Or he could have bought, in 1970, the property on which my neighborhood was built, at about $10,000 per acre. If he'd have kept it undeveloped until now, it would be worth north of $200,000 per acre, now. By the way, if he'd have bought just about any old developable raw land in the Washington, DC region in 1970, today, it'd easily be worth 15 - 20 times what it was in 1970. That's even better!Property tax rise would have forced him to sell some or all of that land long before it reached 200K an acre...
Dear Axenolith,
"Property tax rise would have forced him to sell some or all of that land long before it reached 200K an acre..."
Not really. Where I live, there are folks who keep their land as agricultural land until they get ready to develop it. Low taxes. A side benefit is that you can often rent out the land in the meanwhile to folks who actually want to farm it, and derive a small rental income in the meanwhile.
But even without the ability to somehow reduce or offset the taxes, the residential property taxes where I live are low. A property with a market value of $200,000 that's been held for many years might only have taxes of $1000 - $1500 per year. Over the period of 30 or 35 years of holding it, one would have paid on average less than a thousand dollars per year.
sitetest