Thursday, March 8, 2018

Rising Property Values


Cities, Counties and States have crafted their ordinances and laws to increase property valuations in order to increase tax revenues.  Home owners support this plan because it makes their home values rise.

But there are diminishing returns. As home values rise, the percentage of potential home buyers diminishes. So these home owners may not be able to sell their homes when they want to. Also, the cost of living in these areas rises and that makes it less attractive for employees and businesses, so they go elsewhere.

It is true that some employees will move to expensive big cities to take high salary jobs, but many will not take these jobs.  The typical pattern has been for new grads to make the move to expensive cities, but if they marry and have kids, they will want to buy a home in the suburbs where the schools are good and cost of living is lower.

I used to run an ad inviting engineers to take jobs in Atlanta with a picture of a large, gorgeous, colonial 2 story brick home in Atlanta priced at $200,000 next to a small 1 story run-down stucco dump in Los Angeles priced at $200,000.

Norb Leahy, Dunwoody GA Tea Party Leader

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