Americans ARE DONE WITH PROPERTY TAXES!

You know, many Americans, including me, are sick of paying property taxes, especially when you see how little you get in return for the ever-increasing property taxes. We've also uncovered here on the channel that a lot of property taxes are being fraudulently assessed because property tax increases are essentially a form of taxing unrealized capital gains. When you think about it, your house is going up in value, so the county is charging you a higher property tax rate, but you never get to actually enjoy that higher value of your home until you go ahead and sell it. By definition, that's taxing your unrealized gains on the house. But people are getting so sick of property taxes that actually eight states this year had some form of property tax measure on their ballots in the form of even abolishing property taxes or lowering property taxes, capping property taxes, which is a clear sign that many people are frustrated with how much property taxes have gone up over the past few years. Georgia, they approved a constitutional amendment that caps property tax assessments for all current homeowners, and Florida actually passed an initiative that pegs the value of one type of property tax exemption to annual inflation. And that's something that I voted for because obviously I don't like paying property taxes, so any little decrease I can get due to higher inflation, I will take it. I should actually know this any day now, now that I'm thinking about it, but if there was no new budget passed in Miami-Dade County, then my property tax bill is actually set to go down a few hundred dollars into 2025, amazingly. However, if they do pass the new budget, then it's actually going to go up a few hundred dollars instead. But usually the property tax bills start coming in November, so I'm expecting that bill to show up any day now. In fact, it might be at home waiting for me. I'm only going to be here in Arizona a few more days, so it'll be interesting to see what happens with that. In Wyoming, voters passed a constitutional amendment that allows residences to be assessed separately from other types of real estate, which could lead lawmakers to pass lower taxes for homeowners in the future. Unfortunately, the most interesting property tax measure that was on the ballot did end up failing in North Dakota, where they had it on the ballot to eliminate property taxes altogether. How that didn't pass? I have no idea. I would think pretty much everybody in North Dakota would be voting for that one. In fact, it lost pretty big. This measure to eliminate property taxes in North Dakota only got 37% of the vote, and according to this story here, this constitutional amendment faced stiff opposition from a variety of interest groups, including the state's governor, Doug Burgum. I'm sure there was all kinds of fear-mongering going on, trying to tell people all the things, all the services and amenities that are going to be taken away from them if they don't pay property taxes. But the reality is, it's probably mostly BS, because what it really means is less money for politicians, less money to be stolen in some way or another, or funneled into businesses of interest. And guys, don't forget that I was sponsored by a company about a month ago called OwnWell, who will protest your property tax bill on your behalf completely for free, and you won't have to pay anything unless you actually win that protest. I'm keeping a link for that service down in the description of my videos permanently for you guys to have access to. I'm not even getting paid to say it this time. I just want people who watch my channel to have access to all of the best services that are out there that can really help people out with their financial life. So make sure you go ahead and use that if you need to. But sure enough, all these local governments are crying out, saying how much this would And take a look at this, guys. This is how much money is being stolen from us as Americans, okay? Local governments in 2023 levied $36.3 billion in property taxes on single family homes alone. That doesn't include multifamily, doesn't include commercial, doesn't include condos and townhouses. So the actual number is probably more than double that that was actually collected in property taxes. And that number was up almost 7% from 2022, which is the largest increase in the last five years. So how is that fair? Oh, your property went up in value? Great. I didn't sell it. I didn't do anything. I'm still living in the house. Why all of a sudden do you have to pay substantially more? You shouldn't. And it's also not fair that they make new people pay substantially more either, guys. Like I understand that local governments do need to have some sort of an operating budget, but these increases that we've all seen are egregious. Last year, Texas, they supposedly passed an $18 billion property tax cut, which is the largest cut in the state's history. But Texas turns out to be one of these places where property tax fraud is actually at its highest. Maybe they just did that just to cover their butts to make sure they don't get completely sued like what Mitch Vexler is doing right now. Here we have a house for sale for a whopping $1.8 million, although it is huge at 4,300 square feet. It's on par with California prices, although you'd never get a house that big in California for that price. But they bought it back in 1996 for $477,000, today at $1.8 million. But apparently Arizona is pretty good at keeping property taxes low because $5,870 a year for a house that's supposedly worth $1.8 million, that's not too bad. You guys here in Arizona should feel pretty good about that because that's definitely not the case in Florida, Texas, or California. Let's talk about Georgia's passing of their property tax measure over there because this seems to be the most significant one next to Florida's, which where they did something similar and they capped their tax assessment changes for current homeowners at an annual inflation rate rather than the real market value. So home prices have increased about 60% in Georgia over the past five years. But the problem is, all of these increases have already been made, guys. They're finally doing something about it now, right after we've already seen the 60% increase in home values and people have already seen their property tax bills go up by 30%. They talked to one 60-year-old man in Georgia who said his property tax bill went up by 25% this year after the county determined the market value of his house had increased by 29.2% since the last time it was assessed. And so he said he's going to be appealing his assessment like he should. And that's why I brought up the OwnWell, guys. They will do that on your behalf. If you don't want to go through the trouble, if you don't want to learn how to do it, you're more than welcome to do it yourself. It's free for you to do if you do it yourself, but you do have to know what you're doing and you have to meet the deadline. So just keep that in mind. And this is all happening at a time people are getting hit with other rising costs to own a home, like homeowner's insurance and higher utilities and higher repair costs, higher everything. But the downside to this measure, supposedly, is that because it's helping to cap property taxes for current owners, it may end up increasing property taxes for new homeowners who already can barely afford the house as it is. Because if they're not collecting enough tax from all the current homeowners trying to keep older people in their homes and not see the property taxes go up so much every year, then somebody's going to have to come up with that difference unless the local county can start operating on a lower budget. But no one ever seems to want to do that anymore. Everybody wants to always increase the budget and it can never go down. That's like political suicide for some reason. So what they're worried about in Georgia is something similar happening like Proposition 13 in California, where current homeowners are able to lock in their property taxes at significantly lower rates than what new homeowners will pay, which disincentivizes people from selling homes, which leads to far fewer listings hitting the market and home prices going up, guys. In fact, sometimes homes in California don't hit the market for 50, 60, 70 years. These homes are transferred between family members in order to keep that property tax bill low and people will do anything to do that. And listen, I don't blame them. If I owned a house 30, 40 years ago in California, I'd be doing everything I could as well to keep my property tax bill artificially low for as long as possible. Who wouldn't? Now they're saying that the property tax measure passed in Florida, that this is estimated to cost local governments more than $400 million in the first five years. And they're saying it's going to save the average homeowner only $20 a year. Like, I don't know, man, I don't believe these people, you know, that's just one of those tactics that they probably use to get people in North Dakota to vote against themselves. That's what I think. It's for sure it's going to save people a lot more than $20 a year and I'd be surprised if it didn't. But you do have the real possibility of cities, states, or local governments that reduce property taxes through voters' requests and they may end up increasing taxes in other areas. So it could end up making the cost of living remain the same. New Mexico, Colorado, and Virginia, they all voted to expand property tax exemptions for veterans or their families. There was actually one here in Arizona as well, which allows real estate owners to apply for property tax refunds when they spend money to protect their properties from homeless individuals or to repair damage allegedly caused by them. Rightfully so. The state should be paying for that. If you're not doing anything to manage the issue and homeowners have to incur unnecessary expenses because of it, but the first thing I think of when I hear stuff like this is fraud, right? How are you going to prove that it was, you know, property damage done by homeless unless you literally have it on video? And on top of that, it could all be staged. It could all be, you could just have somebody set up a fake tent and pretend they're homeless in front of your house and cause damage and then, you know, hand the bill to the state and say, now refund me, right? So if I can figure out the scam in 30 seconds after reading it, I'm sure many other people are already currently working on how they're going to get away with this scam. We just saw another fed rate cut this week by 25 basis points and mortgage rates aren't budging guys. They went down a tiny little bit, but it barely even moved. In fact, I think the election moved the 30 year mortgage rates more than the actual fed rate cut did. According to Zillow, the 30 year fixed rate is sitting at 6.86% according to mortgage news daily, it's at 6.98% so still hovering right at that 7% mark and something I haven't said in a while, but I want to reiterate is that those rates that you see are only for the most well qualified individuals, people that have immaculate credit that don't even really need the money because that's who gets to borrow the money at the cheapest rates. Guys, people that don't actually need money and have fantastic credit. That's who gets the 7% mortgage rate, not the first time home buyer with a 620 credit score and a $10,000 down payment, okay? But the funny thing about this story is that all the experts are just kind of stunned that mortgage rates have been going up since the first fed rate cut and then still after the second one, the mortgage rates are still going up. Like why is this happening? They point out some interesting anomalies here that normally don't happen. We had this horrible jobs report earlier in the month where the jobs numbers are essentially negative right now. And typically when we get these bad jobs reports, it causes mortgage rates to go down, but they actually went up instead. Over the past seven weeks, in fact, mortgage rates have been rising every single week. Guys, they have not been coming down at all. So it seems like the fed is essentially powerless when it comes to setting rates in the market. Who would have thought? How many times I've already said that here on the channel and explained why. The fed can keep cutting rates all they want, that is no guarantee or any indication that borrowing costs when it comes to buying a car, buying a house or anything like that is going to come down anytime soon. To me, when you see this situation happening right now, it's actually showing you that the fed has not achieved the soft landing that they kept saying that they would and has failed at that task miserably and we're headed in for a hard landing right now. And they're also saying here that because Trump won the election, this literally caused the best week in the stock market for the entire year following the election. That's another reason that we've seen interest rates continue to go up. But no mention here of inflation, no mention that maybe it's because investors want to hire a return on that government debt if they're going to invest in it because inflation is not squashed. And in fact, it's already coming roaring back if not staying put at around almost 3%, depending on which measure you look at. If you're looking at PCE right now, inflation's at 2.7%. If you're looking at the core inflation numbers, we're looking at like 3.2, 3.3%. Right now, the mortgage industry is suffering big time, guys. I reported the other day about how United Wholesale Mortgage has seen their profits go down by 90% in one year. You're seeing similar things happen at other mortgage companies that I'm going to cover here now. One of them is called Motto Mortgage. They are a subsidiary or a partner of Remax, the real estate company. Their net income was $966,000 down from the 3.7 million in the second quarter and a loss of 59.5 million one year ago. Of course, they're blaming this on high interest rates, not blaming it on high home prices. Every time the sales go down in the real estate business, the first finger to point is, well, interest rates are too high. Okay. Well, if we lower interest rates back down to 2%, home prices will still be too high. Most people still won't be able to afford houses at today's prices, even if they were at 2%, guys, and 2% is an unrealistic number. Some people got close to that during the pandemic, borrowing at two and a half, 2.75%, but really lucky people, but those rates didn't last very long. Looking back in history, we'd never seen anything like that. You never see 30-year mortgage rates like that. Where they're at right now is pretty much in line with historical reality, but all these agents, all these mortgage companies keep talking about how rates are too high and that's the reason nothing is selling right now. Here we have a house that's actually smaller than the last one, but has some kind of nice view and it's on a corner lot, so they're asking more at almost 2.15 million here, but it's a flip because they bought it back in 2021 for 1.7 million, so they're looking to get an extra half a million dollars in just a few years. Will they be able to get it? Comment below. But even then, property taxes are still at $5,800 a year for a house that was purchased for 1.7 million. I might have to start thinking about moving to Arizona. I don't know if I will consider it seriously, but it's really got me thinking when I see that because the property taxes are just so egregious in Florida. In the third quarter of this year, the model mortgage, they lost 1.12 million. Three months ago, the quarter prior to that, they lost 1.68 million, so the losses are just continuing to mount for these mortgage companies. In fact, things are so bad, they've had to close down eight of their locations and they say this is the first time since REMAC started the model mortgage business that the number of operating franchises has had to close. So I don't know what that tells you. I think that tells you that the housing market is not nearly as strong or robust or as rosy as we're continually being told. Maybe that's what it means. But another thing you have to understand is that the mortgage industry is impacted by the lower sales volume even more than real estate agents. Because think about it. Even though home sales are also at 30-year lows right now, at least a real estate agent can still get some business from cash buyers, people that are still affluent enough to be buying in this environment. You still have cash buyers. You still have people that can afford even today's prices and interest rates buying. But on the mortgage side of things, you only get paid when you close on a loan. When we have a situation when 30% of home sales right now are all cash, then the mortgage industry is losing out on all those transactions. I find this interesting as a former real estate agent. I still technically am a real estate agent, but I don't practice it anymore. If you guys need real estate services, it's something I offer for free down in the description below. I can get you set up with a real estate agent or a mortgage broker for that matter if you need one. But historically, when I was doing real estate transactions, it was always like, man, it must be nice to be the mortgage broker because they're going to get paid no matter what. This loan is going to close. But sometimes clients don't stick with you as a real estate agent. Sometimes they'll leave and go work with somebody else after you did a bunch of work for them, which happened to me on numerous occasions. But the thing that home buyers usually don't do is they usually don't switch lenders unless they absolutely have to at the last moment because their original lender couldn't pull through and get the loan for them. But now the tables have kind of turned where the real estate agents have the upper hand and the mortgage brokers are suffering, which I find kind of ironic. Guild Mortgage, they're another one facing financial setbacks right now. The company reported a significant loss of $145.8 million in value adjustments to its mortgage servicing rights compared to a gain of $2.1 million in the prior quarter. But even look at that. Even just look, the gain in the prior quarter was $2.1 million, which has been completely obliterated and wiped out by the $145 million loss that they just faced this quarter. They said its servicing segment posted a net loss of $74.6 million in the third quarter, while company-wide it reported a $66.9 million net loss, a drop from its net income of $37.6 million in the second quarter. So imagine you're a business and you go from making $37 million a quarter to now losing $67 million in the next quarter. All of the gains that you made have been completely lost, and then some. They're also blaming this on higher mortgage rates, and it's all the mortgage rates fault. It has nothing to do with home prices. That's not a factor here. You don't even see that mentioned, in fact. Now keep in mind, this is their servicing department that's losing money, and they said For the third quarter, their origination business actually grew slightly to $6.9 billion, up from $6.5 billion the quarter before. So they just go on to say all the things that they plan to do to try to drum up business moving into next year. But the reality is, unless homes get significantly cheaper or rates drop by a lot going into 2025, which looks like pretty much impossible at this point, no one's going to continue buying, guys. We're already seeing the worst year in home sales since 1992. And so that's not magically going to get better into 2025. It's not like all of a sudden people are going to wake up and say, Happy New Year. I'm going to go out and buy a house now. All of a sudden, I can afford it. All of a sudden, I just came into this windfall of cash. In fact, it's likely going to be the opposite, because mortgage rates will still be high. Home prices will still be high. Inflation is going to continue to be high, which makes everything more expensive, which leaves less money for people to then go out and buy homes. So I don't expect this situation to get better anytime soon. Oh, how cool is that? Purple cactus. I don't think I've ever seen one like that. So only got a couple more days left here in Arizona. I'll have a couple more videos left for you guys after this. And then I'm back to Florida, guys, at least till next summer. So really looking forward to getting back to Miami and seeing what's going on over there and making some Florida videos for you guys. So if you enjoyed this video, make sure you subscribe to the channel. And if you don't want to wait for my next video to come out, check out this one on the screen right over here. And I'll see you in the next one.