than progressive, income based taxation in this country. Not only do income tax systems function according to one's ability to pay, but they also interfere less with a market based economy than any other form of taxation.

Welcome to DU. :hi:

I agree with your first paragraph but after that, ehhh?

I believe taxation that is most direct is most fair. See my other posts. Utility taxes, gasoline taxes, for example are fair, direct, based on use, etc. I am not using and never used the grade, middle or high schoolsin this town since I had no kids.

You say that you agree with me that we should all pay for the schools because we all benefit from them. And then in the next paragraph you say direct taxation for school *use* is what should be used.

I agree that property taxes are bad. I do not agree that only parents should be taxed to pay for the school system, since we all benefit from an educated populace. Maybe that makes my stance clearer?

but I wanted to clarify. Yes we should all pay school taxes as we all benefit but I think the way we are doing it is wrong. If I don't directly use the grammar and high schools I think I should get a big break, like a third to half the tax of what others are paying who are directly using the schools. Similar to the way seniors in some tax districts can get their property taxes frozen when they are 65. Or as my friend the tax guy always points out, the property tax is regressive and he'd rather pay larger state income tax than property tax. I don't agree with him there necessarily, except from the standpoint that's there's more than one way to fund the schools and that can be one way. I think local school disricts would not be happy with that option.

That's what they do in my town.

Like health care, education should be the responsibility of the larger society regardless of how many children one has.

has been a lifesaver for longtime homeowners, but a disaster for school funding. I bought my house new for $101K in 1979. I currently pay $2400 per year prop. taxes, and a portion of that is a local school bond passed last year because of cuts in funding at the state level. If my house sold for its current market value of $600k the new owners would pay $7500 the first year with small incremental increases every year after that.

Homes are only reassessed when they sell or undergo major improvements. Really provides a huge incentive to stay put.

Most younger buyers here can barely afford their homes as it is, and no elderly buyer could afford to buy here today. It's only the Prop 13 protections that keep home ownership up in this state.

My friend near San Fran says yes; she lives in a million buck dump and pays 2000 a year in real estate taxes. She'd be paying at least ten times that here for that price house

Property tax based school funding seems to be discriminative to me.

I have all of my land on the market, cannot afford the property taxes. Selling it all off, and keeping the house for now, but thats going on the market at some point also.
Just cannot afford the high property taxes. How I miss the 90s.

I had no idea! We pay a couple of hundred a month and I thought that was outrageous! If high property tax laws were passed here, we wouldn't be able to afford it-not even for a day! This country is fast becoming the country of rich or poor, no doubt about it. :thumbsdown:

AND I haVE NO KIDS. If it were just a couple of hundred a month I wouldn't be whining on this board like I am. Hubby wants to move because of this and I am starting to agree with him, though I love my house.

estate/property tax deduction on our income taxes!!! Now that would piss off those of us in the Northeast that pay the highest property taxes in the nation. I guess that's the whole point in offering up such a 'tax reform', punish the blue states for being blue.

In many places they use that as an incentive to attract businesses but it really isn't fair. A lot of corporations pay very little tax as it is. But really, a progressive income tax system is a lot more fair anyway. Here in Texas, though, that is the third rail of politics. I think someone will eventually get it through but it will take a very long time.