We're Going to Make $90MM off the new Property Tax, Nutter Says

[the mule]

It does not necessarily follow that raising taxes on vacant land will spur development. It just creates a disincentive to owning land. How that disincentive affects the owner's use of the property depends wholly on the development potential of that parcel. It might motivate speculators to either develop or sell to a developer in higher value areas, but in distressed and transitional neighborhoods it isn't going to spur development where there are no market forces demanding it. It merely reduces the market value of that parcel to account for the added cost of owning it.

Blight is best dealt with by fining safety violations and holding property owners liable for the maintenance of their property. L&I's doors and windows enforcement is a good start. Someone owning vacant property in an area not yet ready to support redevelopment shouldn't be punished simply for owning that property so long as they properly maintain it.

[raider.adam]

It does not necessarily follow that raising taxes on vacant land will spur development. It just creates a disincentive to owning land. How that disincentive affects the owner's use of the property depends wholly on the development potential of that parcel. It might motivate speculators to either develop or sell to a developer in higher value areas, but in distressed and transitional neighborhoods it isn't going to spur development where there are no market forces demanding it. It merely reduces the market value of that parcel to account for the added cost of owning it.

Blight is best dealt with by fining safety violations and holding property owners liable for the maintenance of their property. L&I's doors and windows enforcement is a good start. Someone owning vacant property in an area not yet ready to support redevelopment shouldn't be punished simply for owning that property so long as they properly maintain it.

Very well put.

[OffenseTaken]

It does not necessarily follow that raising taxes on vacant land will spur development. It just creates a disincentive to owning land. How that disincentive affects the owner's use of the property depends wholly on the development potential of that parcel. It might motivate speculators to either develop or sell to a developer in higher value areas, but in distressed and transitional neighborhoods it isn't going to spur development where there are no market forces demanding it. It merely reduces the market value of that parcel to account for the added cost of owning it.

Blight is best dealt with by fining safety violations and holding property owners liable for the maintenance of their property. L&I's doors and windows enforcement is a good start. Someone owning vacant property in an area not yet ready to support redevelopment shouldn't be punished simply for owning that property so long as they properly maintain it.

billy ross's idea would be a roaring success if improvements were not also taxed, in addition to the lot itself.

[BarryG]

Thea idea of a land value tax instead of a property tax is new to me. It's interesting but in my (very) limited research, it looks like no major city in the western developed world actually has this implemented. So surely there are ways to successfully reduce blight and encourage development under typical property taxes?

It does not necessarily follow that raising taxes on vacant land will spur development. It just creates a disincentive to owning land. How that disincentive affects the owner's use of the property depends wholly on the development potential of that parcel. It might motivate speculators to either develop or sell to a developer in higher value areas, but in distressed and transitional neighborhoods it isn't going to spur development where there are no market forces demanding it. It merely reduces the market value of that parcel to account for the added cost of owning it.

Blight is best dealt with by fining safety violations and holding property owners liable for the maintenance of their property. L&I's doors and windows enforcement is a good start. Someone owning vacant property in an area not yet ready to support redevelopment shouldn't be punished simply for owning that property so long as they properly maintain it.

This makes a lot of sense to me.

[Hospitalitygirl]

Really? Because to hear AS tell it, our city employees will leave you alone forever and a day unless he personally leads the charge to harass you about it.

Whoa, Shosh, this makes at least three dings of AS that I have run across from you today and I haven't been searching for them. I'm rather surprised at you.

[billy ross]

billy ross's idea would be a roaring success if improvements were not also taxed, in addition to the lot itself.

But improvements aren't taxed, at least for enough time (10 years) that banks underwrite mortgages as if the city doesn't tax improvements.

[ArcticSplash]

Whoa, Shosh, this makes at least three dings of AS that I have run across from you today and I haven't been searching for them. I'm rather surprised at you.

Shosh doesn't even know what he's talking about.

bross is a builder/investor over in one neighborhood who is an active owner, and over where I'm doing my work are absentee, unresponsive owners plus a completely different L&I field district.

Hint: L&I response is not completely uniform across the City (it never was) and with the budget cutbacks the last 4 years; things like LVCIP properties were passed up in favor of constituent service priorities. TMK, bross isn't big into LVCIPs. Of course now that we have had an LVCIP go up in flames that killed 2 firefighters, that's being re-evaluated.

The L&I before Fran Burns also was slow to inspect. It's now a lot faster to inspect in just the last year. The 3 notices and you go to court rule is a brand new policy. L&I communicating to the complainant what it's doing--that's still miserable. And before the Buck fire there was still a problem with complaints going to 311 and then being dropped as unfounded by L&I, even though they were written well--and resubmitting the same complaint repetitively magically causes an inspection.



Here's a property that several people worked on where we tried to use L&I but the inspector was fairly powerless to do much of anything. Fran put in the "Lot-Line-In it's L&I, Lot-Line-Out it's Streets Department" policy but in this case with a squatter who was pumping raw sewage into the street for over a year (2 blocks from the Bucks Hosiery building)... we (and by we I mean the neighbors and neighborhood) lucked out with the Water Department digging up the street to shut the water off to the property. That forced the squatters to leave. They were professional squatters, too. They were armed with a water box key b/c one trip to shut off the water by PWD resulted in them coming out of their house in an hour to turn the water back on.

http://fishtown.us/content/forum/nui...-sewage-street