I was just talking to a friend in Ridgewood, NJ, last night. He mentioned people are limited on living there due to property taxes. The costs are high, too, but the property taxes are deal killers. His house is $900K with a $17k property tax. His house would be probably $350K in most places with $3k in property taxes. He has neighbors with $100k property taxes.
NJ is a terrible place financially to live.
To me, a home with $17,000 in property taxes on it shouldn't be worth $900,000 under any circumstances. It should be worth $0, because it's not an asset anymore -- it's a liability. If it costs you $1,500 per month to live in that home even if you hold the title free of all liens, and before you've paid a penny in maintenance, repair or insurance costs, then it's hard to see it as anything BUT a liability.
“His house is $900K with a $17k property tax. NJ is a terrible place financially to live.”
We just refinanced the home we built 32 years ago here in Northern California. The place “bank appraised” for $2 million+. Thanks to Proposition 13, our property taxes are only $7k. For us, California is financially a good place to live. That said, the RATS here are constantly trying to find ways to circumvent Prop 13, which is tough to do, since it was passed by a referendum. The real problem, the country over, is financing public screwels with the property tax. “Public Edumacation” should not be a property-related expense.
Jerseyans accepted the high taxes as long as there was no shortage of high-paying jobs; now many of the jobs are gone but the high taxes remain. Some (including areas like Ridgewood) see the high taxes as protection against “ghettoization”, while others flee the state because they realize that instead of getting services for their high taxes their just funding the teachers’ unions (and therefore the Democratic Party).
We are still importing masses of foreigners to keep those teachers collecting paychecks; the inability to pay anything towards their own upkeep means nothing to our government here. As in other “sanctuaries”, the foreigners are being trafficked here to prevent ghost towns.