this post was submitted on 15 May 2025
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A Boring Dystopia
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Uhhh no... when your house goes up in value, that's how much somebody might pay to buy it IF YOU SOLD IT. Until you sell it, you don't get any money. And as I said, if you do sell it it would make sense to me to tax you at that point - but not until you get the money. Srsly what grade are you in?
Now it's true that you can borrow against your home value - this is known as a home equity loan or a line of credit. So you potentially have that - but again, not until you actually do it (if ever). And that's not even really your money, it's a debt you have to pay back.
They are paying money based on wealth they can obtain at any time directly by selling. So if you pay $50k and end with a 4M home you can sell it and live on the millions of dollars.
What if the real estate market cools off and they never get their millions of dollars - do you think they should get a refund for all the years they paid the higher tax on the expectation of getting rich which never happened?
Why would that be so.
Any investment has risks. On average real estate taxes are overwhelmingly taxes on real gains that are actually both enjoyed and eventually realized often without a commensurate tax rate especially when they are given to descendants and the value is "reset" to the level it was received and all those gains magically poof and cease even being capital gains.
A tax payer funded remission when the market drops would be full on pants on head crazy for so many reasons. It would encourage stupid risk on the basis that it would be subsidized by the government, it would be paid by everyone but overwhelmingly enjoyed by the rich, and it would oft represent fake losses. For instance collecting 10,000 for 5 years on a 1M property then remitting 25k back largely to the 1% who overwhelmingly own the country then oops it recovers its value after the crash!
Real permanent loss of value in consumer real estate is rare and impossible to sanely effectively insure against. Fortunately it is a fucking fake problem.
It is highly weird to see a bunch of people in the top 10% whining about the only real way they remotely pay their share.
That is literally how every billionaire funds their lifestyle, just borrowing against stocks instead of home equity. If people with $4 million homes are not rich, then neither are most billionaires.
It's also NOT literally how a typical homeowner lives their life. Those are the people I'm talking about, who are being taxed on money they don't have.