Quote from: K-Dog on May 28, 2024, 07:56 PMI have never cared about how much the house is worth. To me it was always about paying it off and having no rent. Sell it for a fortune? So what, a new place costs a fortune and you have to live somewhere. And now houses are worth so much property tax is like new rent.
A system that reduced housing values should have a way for people to refinance homes as they lose value for those who have an underwater mortgage. Construction of the system should however not reward those who must refinance to a lower value. Only ease the pain of the stupid who bought air. Socialize their loss somewhat.
But this is random speculation. We live in America. Easing of pain is not what we do.
"Legacy" properties like yours pose another problem, because they are out of the system once the mortgage is paid off. There no longer is a bank whose Tier 1 capital structure is affected, no pension fund holds securities of which it is a part. The only effects are on the price it could be sold at if it were to be sold in the new controlled market and how it would be assessed for taxation purposes. You also do not have a home equity line of credit attached and aren't using it as collateral upon which to leverage other loans or purchases.
The problem is here that it's uncertain who would buy this type of house with many bedrooms and large square footage and property if there are available homes that are much cheaper and more energy efficient that better fill the needs of the new population of DINKs (double income no kids). I suspect the number of people who would buy such homes is quite small now, so they would either need to be razed or cut up into multifamily dwellings if the architecture is suitable for that. That's what they did in old cities like St. Louis and Detroit to the Mansions built in the late 1800s when these cities were booming in the years after WWII. I had a friend who lived in one. The 1st floor was cut up into 3 apartments, 2nd floor 2 and the basement and attic each had 1. They were all 1 or 2 bedroom apts. Floor plan was crazy nuts. This was the only way the people who owned these places could afford the taxes assessed on them as the cities lost their populations of wealthy people that could afford big homes.
As long as you could afford the new tax assessment under the new property financing structure, you wouldn't need to make any changes and any financial loss is just on paper, it's not realized until you sell the property or die. If the new taxation is too high, you would either have to divide up the place to rent some units or sell it to Da Goobermint at a fixed rate to be replaced by housing under the new code in terms of square footage and energy efficiency.
I wouldn't worry about it because it's not gonna happen. Your situation is not uncommon amongst old Boomers, but it takes a back seat to the much larger problem of all the homes owned by GenX and later that also often have 2nd & 3rd mortgages and consolidation loans that reduced their credit card debt & auto or student loan debt. That's where resolving the financial mess would be a real nightmare. Jamie Dimon and the rest of the Masters of the Universe will never let this happen.
RE