Yes. I bought a house at $40K thats now about $300K 6 years later. I think our taxes in Ferrick's suggested number ($19 per thousand) would basically triple. The guys at the BRT has been pretty insistant that we should intentionally shoot for that zero gain in overall taxes. We'll see what happens in City Council. Even so, for those of us who live in areas with rapidly skyrocketing property values we are likely to face some pretty serious sticker shock. Not to mention old folks, people on fixed incomes, and even longer time residents in neighborhoods where property values have tripled in the last 5-10 years. Ouch.

Factor in politicians not wanting to seem like Scrooge but Philly's mounting debt issues the way this might play out, it gets really confusing real fast. Plan to see the amount of sherrif's sales triple (some might say a good thing - others not) and huge impetus to kill the 10 year tax abatement (or else a lot of condo-owners heads on pikes). Also plan to see some racial politics like you haven't seen in 30 years. Just a thought.

Several people have suggested that higher property taxes will mean higher property values, which I don't get at all. Housing estimates to borrow and refi are based on recent sales in your area, not taxes. I guess if there is a massive shakeout of poor people and old folks, there will be more sales and places where values have been abnormally low for lack of turnover - there might be a plus. For most folks it just makes owning in Philly more expensive and the suburbs (and their higher taxes) look better. That doesn't seem likely to increase housing values to me.

If anything is likely to kill this seller's market, this will. Long term of course it will turn over a lot of abandonned homes in the neighbrohoods but that postive impact might be a decade down the line.

Is Ferrick's $19 per thousand just too high?

30 years? do you remember the bug?

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I don't see how any good can come from this reassessment. There's apparently no plans to dramatically cut or eliminate the wage tax. Hundreds of thousands of people whose home values increased are going to get pissed off when they see their tax bill. And for what? They're not even going to take in more money if it's really revenue-neutral. Think about it... if you bought your house for $60,000 and it's now worth $300k, let's say your taxes triple. For every person with a massive tax increase, 10 other people must be getting a tax cut. Now think about who those people will be. I can see why Street's such a big proponent of this reassessment.

As I understand it, tax reform per se isn't the rationale. It's simply that a series of court decisions in other jurisdictions indicated that the current system of assessments is on extremely shaky legal ground. The city could have temporarily lost their ability to levy ANY property tax if they hadn't moved to a 100% of market value assessment. Or maybe not, but they potentially could have faced doing a court-ordered mass reassessment in the not-so-distant future.

EDIT: Here's the relevant item from the Q & A w/ David Glancey posted earlier in this thread:

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Ferrick really misstated the case when he calculated taxes at market rate without a decrease in the fare.

The rate at which full market value is taxed is going to be lowered. But people need to have some idea what that number should be.

Any thoughts? What would be a fair number for you as a household? Is that going to work for the city?

Some people would kill for this problem. :-\ What would your new tax rate be, $1800? for how many sqft?

But will City Council decrease the rate?

I mean the city is always complaining how hard up it is for $$, and this reassement wil bring in a ton of money.

It would be as if the city hit the lottery

The city does not have to raise taxes, but it does have to collect the property taxes it has assessed legally.

In just two blocks in my neighborhood, there is, of the worst offenders, over $57,000.00 in overdue property taxes.

Here they are:

Propoperties that owe exhorbitant taxes near 18th and Pemberton which the owners are way behind on:

1919 Pemberton -- $7K -- Over four years delinquent

2023 Pemberton -- $11K -- Over nine years unpaid

2050 Pemberton -- $6K -- Over nine years delinquent

740 S. 18th -- $18K -- Over eight years unpaid

742 S. 18th -- $14K -- Over nine years unpaid

These are just the worst of many accounts in overdue status.

In the two blocks I looked at there is of these only overdue accounts over $57,000.00 due the schools and the city. That is trash collection, recycling, teachers, after school test prep, street sweeping, etc.

Why doesn't the city collect? Because citizens aren't demanding that their neighbors pay their fair share.

Philly politicians are clearly squeamish about race, class, and taxes. But if they plan to raise taxes for those who do pay, wouldn't it be appropriate to work harder to collect what has already been levied while taxes were low?

Hallwatch uses the latest publicly available data on overdue taxes, and calculates that at over half a million owed the city that is unpaid. That could be used to lower wage taxes, improve schools, and would spur growth and development without a penny of NTI money.