Zardnaar
Legend
I'm all for keeping folks in their houses in their senior years - or to stop families from being removed at younger ages due to gentrification, or to stop ancestral land from being lost because of increasing value!
Unfortunately, I think, a lot of the plans I hear around here for doing that seem more like they're designed to help folks who just don't want to pay taxes but still want to reap all the profits when they sell. So, I wonder about doing something like giving people a choice on how they want the tax changes to be done - either (a) as usual (regular reappraisals with a % increase limit), or (b) deferred to something like the next time the house is sold to someone outside the family. So, if the senior wants the house to be sold when they die to give their kids a huge amount of money (either they or the kids selling), then they should pay the increased taxes on it as they go. If they don't care if it's passed on, then they don't ever have them increase, and maybe the house goes to the city to be sold to recoup those taxes when they pass away. That avoids the things where if you just have the older generation get a fixed tax rate forever, then the younger generations and those who had to move for some reason pay for all of the public services. (In a place where property taxes do that, anyway).
Are taxes calculated on the value of the property?
Contributing factor here is the local councils keep rates low and there's no capital gains tax.
If you bought in the 90's for 100-200k and sell now for 1.5-2 million it's tax free.
The rates paid to the local council do go up but successive councils have kept them as low as possible while racking up debt.
The government has put togather a 2.5 billion dollar bailout but is looking at merging things.
So you have large sections with old villas on them built pre 1940's within walking distance of the CBD now worth millions of dollars. Population has increased 60%bsince 1980 or so but they haven't really built any new infrastructure since then either at least in terms of what's needed.
Ney result some areas have century+ old pipes which break a lot. One council got overruled by central government and they sidelined them with appointed officials to run the city (at huge expense the city pays for).
Of course the various councils like gumming up the works for development, virtually no one votes in local body elections (10% turnout iirc).
I had a friend who's father was tied in with the local business roundtables. Essentially they picked the major basically by going "well boys who wants to run this time".
So basically deregulation in 80's combined with unsustainable population growth = big mess.
My younger D&D players basically said they're screwed and ones a medical student and doctors aren't exactly poor.
One person was asking for advice on where/how to buy with a 150k deposit. He needed 40% deposit and there's virtually no where you can buy at 350k.
Of course if you have a spare 3 million dollars (or 30) you can visit in December, get residency in January and gain access to healthcare by March.