[Jackie Lange]

Jackie Lange

See this article

http://www.cnbc.com/2016/07/06/foreign-buyers-flood-us-real-estate-but-buy-cheaper-homes.html

a good way to reach thee foreign buyers is to advertise your properties on http://www.mondinion.com/

[D Graber]

D Graber

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More such bubble-mania, including a special emphasis on Canada:

http://wolfstreet.com/2016/07/05/teardowns-shadow-flipping-living-inside-vancouver-housing-bubble/

Elsewhere I’ve seen stories of young lawyers being priced out of homes they had bought in Vancouver — after foreign money had driven the prices so high that local property tax bureaucrats jacked up their property tax bills way beyond affordability.

–Dee

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[Robert McWhirter]

Robert McWhirter

DLG, that happened here in Florida along the Gulf Coast where the county appraisers (back in 2004-2009) appraised the beach area motel owners as “highest and best” use of their land. So all those 1950’s & ’60’s Mom and Pop snowbird motels that had been appraised at $200 – $300 Thousand dollars were bumped up to a Million$$ or more because it could be a 12 story condo building. Sell out or lose it to taxes. Now you can drive Gulf Blvd. from St. Pete Beach to Clearwater Beach and not see the water or sunset anymore.

[D Graber]

D Graber

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Thank you, mactrustee. I had not heard of the “highest and best use” theory being ripped off by tax looters. In Texas, it can occasionally be used by property owners about to lose their property to eminent domain (however unjustly to local developers in cahoots with local government, such as for sports stadiums) to demand compensation based on that “highest and best use” that the developers intend to put the property to.

In some states, I think it may still be possible to get a single family house (currently being property tax gouged by out-of-state money sloshing in to jack up local comps) converted to a designation of commercial use (since the owner(s) don’t live there and use the house strictly for rental income. In the states where commercial tax valuations are based strictly on the income that a property generates, that commercial designation could potentially result in enormous tax savings. But clearly in a state like Florida addicted to “highest and best use” tax looting, that redesignation to commercial status probably wouldn’t help.

Here are a couple of superb quotes from the great French writer and free market economist Frederic Bastiat (1801-1850):

“It is impossible to introduce into society a greater change and a greater evil than this: the conversion of the law into an instrument of plunder.”

“But how is this legal plunder to be identified? Quite simply. See if the law takes from some persons what belongs to them, and gives it to other persons to whom it does not belong. See if the law benefits one citizen at the expense of another by doing what the citizen himself cannot do without committing a crime.”

–Dee

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[Jackie Lange]

Jackie Lange

Instead of buying one $1,000,000 property, in Panama, we’re seeing foreign buyers buying five $200,000 houses instead. Better cash flow and less risk.