In theory, yes. In practice, if you own a currently 4+ million dollar home built in the 50's, you are paying at least 15-20k on it anyway.

Here's an example currently for sale:https://www.redfin.com/CA/Los-Altos-Hills/27446-Black-Mounta...

They are paying 18.2k.

If it was reassessed today, they'd be paying 40-45k.

If they do what most people who have lived in a home forever do, and are downsizing to something smaller (IE kids grew up, whatever), they will likely end up with either the same or less in taxes they pay now.

So it's not like right now they pay nothing, and they'd pay a ton, it's "they pay a lot, they'd pay more".

This house changed hands in 1990 for $1M where it got reassessed - otherwise they would be paying 2-3k max if purchased and held since 1978.

Whoops, missed that, sorry. It's still ... 25 years?

Just a single data point, but my parents bought their single family home in sf in 1972. It's currently worth about $2M. They pay roughly 400/yr in taxes and as a result there is no incentive for them to ever leave.

Even the current taxes are over 1.5x what my mortgage is (including not only escrow payments for taxes but also PMI). Nuts

well that house was sold again 1990 so the taxable value was reassessed.

Yes, i did miss this. But most of the value was added since then :)

That's quite the leap. How about you check out some broader data sets and then reassess your statement. There is less demand for homes at that price point. There is a MUCH bigger crunch for "entry-level" homes that doesn't look like it will go away any time soon.

It would, and it does.

In this discussion there are a lot of terminology considerations around "supply" (ie, housing stock) vs. "liquid supply" (ie, houses on the market) and "average prices" (ie, total RE value) vs. "marginal prices" (ie, expected home sales price).