Second home buyers in Healdsburg could be subject to an additional property tax

““Many residents are frustrated that second-home purchases continue to eat up our housing stock,” Healdsburg resident Bruce Abramson told the council.”

This is also BS! I know Healdsburg. We go there to Kayak on the Russian River. For years it was a sleepy town where there was probably not much real estate turnover.
So the residents should applaud the sales of homes, because with each sale, there is likely to be a major increase in property taxes that inure to the town. Plus second homes alleviate the problem public schools often face with increasing numbers of children to educate and whose education property taxes support almost totally here in California. So much to say the old timers are essentially getting a free ride on property taxes because their tax basis was determined when they bought their homes 30 years ago are getting their town subsidized by absentee owners. And FWIW it pi$$es me off that I can’t vote where our second home is located and the locals who control the government have nutsy ordinances that work against us as non-residents.

Sometimes I wonder if these people have ever read the constitution. What screws housing prices is ridiculous regulations and fees. Permit fees, impact fees, inspections, etc, will add at least $100K to the cost of a new home. It is not much better if you remodel. Of course it is never the stupid laws they already have that are the problem but just one more law or tax will fix the problem.

100% correct. I live in Texas outside of the city limits without building restrictions. I live of 3-1/2 acres in a 2100 square feet home. Land and house cost me 149,000 dollars 15 years ago. If you factor in inflation about 230,000 dollars today. In California this would be millions.

I have since bought additional land next to me and now have 9 acres with abundant game. Each year several deer go into my freezer.

I love Texas. If you are from California and conservative please move to my wonderful state. If you are liberal, please stay the hell away.

She's conservative, but laments that most of her neighbors are liberals with the idiot mentality that goes along with liberalism.

My wife came from a well to do family in Mexico. She grew up in the sixties as I. She was a left winger but I never was. She is not a left winger today. My favorite quote from her is, "It is easy to be a communist when you are rich."

And the last time I looked, it was perfectly legal to own real property and not live in it all the time, or any time at all.

At some level, it becomes an invasion of privacy. What’s next; the city could decide an owner has “too many” bedrooms for the number of people in the house so the house is not being “fully utilized”. It’s all very soviet.

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