Unfortunately all the better locations are built out and these developments are getting into very rural areas. Reminds me of south fayette, jefferson hills, plum, peters, etc Meanwhile nimbys in Oakland and shadyside keep fighting 12 story buildings closer to offices

If anything it will reduce competition for existing homes. New housing increasing prices of existing housing is a myth perpetuated by the fact that new housing is only built when there is huge housing demand. However due to the overall shortage of housing it’s like pissing in the ocean.

If a democrat tries to implement annual assessments it will be committing career suicide and hand the county to republicans. Democrats could fix the clr with less bad publicity and spend political capital on more important issues. Let a Republican figure out the shitty property tax system because they refuse to raise income taxes

you are exaggerating the effectiveness of annual reassessments to feel superior while ignoring the costs and deploying hyperbolic strawmans to avoid admitting your solution is mediocre and full of loopholes. it has implementation challenges and bureaucratic waste, while calculating a clr for each neighborhood is orders of magnitude cheaper than reassessing every house annually

That person didn’t pay $100k more for the paint job. That’s just waving a magic wand to pretend my point doesn’t exist. Non permitted renovations in the $50k range seem to be getting crazy high premiums in the last couple years. It’s entertaining listening to you refuse to admit the basic situation of the current housing market because you are obsessed with having a solution that has no downsides

We could get rid of school property taxes and only use property taxes for municipality and county services and instead fund schools using an equitable and just distribution of state income tax (double it and make it progressive) The city has school property taxes half of most surrounded municipalities. That works for the city because it doesn’t have as many retired people as the suburbs.

But it’s a loophole to just remodel after the sale if there are annual assessments. I don’t know how you would find these remodels without annual interior inspections of every property in the county.

Both those statements are incorrect.

You are just waving you magic wand to shrink the significance of non permitted changes just because you don’t like hearing that your preferred solution isn’t as clever and amazing as you think it is.

3257 Latonia Ave, Pittsburgh, PA 15216 sold for $230k for 1520 sqft

3215 Latonia Ave, Pittsburgh, PA 15216 sold for $130k for 1450 sqft

Can you guess which one had cosmetic upgrades? It has new carpet, hardwoods, whole house repainted, kitchen cabinets, and bathroom. If they are reassessed at sale price they will pay $90k more in taxes over thirty years even though the smart buyer can spend the same amount renovating his house right after buying it and even just rent it forever instead of ever having to sell if he wants to move elsewhere. Also businesses who can who hire lawyers structure leases and sales to avoid reassessments and taxes. More frequent assessments will make the system a little more fair at an expensive of larger bureaucracy. The clr could be fined tuned by neighborhood boundaries and the county could stop lying about its value by handpicking sales that make it look lower than it is.

I’m not advocating for the current system. I’m just pointing out there is no way to fix the newcomer tax. Value is proportional to cost - usually 75%.

> IThat your criticism hinges on whether or not minor improvements are captured does not strengthen it.

Not permitted doesn’t imply minor cost

> No system is perfect but more regularly capturing these changes and eliminating the CLR would fix the most glaring ones.

Don’t they reassess permitted changes anyway under the current system? If I add an addition to my house I’m under the precession they would trigger a reassessment

Because cosmetic repairs are obviously expensive and you are just pretending they aren’t.

Cosmetic updates don’t require a permit and can be substantially expensive. It is questionable tax policy to tax them one way for new buyers and another way for current owners. You don’t have a magical solution no matter how much you try to wish away how expensive cosmetic updates are

But why should someone who makes the same repairs without selling pay less?

If I buy a 100,000 house and before I bought it the windows roof and carpet were replaced for 20,000 and common ratio is 50, I pay taxes on 50,000. If I buy that house before the repairs are made for 80,000 and pay the 20,000 to renovate, I pay taxes on 80,000. Unless I’m missing something, the first scenario I would pay a whopping 25% more in taxes than the second option. Over a 30 year mortgage on a 100,000 house at 30 mils that’s an extra 18,000 in taxes for a renovated house versus a fixer upper

Frequency of assessment has no effect either way on newcomer tax if the common level ratio is accurate. Most interior modifications don’t require permits unless they are structural. The housing market is heavily weighted toward flashy cosmetic updates to drive up the price. Nobody wants assessments to be invasive interior inspections. Many exterior modifications can be non obvious like roof and window replacements which don’t require permits. In a low priced neighborhood, renovations can double the house price with no permit updates

Reassessing every 3-5 years would be a good middle ground. ten years is the absolute limit based on the current frequency of posts on Reddit. Every one or two years is a lot of effort for little benefit.

I completely disagree. Permits are required for additions and major modifications that affect a minority of houses. The interior condition of a house has a massive impact on sale price.

Even with annual assessments, a landlord can buy a shithole house, gut it, install high end fixtures, jack up the rent and coast on a low assessment forever.

A system that requires a detailed market comparison for every house in the county is not a good use of tax dollars. I’m in favor of more frequent assessments. I just want to point out it’s still not going to fix the “newcomers tax” issue

A lot of expensive things don’t require a permit and have a huge affect on sale price like carpet paint roof windows kitchen cabinets countertops. It can affect value by $100k easily

Yeah it’s hilarious.

But how would an assessor know the carpet was replaced or walls painted?

Do you think the 2.1% or 4.7% growth rate is correct?

how does assessing every year capture the value of new capet roof or windows if the house isn’t sold?

That benefits someone who never sells like landlords. One way to avoid incentives and disincentives is to assess on land area and property square footage but that isn’t as progressive as the current system which has higher taxes for popular neighborhoods and lower taxes for neglected neighborhoods based on sale value

From a tax policy perspective it generally makes the property tax system more progressive instead of regressive. In practice it’s a disincentive against buying a recently renovated house and incentives buying fixer upper and live there forever. It is an inefficient tax policy from the perspective that moving closer to a better job has economic benefits and renovating a house before putting it in the market generates economic activity. As far as I know nobody has a perfect formula