This will both alleviate pressure on the Bay Area as well as accelerating the political shift to the left in Texas. It's a win all around.

I actually think that living in the Bay Area as a tech employee is increasingly unjustifiable from an ethical point-of-view. It was once the case where that was necessary for many career paths but that's increasingly not the case and the pandemic has hastened that shift.

Why unethical? Because tech workers are contributing to the displacement of the people those places need to survive.

Example: I read an article about one of the Google bus drivers and what his schedule was. It was basically get up at 4am, drive for 2 hours to work, drive a bus for 5 hours, sit around unpaid for a few hours, drive for another 5 hours then drive 2 hours home. Why? Because he couldn't possibly afford to live anywhere closer.

You can argue that NIMBYism is rampant in the Bay Area and this restricts development of housing units and you'd be right. Yet the reality is you're still contributing to that displacement even though you're not responsible for those policies.

The displacement is going to happen with our without tech workers, because of the land use policies. Maybe not today, but as it stands, the region will likely never become more affordable. Blaming the tech workers for literally existing when the suburban tides turned back to urbanism is a trivially irrational post hoc argument.

So far I have Joe Rogan with his spotify deal and now Musk with some of his options coming up for payday.

1. The $200-500k Federal tax bracket actually went up;

2. Loss of the SALT deduction. There are 9 states without state income tax. Most of them are red (Washington is a notable exception). This disproportionately hits blue states; and

3. Reducing the cap for the mortgage deduction, which again only affects expensive states.

We have a hung Senate, essentially. A better description is to say that it is controlled by Charles Koch, who owns Joe Machin and the Republican Party.

So these tax hikes on blue states haven't been rolled back under Biden because of Charles Koch, basically. In the proposed bill, the SALT deduction isn't getting reinstituted, the mortgage cap is the same and the corporate tax cuts (you know, the ones that will trickle down) are only getting partially rolled back.

And even that might not pass.

But what this means is that there is now a huge financial incentive for workers in California and New York in particular to move south. Hell, it was a significant factor in me moving from NYC to Florida, as an example.

But I wonder if the unintended consequence of McConnell's and Trump's giant middle finger to the blue states could be the migration of left-leaning voters to Texas, Florida and even Tennessee and Georgia (GA has a state income tax but Atlanta is cheap compared to CA/NY).

Perhaps Tesla's move is part of that trend.

It would be entertaining, to say the least, if this hastened the political extinction of the party of Trump. The trends were such that Texas is likely to be a battleground state in ~10 years as it is.

I can but hope.

alt: https://www.cnbc.com/2021/10/07/tesla-moves-its-headquarters...

While this move is great, I'm skeptical of the idea that moving to Austin is a political panacea for moderate/center-right/libertarian governance.

- The same percentage of people who voted for hard leftist candidates in SF also voted for hard leftist candidates in Austin. Don't believe me? Check it out for yourself: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Texas_Democratic_presiden... This means that, fundamentally, people in Austin believe the same things that people in California do.

- There are homeless issues in Austin, just as there are in SF (though not as bad as SF, it's getting worse every year).

- Many people don't realize how regulatory constrained Austin is for new buildings/housing. The same NIMBYism exists in Austin too, just like SF! But this isn't surprising since people in Austin basically have the same politics as people in SF. The only reason why rents are cheaper (though that's changing as more people move in), is because Austin isn't as big as SF. If all of the intelligent tech people moved to Austin, it would have the same supply & demand problems that SF has (since you'd have the same number of people mixed with the same regulatory constraints on new housing supply).

- Yes, it's true Austin is a place with zero income tax and fewer business regulations, but that's only because it's held at bay by the surrounding red regions of Texas. But it's only a matter of time before Texas turns blue. So in the long-run -- when the state house will be controlled by the same party running California -- why would you expect tax rates and regulations to stay low? In 10 years, Texas will have the same political makeup (at the city, state, and federal levels) as California!

- The bulk of taxes and regulations aren't at the state/city levels. They're at the Federal level. A zero percent state income tax is cool, but it only goes so far. Is the entire tech ecosystem really going to sustain this movement for a mere 10% drop in total taxes? The SF/NYC network effects are still very strong. I'm not sure such a marginal/incremental decrease in taxes is enough to affect this sort of change.

Power to Tesla though. I really, really hope to be proven wrong.

It feels that : 1. It's way out of temperate climate that one would live in when given full choice and all things equal (understanding they never are of course - I live in great white North :)

2. Politics are highly conservative and frequently invasive. now clearly half of Americans like it that way,but still,seems odd for largely progressive company like Tesla that's ostensibly working to put oil industry on defence... And that's not even allowed to sell there.

Taxes?some quid pro quo to get sales in? Something else?

No forward thinking company should be setting up there right now.

Elon has options to exercise in Q4 before they expire, which will realize a substantial capital gain.

By moving both personally and his business to Texas, he is likely avoiding California state income tax and capital gains, since Texas has neither.

I’d say that’s bad faith, given how much California has subsidized his companies.

People get this logic when you talk about, say, Ferraris. Of course not everyone has one! They cost a lot of money!

But with housing it's like "no! It must be drugs! Or they don't work hard enough! It can't have anything to do with the cost of a home being nearly a million dollars!"

Californians pay lower average property tax rates, but California's ridiculous housing prices mean that they pay more in property taxes. Median home value in California is $554,886, average property tax is 0.7%, for a (rough) average property tax bill of $3,884. Median home value in Texas is $207,301 with an average property value of 1.6%, for a (rough) average property tax rate of 3,316.

Californians also have a higher sales tax rate and an income tax, while Texas has no income tax.

So yeah, I mean taxes.

[0]https://taxfoundation.org/high-state-property-taxes-2021/ [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_median_...

Texas produces more GWh of Solar + Wind energy than any other state in the US.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technical_(vehicle)

Property tax taxes two things -- the house, and the land. The portion of the tax that taxes the land is capitalized into the selling/renting price of the land, which is to say that causes it to cost less to buy the land and less to rent it. (The portion of property tax that taxes the building can actually be passed on to tenants (unlike the land portion of the tax) and serves to make building things more expensive, and that is bad, but since the majority of the price of houses in most urban areas is just land value, the land portion of the tax makes it a net gain).

https://www.city-data.com/city/Austin-Texas.html

https://www.city-data.com/city/San-Francisco-California.html

Austin typically has a far lower murder rate than SF (usually 1/2 to 1/3 the rate of SF looking over the prior decade). Austin is usually well below the US national murder rate, which is rare for a major US city. Austin has a dramatically lower robbery rate vs SF. They're similar on assaults. Austin is higher by 50% on rapes. SF is a lot higher on thefts. They're similar on burglaries.

(Granted, these are pre-pandemic thoughts about moving.)

Wow. That is unreal.

Yeah, no region in almost any region of America comes close to Bay Area prices.

A suburban area with single family houses + high paying jobs = exclusionary house prices

That's slowly changing, but I suspect that's temporary.

You might want to tell Tesla that. They just added a ton of office space in Palo Alto: https://www.mercurynews.com/2021/10/08/tesla-agrees-to-big-o...

Land and more land is one solution. Density and more density is another, so the downtown can actually grow bigger and bigger; if people are willing to live closer to everything, they have a better chance than in SF (but still a far cry from NYC or Chicago).

I don't think OP meant anything by his post. California's policies are lax. Regardless if you think they're deserving of consideration or not, it's miserable to have a huge homeless population living next to your house. People may pretend its not real but homeless areas tend towards drugs and unsanitary conditions and it's not a great place to raise a family.

This would be shocking if the Bay Area didn't have an abundance of shelter for them and very-well-funded homeless service programs, but it does. The resources are all there, but many don't want to use them, they just want to be outside and be left alone, and the cities don't do anything about it.

Palo Alto High School is literally a mini university. Just do a google image search. You can't tell it apart from Stanford.

I wonder if something else is going on for California and Texas to rank behind Mississippi, Alabama, and Louisiana? I'd bet that the issue with the standard of measure, not the actual quality of education.

I should say I think its schools are fine, rather than great.

That seems untrue, given Texas' shift toward purple. Certainly wealthy people in Texas (regardless of their politics) aren't affected too much by who sits in the state house, but there are plenty of Democrats in Texas who aren't wealthy.

And just as a random example, I bet women who are looking to terminate unwanted pregnancies in Texas right now are probably sick of the Christian zealots.

I’m…not convinced that’s an unreasonable ratio between the Bay Area and Chicago.

Never lived in Jacksonville, but I’ve visited it and have a friend who used to live there. Jacksonville is to Florida what Fresno is to California: bigger than you think, probably perfectly pleasant, utterly non-descript. :)

For example, here is Tech: https://i.imgur.com/rHBVWRt.png

I know Fremont is suburban, but it's a well incorporated suburb to both SF, Oakland and San Jose. 78725 is on the opposite side of Austin from most of the fancy neighborhoods.

Prop 13 was a "tax revolt" passed because greedy angry landowners wanted revenge on the state for taxing them.

Agree with you, but I would guess most of the Gigafactory workers who haven’t exercised stock options probably can’t afford to own in the Bay Area.

While Prop 13 probably filters down to renters in reduced rent, the supply/demand issues for housing is still pretty out of whack even with all of the new units in Milpitas. Also Prop 13 has second order effects that keep older empty nester boomers in a large house even though they would otherwise downsize if they didn’t lose such a generous benefit.

Or California's housing market is just too fucked. I think this is more plausible than the income tax too high theory.

Is Austin cheaper than San Francisco? Yes.

Would I classify Austin as "affordable"?

I would have two years ago, when my wife and I were first looking to move here. That was the whole reason we began the process.

But, it's gotten insane.

We were going to wait a year, after renting, before we bought. Prices here were rising, we bought within six months so we wouldn't get priced out of our neighborhood.

On my street, I have neighbors who bought literally a year before me, who live in basically the same home (1970s subdivision so all the houses are basically templates) that paid 40% less than we did.

My neighbors could not afford to buy their current homes at the prices they're currently selling for. They cannot afford to buy similar homes in similar neighborhoods.

This is only going to get worse.

Look at prices in Portland, Seattle, Vancouver, or out east. They all easily top Austin.

I think it's a good thing. Austin has a budding tech scene. Hopefully the political shitstorm there blows over so people actually want to live there.

How is the sprawl in Austin compared to the Bay Area?

A lot of times land/housing is cheap/er, but you 'pay' for that will long/er commutes in bad traffic. And often with few/no options for public transit.

WA at least doesn't have a prop 13.

Since I'm apparently "posting too fast", I'll just post my reply to the post below here.

US cities (including Austin) are not built to make this viable. I grew up in Russia which mirrors the European way of building things. Everything you need for your family is within walking distance, for what I hope are obvious reasons. The US is not built for this. If one's goal is to get rid of cars, you have to build cities with that in mind. This takes decades, which is why nobody seems interested in actually doing this. Instead we get this passive-aggressive "let's build less parking and roads" thing that you see in US urban centers. No attention whatsoever is paid to how the folks actually live, how they raise their kids, and so on. I'd also argue that, as we switch to electric (and eventually to nuclear power, since that seems inevitable if we actually want to solve the climate crisis rather than just make Al Gore filthy rich), cars will become less and less of a problem, and population will spread out rather than move into the cities. Cities are a bad deal as it is. Expensive real estate, congested roads, high crime.

FWIW I haven't been in Austin, just Dallas

But business has to do more specific nice things for more people, more frequently, or they’ll be gone long before an election cycle. Politicians have a few selection events every few years.

The evolutionary pressure on business is far greater, so they reflect what we truly want much better - good or bad.

Look at some lists of top companies from 20, 30, 50 years ago. Juggernauts in their time, most of them have long been out-evolved.

Same with rich families, inherited money rarely lasts more than a few generations and tends to decline precipitously with each new batch of heirs.

But we have politicians routinely kicking around for decades based on nothing but platitudes and general charm.

No, but they have to produce a product that someone is willing to consume at a price they are willing to pay for it. Meanwhile, politicians fail to reduce homelessness with a budget of hundreds of thousands of dollars per homeless person.

> However, when property taxes are higher, there is more incentive for cities and households to allow more housing.

True, and what tends to happen in CA is that cities will approve commercial development over residential, since they can get much more tax revenue out of commercial property.

But I don't think CA's property taxes are too low; from a little searching it seems like CA's average property tax rate is only slightly below the national average. Meanwhile, Texas' clocks in at several multiples of the national average.

I'm not really sure what you're getting on about with the rest of your post, though. Property taxes, as implemented pretty much everywhere in the US, are regressive. Full stop. It doesn't matter "who writes the check". Landlords will pass on the cost of property taxes to renters. I don't really see evidence that home prices are so much lower in Texas due to the high property tax. Lower, certainly, but I would still much rather buy a house in the bay area with its inflated prices over a house in Austin.

And I expect as demand goes up in Austin, home prices will go up (if slower), and tax rates will just help make homes even more unaffordable there for lower income folks. I expect it's easier to build in Austin, but it still takes time, and likely any new demand for housing in Austin isn't primarily in the outskirts of town where things are cheaper.

[0] https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2019/11/taxes-are-sur...

And yes indeed, the taxable event is vesting, it indeed happens outside of ca, and yes CA still intends to tax you! They will even come after you in another state for it, after you permanently move out.

!!!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silicon_Hills

Are you talking about paying property taxes via an escrow account that your mortgage lender takes care of for you? That's not your "mortgage payment", which is a function of your loan size, interest rate, and term, and nothing more. The monthly mortgage payment (assuming same term and interest rate) is the same in CA and TX for the same amount of loan.

(I guess we could also talk about things like PMI, but that won't raise your payment by all that much.)

Property taxes might be quite a bit higher in TX, but I'm not convinced a $900k home in TX is the equivalent to a $1.2-1.3M home in CA. I would expect that's closer to $1.7-2M, and then the property tax amounts end up being not that different.

No income tax, but property taxes are at least 2% of the assessed value, and sometimes 3. You'll see that on the Zillow listing.

Amazon largeset office presence outside of seattle (and bellevue which come consider seperate) is SouthBay cali, followed then by HQ2

It doesn't tell you anything that only 1 of them went to jail. Even assuming they are incarcerated at something close to the background rate (an unreasonable assumption) we would expect 0% of them to be in jail; at any given moment. Adjust that for the fact that they have basically no rational reason whatsoever to commit crimes and there is nothing unusual going on.

The two are directly linked, so this makes sense. A higher property tax means that the future annual rent (real rent if you're a landlord, imputed rent if you're a owner-occupier) you get from property will be reduced, so the capitalized present value will decrease correspondingly.

My mom has a million dollar home in California and pays around 1.5k/year in property taxes because she's owned it since the 70s.

Not only that, CA has Prop 13: for better or worse, your property tax is essentially frozen in the year you buy your home in CA. In TX it increases with the market value every year. And the assessors are ruthless – market value of your home went up by 20%, as they have the past few years? Expect your tax bill to too (granted, I believe legislators have restricted this to a maximum increase of 8% a year as of this session, but I believe localities are still allowed to exceed that in some cases).

Source: I'm from Dallas, and a homeowner in Los Angeles. Though rates are publically available:

https://smartasset.com/taxes/california-property-tax-calcula...

https://smartasset.com/taxes/texas-property-tax-calculator

Financially speaking, either place may turn out advantageous depending on your house's price and income. CA (Bay Area) has a lot of other positives that are almost impossible to get in TX - tech scene (quality and quantity), nearby sea, desert AND mountains, good weather are just some of them.

Many years ago, I chose to move to TX as opposed to CA. But most recently, after living abroad for some years, I picked Bay Area to move back to mainly because most of my friends have converged to Bay Area over the years - almost all are in tech. However, if you aren't involved in tech and don't care about some of the other positives of the Bay Area, Austin is almost a no-brainer.

Arguably taxes are higher for newcomers. Yes rates are lower but purchase price is insane. But Native Sons of the Golden West pay pennies on the dollar in property tax. Old businesses to. It's a $30B per year tax cut to successful real estate investors. That's 3x the size of the NSF and several billion more than NASA.

This is the root of all California's problems. Underfunded schools, endless sprawl, state parks closing, crumbling infrastructure and rampant housing speculation. It's all because of Prop 13.

Billionaires should to go jail for tax fraud, preferably in proportion to the amount of money they stole. They are not running their itemized deductions by a typical accounting firm. They are seeking out teams of lawyers and accountants with a reputation for hiding money, and paying millions of dollars because they expect them to be good at it.

Exactly. And this is important for potential homeowners to understand. It is one of the things that makes California real estate so attractive. One has to view their house as an investment, not just a place to live.

And sure, property taxes for a $1M home in TX is the same as a $2M house in SF, but that's a mansion in TX and a 2 bedroom apartment in SF. You get way more for your money.

And google tells me that TX does cap property tax increases. Not like Prop 13, but we all agree Prop 13 is terrible, right?

And everyone is ignoring the state income tax which is 9.3% in the $60 to $300k bracket (and goes up to 13.3%). So if you’re making $250k, that’s saving of $20k alone, which is about the property tax in TX.

It’s not even a close comparison in terms of the tax burden between the two.

The maximum cumulative rate by law is 8.25%.

You’re literally just getting upset at him for not liquidating his entire position of Amazon shares (or options) every year. If he ever wants to turn the theoretical number some Forbes intern came up with for his net worth into income, then he’ll have to pay tax on it. He could theoretically live the rest of his life without selling his shares if he wanted to, just like you or I never have to sell any shares, or property, or any other type of asset we own. However if he did that, the IRS is going to come and take the tax he owes from his estate.

There is no tax evasion taking place here, this isn’t even a loophole. It’s the same treatment everybody gets.

You don’t have to sell your assets if you don’t want to, and you don’t make a taxable profit from selling your assets… unless you sell them. The propublica article you’re quoting is designed entirely to rage-bait people who don’t want to think about the topic long enough to figure that very basic fact out.

Which is why the current congress push to ramp up capital gains to get money back from the rich is super super misguided. It screws startup founders like myself, but it literally has no impact on the mega rich.

Assuming you made exactly 100k as a nice lowball you'd have owed $6947.92 in 2011 California income taxes. Harder to quickly find 2011 Austin property taxes but using todays rates without the homestead exemption you would have paid $4653 presuming you lived in Austin proper with Austin ISD taxes.

This is obvious a simplified calculation assuming basic W2 income and may very well not have applied to you, but for others reading it's nice to see some actual numbers.

My utilities are 50% cheaper and more reliable, crime is lower, the air quality is better, and I bought a new construction with 10G Fiber Internet (You will never get this in California due to failing infrastructure). I miss is the arts, culture, and nightlife, but that was wiped out by government-enacted COVID restrictions so there are few redeeming reasons to stay. Tesla should be a good lesson that when you put political idealism above the basic needs of your residents (Safety, infrastructure, housing), people leave.

Or is Tesla going to give each of them 25kw solar arrays plus three Powerwalls, and a backup natural gas generator for when the sun doesn’t come out in January or February and ERCOT decides they’re going to just go into rolling blackout mode because they are unable to sniff their own butts?

The only thing to remember is that Californians can afford the new area's current housing prices and a decade's worth of price increases.

I-35 is bad, that’s about it. The freeways around the rest of Austin are still moving even around rush hour. None of those hold a candle to the Bay Bridge on a Friday afternoon, not even remotely close to as bad.

According to this, Austin Texas is #10 on this chart.

  #1, LA
  #2, NYC
  #3, San Fran
  #4, San Jose (near San Fran)
  #5, Seattle
  #6, Miami
  #7, DC
  #8, Chicago
  #9, Honolulu
  #10, Austin

I don't know about the Bay Area, maybe they are better because of reliable transit, but Austin is nowhere near the So. Cal area when it comes to traffic.

Source: while working as a transport planning consultant, I had a private client in Austin. He flew our team around the city in a helicopter, saying "see all this traffic? It's insane!". I'd just flown in from New Delhi. By the standards I was accustomed to, I didn't see any traffic at all.

Certainly Austin does have a need for much better public transit -- and if being upset about traffic is a catalyst for making that investment, then that's great! -- but in that respect it's no different to most other major metropolitan centers in the US.

If you visit Amsterdam or Copenhagen, you know what I mean. The happiness of the people, clear streets and less noice is something you can't explain, but it's better what you can imagine.

Employees at corporate HQ's tend to want to have houses in the burbs. They tend to be in there 30s and up as well. There is no shortage of suburban real estate in the vicinity of the gigafactory. A minority of employees will live in downtown Austin and hate their life due to the horrific commute out of there.

I'm a would-be beneficiary of Prop 13 Pre-19 and a homeowner in Los Angeles, and even I voted for this reform. I would vote to repeal Prop 13 in whole if I could. Prop 13 was originally meant to protect middle-class Californians from losing their primary home (for which other alternatives exist: see TX. Your primary home cannot be taken from you for tax reasons or in bankruptcy) – not a tax loophole for generational wealth.

Nothing to fault them for if they want to be wealthy and exclusive.

I wouldn't trust this. Speaking as a resident of Austin, there's several OG Austinites that are mad about all the change. Sounds like FUD to me. Point to a source please!

This two are the same problem: http://www.austintexas.gov/news/sanitary-sewer-overflow-repo... https://www.kxan.com/news/local/austin/sewer-overflow-sends-...

https://www.kxan.com/investigations/93-of-austins-stormwater...

1. Property owners make a lot of money and own a lot of property.

2. When you increase property taxes, people who own a lot of property pay a majority of that increase.

3. Rent prices don't immediately increase 1:1 when property taxes rise, based on one data set.

Basically, property taxes are mostly paid by people who own property. Most property is lived in by the owner. So property taxes aren't regressive, since rich people end up paying the majority share.

People have been trying to create a model for the impact of rent shifting since the 60s. No one has a good model yet. It's hard to model.

If I sign a lease for 2000/mo, and the state increases property tax on the owner, the owner can't immediately increase my rent. Rents increases are generally governed by local laws. But over time, they can raise it, and it can be reset when the current occupants leave.

So an owner's profit margin takes a hit when property taxes rise, and renters bare a smaller percent of the burden of the new tax than the absolute amount raised in the short term. Long term, renter's are still covering the owner's total cost of that property, otherwise the owner would be losing money on the property – which, if that were prevalent business practice, we wouldn't have that many landlords.

So yes, renter's pay property tax.

But, definitionally your rent must cover the mortgage and property tax of the property you occupy, plus profit. If you rent is less than property tax and mortgage, the land lord is underwater and will soon sell to someone else who will charge more or evict you for remodeling.

That's depressing, especially for a US "tech hub". I'm in an irrelevant-but-dense urban area of Japan and have 1G fiber @ <$40 / month.

I think that's fair but the nonetheless the only houses on here in San Mateo for under 600k are about 600sq ft. Even 1200sqft homes are 1M+ Where do you think married mid-level engineers are going to live?

For 500k in Austin you can choose between brand new 1300 sqft homes or older 2500 sqft homes.

What's your basis for this belief? My understanding around Biden's tax plans was that the SALT deduction cap would likely remain at $10k.

Just did a quick search for recent news, and nearly all of what I'm reading is doom-and-gloom around the possibility that the SALT deduction cap will be repealed. Which makes sense, since that would lower tax revenue, and that's not something politically palatable with the Dems trying to push through multi-trillion dollar infrastructure spending.

There is, however, a large group of ordinary middle-class people, particularly in cities like Los Angeles or San Francisco, who own what were once modest homes that are now worth more than $1m.[0] Their heirs will be burdened when the property tax bills double (or more) in one year, even if the heirs use the property as their primary residence. More heirs will sell inherited properties, which is exactly what the real estate brokers who promoted Prop 19 intended. $1m+ is also a sweet spot for broker profitability.

The intent of Prop 13 was to stabilize property taxes after the double-digit hyperinflation of the 1970s by capping annual increases in assessed value at 2%. That created stability for individuals and businesses that led to massive investment in and migration to California.

Prop 19 undoes that stability, but only for a narrow group of people: heirs to $1m+ properties from parents who did not have sophisticated estate planners. From Wikipedia:

    The Case–Shiller housing index shows prices in Los Angeles, San Diego, and San Francisco appreciated 170% from 1987 (the start of available data) to 2012 while the 2% cap only allowed a 67% increase in taxes on homes that were not sold during this 26-year period.

Personally, I think it would be fair to increase the annual cap from 2% to 4%. In a decade or so, that would undo much of the tax discrepancies caused by Prop 13. And the effects would be spread out, so people could plan for it. Increasing the cap, however, would never pass because it is clearly a tax increase on everyone and doesn't benefit a special interest like real estate brokers.

[0] The median home price in Los Angeles is now over $900k. https://www.zillow.com/los-angeles-ca/home-values/

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1978_California_Proposition_13...

[2] https://web.archive.org/web/20191011004252/https://us.spindi...

It's not relevant to the current discussion though. Right now rents are lower than mortgages in general so the assertion that the tenant pays all landlord's expenses is demonstrably false.

> Note that I am not making a statement about every house, to rebut your assertion that all renters pay no less than the landlord's taxes + mortgage + insurance it's enough to show some (even one) counter example and not to prove that all or, even, typical renter does not do so.

Don’t be a pedant, we were clearly talking about the typical renter.