Homeowner Property Taxes Soar
What makes 2024 a year where homeowner property taxes soar? Why did they soar in 2022? 2023? Once again FOMO starting in 2020 rears its head. With remote work and distancing with Covid, those individuals and families who received stimulus payments and had means chose to escape dense living, dense urban areas, and crowded schools. Suburbs and rural areas saw bounces, even staggering leaps in home prices. Higher home prices lead to higher property value on the tax rolls and eventually to higher property taxes on you.
Not all states, towns, cities or suburbs saw massive increases in property taxes. Those areas with good fiscal management lowered property tax rates to offset higher property tax values. This limited increases in the overall homeowner property tax increases. Coupled with higher property insurance costs and high interest rates, how is one to buy a house and afford a mortgage?
Not All States Created Equal
Good fiscal management is a key. States with poor fiscal management saw an exodus of people through domestic migration. The worst offenders, California, New York, and Illinois, drove at least 2 million of its citizens to other states. Those states continued, and even increased, reckless spending sprees. 2024 and 2025 are shaping up to be massive budget holes dripping with red ink. They did not pass along property tax rate relief in the fashion of other states. And with looming budget deficits, new, even higher, property taxes will likely result since that is the mindset of those governing these states. Sell your 1,500 square foot 50 year old house in California for $1 million and buy a new (or newer) 3,000 square foot house for half that in another state? Done!
Illegal Immigration
Let’s not forget illegal immigration. Held in check for a long time, but more so in the 2018-2020 period, it exploded beginning with Biden/Harris in 2021. What does that have to do with anything? 12.5 million illegal entrants identified by the Department of Homeland Security. Not all remained in the US. But where do 8-10 million of new population live? They live where the US government, or even local governments are paying for them to live. Did your apartment rent or home rent skyrocket? You were competing with the government’s seeming unlimited spending housing non-citizens. Tens of billions of dollars later, can you compete with that? Biden/Harris even flew non-citizens in from their home country! Why in hell do that? What’s a border czar like Kamala Harris to do if you can’t get enough illegal immigrants to vote for you? Get more!
If you’re looking to buy a house or facing rent increases, why vote for more rent increases or housing unaffordability? 2024 and early 2025 may be the peak of unaffordability. Pick up a copy of Winning Mortgage, Winning Home. Choose to stop paying more and find the best housing for you.