Thursday, May 29th, 2008 at 9:30 PM
Carlsbad Mello-Roos
One thing the Carlsbad Unified School District did to help with their cash flow is designate the rest of town as it’s own Mello-Roos district. The area outlined in yellow is the remaining vacant land in town – so say thanks to the future new-home buyers, they’ll be carrying the load for us!
Posted on Thursday, May 29th, 2008 at 9:30 PM in Uncategorized | 15 Comments » | 
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So who are the landowners who were in favor of designating the area as a special district? Under the Mello Roos act,it has to be at least 2/3 of the owners. Has the Mello Roos tax lien actually been recorded?
Kingside | May 29th, 2008 at 10:02 pmProp 13, Mello-Roos taxes, environmental and zoning restrictions on new development… in a sense, it’s all politics. The long-term residents are flexing their political muscle, while the future residents are hung out to dry. New residents don’t stand a chance in this game. All they can do is follow a "if you can’t beat them, join them" strategy. After a few years of paying taxes through the nose, they’re ready to pass the buck to the next group of fellow citizens…
Daniel | May 30th, 2008 at 4:24 amLOL. It just means they’ll pay less for their homes and thus have a smaller prop tax base. While not a perfect 1:1 reduction, it’ll be pretty close.
Aztec | May 30th, 2008 at 1:55 pmIm new in Cali and just learned about Mello Roos. I think they are an incredibly bad and short sighted idea, because they kill the resale value on these houses. I wont even look at houses that have MRs. People dont think about how a monthly assessment of $400 drastically reduces your purchasing power. Politics at work: short term gain at the expense of long term benefits.
mkl | May 30th, 2008 at 2:44 pmOff-topic:
NAR trying to discredit the Case-Shiller index…
Getting Case-Shillered
Tyrone | May 30th, 2008 at 3:25 pm“NAR’s Yun has said that the lack of transparency with the Shiller index has been a problem for economists.”
Translation, he can’t figure it out. This coming from a guy that said the tax rebate checks would help the housing market….Problem here in CA is that the people with enough income to buy a house don’t get the rebate!!!!
SMC | May 30th, 2008 at 4:20 pmwhere was the NAR when Case-Shiller index was going upward?
ocrenter | May 30th, 2008 at 6:48 pm"I wont even look at houses that have MRs. People dont think about how a monthly assessment of $400 drastically reduces your purchasing power."
I *might* still look at a house with M-R if I thought it was something truly unique (been here over a year now, still haven’t seen anything that qualifies). However, $400/mo x 40 years = an instant $192,000 reduction in the size of my offer compared to a comparable property with no M-R.
GeneK | May 30th, 2008 at 6:54 pmIt does occur to me that perhaps the real intent of making the rest of Carlsbad M-R is create a poison pill to discourage future development…
GeneK | May 30th, 2008 at 7:10 pmThat Case-Shillered article is a gem – written by Blanche Evans, one of the worst commenters on the real estate markets.
Aztec, I think you’re off in your measurement of the impact of Mello-Roos. Up until now I haven’t seen builders selling homes at a reduced price – they had their cake and eat it too. I doubt that will continue, many of today’s buyers feel like GeneK.
Jim the Realtor | May 30th, 2008 at 7:13 pmOn the topic of Case Shiller, here is his chart of inflation adjusted home prices.
http://housingdoom.com/wp-content/uploads/27leon_graph2_large.gif
GeneK i agree that you need to reduce the price you pay for a house but you cant do $400* 40 years. The value of $400 in 10 years is not the same as it is today. You need to discount the amount back to the present.
I think the right calculation would be how much should the price be reduced to keep the monthly payments the same. For a $400 monthly payment over 40 years the loan difference would be $65,000 assuming a 7% rate.
adesigar | May 30th, 2008 at 8:43 pmM-R is not limited by Prop 13 and can go up more than 13′s 2% per year. My calcs are based on my determination to make the seller, who was the one who got the "new house premium," pay the entire M-R obligation off. If M-R can be paid off early, I’ll ignore it in calculating the offer and just write in a provision that says "seller to pay off entire Mello-Roos obligation prior to close of escrow."
GeneK | May 30th, 2008 at 9:17 pmAdesigar, I wish he’d update that graph. If we figure prices have dropped, say, 30%, that would put it at 140, still 15 points above the peaks of the previous booms. To drop back to the "110" post-boom mean, prices would have to be down about 45% from peak.
Dwip | May 31st, 2008 at 3:31 amI agree with GeneK. We’ll check out houses with MR, and expect to either have the seller pay it off or reduce the price enough (relative to good comps) so we could pay it off ourselves.
I refuse to pay Mello-Roos taxes, but something is needed to pay for all the additional burdens of new development and the population increases. I’ve suggested a "non-native" tax for anyone who moves to CA from another state or country. However, in a state where natives are less than 1/3 of the population (last I read somewhere), I don’t think that would go over very well.
BTW, I’d also agree to pay a "non-native" tax if we ever moved to another state or country. Fair is fair.
CA renter | May 31st, 2008 at 7:56 amSo ALL homes within the yellow boundaries have Mello-Roos fees? OR just all homes with MR (and some without) are in this zone?
Don’t the MLS listings have to state MR fees? Or do they just lump it into "homeowners fees?"
shoppingaround | May 31st, 2008 at 1:27 pm