I would like the value of my home to rise, while my property taxes fall
- ID
- 34145
- Status
- summarized
- Published
- 10 Oct 2026, 9:29 PM
- Fetched
- 11 Oct 2026, 12:09 PM
- Provider
- Hacker News
- Category
- dev-community
- Original URL
- https://conversableeconomist.com/2026/09/28/i-would-like-the-value-of-my-home-to-rise-while-my-property-taxes-fall/
- Source URL
- https://hnrss.org/best
Summary
- Score
- 2.0
- Created
- 11 Oct 2026, 12:09 PM
- Tags
- Audience
- saas_startup_founders
What happened
Economist David Schleicher's paper "The Great American Property Tax Freak Out" (posted to SSRN September 1, 2026, discussed on the Conversable Economist blog) documents how, over the last three years, several US states have reformed property taxes to give large breaks to owner-occupied homes, shifting the cost of schools and police onto commercial property owners, other local taxes, and state funding — with Florida, Ohio, North Dakota, and Texas having considered abolishing property tax on owner-occupied housing or eliminating it entirely. Schleicher argues these changes make property tax less a locally-controlled funding tool and more a redistributive tax, and predicts higher housing costs, a wealth transfer to existing homeowners, greater state authority over local governments, less stable local funding, stricter zoning controls but more building where zoning permits. The Hacker News thread drew 235 points and 532 comments.
Why it matters
Nothing here changes what a Malaysian developer, AI learner, or SaaS founder builds or ships this week — the text contains no Malaysian, Southeast Asian, cloud, payments, or developer-tooling detail, and no version numbers, prices, or APIs to act on. The only usable takeaway is a macro-policy lens: if you price salaries or set up an entity where housing and local tax costs feed into operating costs, the mechanism described (shifting tax from homeowners to commercial property and consumption/income taxes) is the kind of change that raises commercial rents and cost of living, but the article gives no data on Malaysia, so do not extrapolate it locally without your own research.
Discussion angle
Use it as a 5-minute meta-segment: a 532-comment HN thread on US property tax economics versus what actually gets that much engagement in Malaysian builder communities — worth asking the room whether macro/policy threads are signal or noise for their roadmap decisions.