Thought it was already too expensive to live on Long Island? Brace yourself. It’s about to become even more challenging…
These six factors could make it even tougher for Long Island home buyers and owners during the months and years ahead.
- New Nassau Property Tax Reassessments
If you live in Nassau County you’ve probably already heard that your property tax bill could be going up by over 50% due to new countywide reassessments. That’s a huge hit. In fact, if that type of increase was levied on renters in NY, it would probably be illegal.
- Big Tax Breaks for Others
The Amazon HQ2 deal and all the financial incentives dedicated to it may be over. That doesn’t mean those breaks aren’t being handed out to others. Like the George Washington school developer in Suffolk County who just received a $21M tax break. It’s great to attract investment, but those breaks just mean regular residents and small business owners are going to have to pick up the tab in their own property tax bills.
- More People Fleeing New York
The may still get hunted down for tax audits, but the exodus of tens of thousands of New Yorkers to lower property tax states is already cutting so deep that the state is having trouble balancing the budget again. Less people to collect from means higher taxes for those who stay behind. It’s a spiral that just keeps feeding itself.
- Stricter Mortgage Lending
The FHA has announced it will be pulling back and cracking down on home loans. The major facilitator of home loans in the US has decided it has been too lenient on credit scores and debt to income ratios. Loan to value clawbacks are also likely to follow. That will mean fewer can qualify to buy homes and those that do are going to find it much harder to refinance to lower their interest rates and payments.
- Facebook Gets Sued for Discrimination
Facebook has been hit with new housing discrimination charged by The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). The government agency has found Facebook’s ad targeting features are breaking the rules by facilitating discrimination in housing. While eliminating discrimination is always a good thing, this will make it far more expensive for real estate, home goods and mortgage advertisers. Some may not survive if they were too dependent on Facebook. The rest will have to pass those increased costs on to consumers when buying, refinancing, fixing or furnishing homes.
Despite this a new deal has been struck for two major credit agencies to sell third party data to banks. This could lead to more poor AI made decisions like those which caused the housing meltdown in 2008.
- If They Don’t Get You One Way, They’ll Find Another
The Fines, Fees and Justice Center is actually pushing back on making the property tax cap permanent. They argue that capping property taxes leads to the police force increasing activities, arrests and fines for very minor offenses in order to increase over all revenues for authorities.