Comparable Properties of Western Conference Rivals
Having now lived 16 years in each, I can confirm Texas is not what people in California think it is and vice versa. The strength of the caricature is simply a function of how much time you spend on the internet. Texas is not a handmaiden dystopia overrun by white men with guns. California is not a homeless dystopia overrun by woke police with pronouns.
In our little suburban pocket 30 minutes north of Dallas, Indians run the show. I posted my kindergartner’s yearbook class photo in our family album with a caption about how he stands out, referring to the clown smile among stiff ones. My brother responded no, Griffin is the one who stands out. One white kid in the class. It will be hard for him to revive the Klan at this school with everyone at Spelling Bee practice.
What bubble dwellers with a steady internet connection might picture as Texas is the vast area between our big cities. But really, the same goes for California. If you hop on the 5 out L.A., it doesn’t take long before you’re in a different world. Bakersfield probably is more similar to “Friday Night Lights” West Texas than San Francisco. I’ve always thought the noticeable differences aren’t so much between states as suburban vs. city vs. rural.
There is one difference at the state level top of mind this month, mildly interesting to me and maybe boring to explain. We pay property taxes on the appraised value of our house every year. The thing is, no one’s really doing much appraising. The local district uses some mass appraisal tool (highly doubt it’s been Claude-ified) and mails us a number every April. It appears the tool could be replaced by a 1.1x drag-and-fill formula, as we have yet to get anything different than the maximum 10-percent annual increase.
This year it was $915,200. I love our house, but no one would or should pay that much for less than 3,000 square feet, which by Texas standards is zoned for dwarfs. The backyard is right on Custer Road, the suburban equivalent of La Cienega Boulevard. If I woke up to a semi-truck outside our bedroom window with a crumbled brick wall behind it, the scene would be surprising but not entirely incomprehensible.
The heaviest anchor holding appreciation is the buck-wild building going on. They just keep pushing north with new houses, probably all the way to Oklahoma. Sure you could buy a house in our neighborhood… or add the cost of a nice dinner to the monthly mortgage for a brand-new one. The “For Sale” sign down the street has been there so long I don’t notice it anymore.
So you have the option, really obligation, to protest these values. Spend an hour on Zillow and filling out the form, wait for a counter value, and either accept it or attend a hearing. The first year they lopped off $102,422 without a hearing, and we ended up saving $1722 on property taxes. The next year they lowered it $71,925 and the tax bill $1205 after a hearing that didn’t change the initial counter.
Slashing six figures off a price sight unseen feels like Trump moonlighting as a used car salesman. Or as a president crafting economic and foreign policy. Just throw something out there on whim rather than rigor, let it sit for a while, and have the result settle to an uncomfortable equilibrium largely based on who complains the loudest.
I’ll do my best at our hearing Tuesday. They countered only to $900,000. Whose dick do I need to tug for more reasonable seeding for property taxes?
California’s method makes more sense to me. The assessed value for property taxes is based on the purchase price with a 2-percent annual increase cap. I think that’s right. The value of something is what a buyer is willing to pay in a marketplace rather than cherrypicked comps.
Now, everything has a tradeoff. California, or at least L.A. where I lived, has the inverse housing situation with no new inventory and therefore skyrocketing appreciation. You could imagine in some communities, boomers in $1.8-million homes they bought for $300K are sitting pretty. Meanwhile young families who manage to get in at today’s prices face comparatively steep property taxes, and you could say they subsidize the grandfathered grandfathers when it comes to funding public services. This further squeezes starter homes out of the picture and deters both buying and selling in an already brutal market.
I got some East Asian Communist in me and do not oppose paying my fair share for the greater good. I type this right now at the magnificent Frisco Public Library underneath a life-size T. rex skeleton while my kids play in the robotics area. This stuff didn’t build itself. Teachers deserve strong salaries. I would rather die than educate children not related to me under the age of 10. And I have a special place in my heart for fire departments like the one that saved my dad’s life and in my pay stubs for the law enforcement agencies that buy my employer’s products.
A deductible 12 grand per year in property taxes plus no state income tax seems like a sweet deal for these perks. I guess I would just prefer a more orderly way to get there than this Wild West negotiation charade, and we can look to our oft-compared foil in the Wild West for ideas.