This is cool, but wasn't this a "Verily" project about 10 years ago? What is new here and what has happened since then?

It's a luxury tax that only affects people wealthy enough to have a second home in NYC. These people, by virtue of not living there, aren't paying income tax and thus don't contribute as much as someone who is.

>t's a luxury tax that only affects people wealthy enough to have a second home in NYC.

Not exclusively though, right?

Since they are revising the valuation system to not artificially depress valuations, isnt this a global tax increase? No rate changes or extra tax for someone with a primary residence but the base is increasing, right?

>While the tax seems large, experts say the city’s antiquated assessment and valuation system dramatically undervalues properties, reducing the burden. City valuations can often be 10% or less of the true market value, they said.

>Rather than overhaul the system immediately, the city will gradually update valuations – and the tax – according to the budget documents. Starting in the 2028-2029 tax year, the property values will be based on comparable sales. Since valuations will skyrocket, the tax rates will fall to compensate.

Those are two different things: the new tax, and fixing the broken appraisal process.

Look at the article. It changes appraisals to be comparable sales. Thats how property taxes work in general for NYC. Do you see anything that says this change is scoped to these 2nd homes over 1M? I cant find that specified anywhere - it only mentions the general method.

Yes it is proposed for only the new second home tax. It does not currently exist at all.

some states have homestead exemptions on property tax where your primary residence gets a discount on property taxes (eg Texas); is this effectively the same thing? or is NYC limited to unoccupied second homes instead of those being rented out?

> The rates sound a bit steep.

Agreed, but you also have to keep in mind that those people don't pay NYC income tax.

This specifically targets people who don't live in New York though (and thus don't pay income tax).

I really liked Google Domains, but alas…

I think some of it is due to the lay off, some of it due to the supply situation not being as bad as SF (though construction has slowed recently), and a lot of it due to interest rates making "effective prices" much higher.

> but it always was that way.

I don't think that's true. I remember the very early days of Stack Overflow and it felt much more fun and friendly than it did 6-7 years later. I have so many 15+ years question/answer that somehow get revisited by a "moderator" that decides that maybe we should close this.

But was that the cause of Stack Overflow's demise? I agree that it most likely isn't. It's most definitely because of LLMs.

> You don't have to worry about rent increases

I'd also argue there are financial advantages (on top of the psychological ones) to the price stability as you don't have to hedge against your housing cost shooting up as much.

And it’s not just psychological ones, the cost of moving is expensive, so if you landlord decides to get rid of you then you’re on the hook. You’re also vulnerable to local price increases - of the area you live in increases in value because the school Gets better, prices increase, and you have to move and your kids have to move school.

Owning the asset is an advantage in a bull market and a disadvantage in a bear market. If a dominant employer or industry in an area has mass layoffs, that can cascade into the housing market, driving your property underwater at the same time your job vanishes. This happened to a large number of autoworkers in Detroit in 2008.

Depends where you live. Any sensible municipality will tax land at it's value, so your costs should rise according to value. Of course most municipalities are failures when it comes to taxation, so probably it's a better deal to own land in those places.

Depends where you live. CA has prop 13 but other places you are reassessed regularly and plenty of homeowners are surprised to get priced out of their homes.

HOAs can be a big variable cost, yes, especially in the case of underfunded condos associations with a lot of delayed maintenance. Insurance can vary a lot, but is usually a much smaller amount than your mortgage payment (though I only have experience with the PNW).

But yeah, for a single family home in a not-too-flood-prone area it'll be very predictable.

Unlike a startup that pays with illiquid RSUs, Meta paid its people extremely well for its bets though. I dont think Zuck is a great leader at all, but he’s definitely willing to pay for talent.