Lars Doucet
@larsiusprime.bsky.social
Co-Founder at ValueBase.co ☦ Narcoleptic Norseman, Texan with Tourette's, Game design and Game theory, Mass Appraisal for the Masses.
In the 1920's New York City had a housing boom like none other, thanks to a temporary property tax abatement on the improvement value of new construction. DALT is inspired by this, a property tax reform that approximates an LVT with less work: progressandpoverty.substack.com/p/dalt-depre...
DALT: Depreciation-Assisted Land Value Tax
One weird trick for turning Property Tax into Land Value Tax
progressandpoverty.substack.com
Realtor.com interviewed me for this piece on two overlapping events: layoffs in the game industry, and an acute staffing shortage in local property assessment offices nationwide, desperate for technical talent with data processing, programming, and mapping skills. www.realtor.com/news/trends/...
I've been writing some stuff about LVTs for the Spokane Alliance and this convo is great, but one thing I want to zoom in on is what's lost to surface parking lots. The report this podcast talks about discusses a building downtown that pays 6x in taxes per square ft as the parking lot next to it🧵
David Roberts@volts.wtf · 3w agoRead/listen all about how a "land value tax" can discourage land speculation & encourage dense building on the highest value land, ie, land near urban cores. www.volts.wtf/p/want-less-...
Cool! A listener in the UK passed along this site he made, which calculates how much UK residents would save under a Land Value Tax. In part it demonstrates that assessment can be done with modern data-driven techniques -- it's not some opaque mystery. Would love to see a site like this for the US!
Land Value Tax Calculator | Compare Your UK Property Tax
See estimated land values for any property in England and Wales and compare your current council tax against what you would pay under a Land Value Tax.
landvaluetaxcalculator.co.uk
Visualization of land value per square foot across four cities: Tallinn, Estonia Detroit, Michigan Cincinnati, Ohio Austin, Texas www.civicmapper.org
Today on Volts: Property taxes combine a tax on land value with a tax on the value of the buildings on the land. The latter discourages building and encourages land speculation. Shifting the tax to the former -- a "land value tax" -- produces better land use. They're pushing for it in Spokane, WA!
Want less sprawl and more urban infill? Try a land value tax!
A conversation with Greg Miller of the Center for Land Economics and Kitty Klitzke of the Spokane City Council.
volts.wtf
Such a promising solution! Thrilled to see this idea get the Volts treatment. Related:
Yes, a Land Value Tax Is Possible in Washington State | Sightline Institute
A new report modeling a property tax building exemption in Spokane rebalances incentives toward community goals, encouraging homebuilding and discouraging in-city vacant land speculation.
sightline.org
David Roberts@volts.wtf · 4w agoToday on Volts: Property taxes combine a tax on land value with a tax on the value of the buildings on the land. The latter discourages building and encourages land speculation. Shifting the tax to the former -- a "land value tax" -- produces better land use. They're pushing for it in Spokane, WA!
🚨New Report!🚨 "Modernizing Property Tax Assessments in Allegheny County" by Connor Schwartz and me; a project of @prohousingpgh.org 1/11
If you've been laid off from games/tech, consider the local property assessor's office - Office near you almost anywhere in USA - GIS/coders in demand, gamedev/tech skills translate well - Better job security - Field is desperate for talent - Pay not astronomical but gamedev wasn't either
In Allegheny, Pennsylvania, it's been decades since the last countywide reassessment was conducted. In 2024, a vendor quoted them $30 million to conduct an outsourced revaluation. A team of volunteers just used open source tech to do it themselves for ~$0 instead.
On Tuesday, I'm recording a podcast on Land Value Taxes with a think tank expert & a Spokane city council person (Spokane is considering an LVT). I've been reading up on the subject & getting extremely LVT-pilled. Got questions?
Laid off from tech or the games industry and live in or around Phoenix and need a job? Consider the Maricopa county property assessor's office! They need a tech savvy person and are hiring right now. If you apply for this job please reach out to me, I can help guide you.
Book Review: "The Natural Dividend". A summary: The Earth’s bounty belongs to everyone, property rights are good, labor and investment deserve a fair return, but please, please, PLEASE don’t hand over our precious natural resources to Some Guy. progressandpoverty.substack.com/p/book-revie...
Book Review: The Natural Dividend
The Norwegian cure for the Resource Curse
progressandpoverty.substack.com
Our friends @larsiusprime.bsky.social & Greg Miller at the Center for Land Economics have made another great report showing that a land value tax would be a net winner for the majority of homeowners in Spokane, Washington -- and it'd be progressive! progressandpoverty.substack.com/p/yes-a-land...
The Squamish people of what is now Vancouver were illegally dispossessed of their land 100 years ago. They sued, got the land back, and used their sovereignty to ignore local zoning and build 6,000 new homes over the loud objections of nearby wealthy NIMBYs. Now other tribes are getting in the game.
eggnog slut@deus01.bsky.social · 2mo agoEveryone loves land back anti colonialism until they take your undeveloped land to build condos
Contra Watling on "the failure of the land value tax" progressandpoverty.substack.com/p/contra-wat...
Contra Watling on "The failure of the land value tax"
There are many successful historical examples of land valuation and land value taxation, which critics don't engage with.
progressandpoverty.substack.com
How do appraisers value land? We interviewed one to find out! "THOMAS: Correct. Because the cost is worked out in advance of valuing the land, ultimately, once you set your cost schedules, really all we’re valuing is the land." progressandpoverty.substack.com/p/how-apprai...
progressandpoverty.substack.com/p/ubi-advoca... If you want Universal Basic Income (UBI) or Land Value Tax (LVT) to succeed, you must find a place where they are: 1. Economically feasible 2. Technically feasible 3. Politically possible 4. Socially and politically urgent That place is South Korea.
UBI advocates should watch South Korea
South Korea is the most likely place for UBI to take root, funded with LVT
progressandpoverty.substack.com
Why are we bulldozing forests while city parking lots sit empty? 🌳🚫 It’s the tax code. By taxing buildings instead of just land, we incentivize sprawl. But a solution from the 1800s is back: Land Value Tax. 📈 The key to affordable housing AND a greener planet?🌎🏙️
It took us 111 episodes, but we finally dedicated a full interview to land value taxes. "The taking by the community, for the use of the community, of that value which is the creation of the community"! Thanks @larsiusprime.bsky.social for joining us! lewis.ucla.edu/2026/04/22/1...
Episode 111: Land Value Tax Would Fix This with Lars Doucet (Incentives Series pt. 11) - UCLA Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies
We close out the Incentives Series with a primer on land value taxes (LVT), the ultimate incentive-aligned housing policy.
lewis.ucla.edu
There's a new mass appraisal model in town! pypi.org/project/laye... Designed by John Kossa, data scientist at Lee County, Florida Property Appraiser! It's a tree-based model, designed specifically for real estate, imbued with assessor office instincts, fast, and explainable.
layeredcompmodel
Hierarchical tree-based model for robust parcel sale price predictions using weighted Wilson means.
pypi.org
I made a map of surface parking in downtown Bellingham. It's wild how much of our most walkable neighborhood is parking lots: earth.google.com/earth/d/1FDg... (h/t @larsiusprime.bsky.social for the instructions)
Google Earth
earth.google.com
Here’s all the parking lots in Tulsa, Oklahoma. These kind of maps are surprisingly simple to make. Here’s how:
Many people treat land valuation as this big unsolved problem, but South Korea values all the land in the country, annually, down to the parcel, and gets it all done in five months. Then they post all the values publicly for everyone to see. progressandpoverty.substack.com/p/how-to-val...
progressandpoverty.substack.com
This is the city builder I've always wanted and I'm really excited now that I've spoken to the developer. It has the right focus on new urbanist ideas as a response to the SimCity/City Skylines status quo. Still a lot it will have to get right, but looks promising. metrotown.gg
Metrotown | The Urbanist City Builder
Plan transit-oriented developments, master real-world municipal economics, and grow cities of millions.
metrotown.gg
It's pretty remarkable how policy goals of YIMBYism in California went from being a bundle of untouchable "third rail" ideas to being the bipartisan consensus of the gubernatorial field in a span of like 10 years. www.sacbee.com/news/politic...
California governor candidates have a similar goal: ‘Housing, housing, housing’
“There’s a lot of agreement here,” one candidate for California governor said during a recent forum.
sacbee.com
Speaking of which, yesterday the Virginia state legislature passed LVT authorization in Charlottesville, Falls Church, Fredericksburg, and Newport News! Now it goes to Governor Spanberger's desk, where she is expected to sign! Which state will be next? :) 🔰🔰🔰🔰 lis.virginia.gov/bill-details...
Russell Richie 🔰🌐🏗🚲♿🏳️🌈@drussellmrichie.bsky.social · 5mo agoIncreasingly, state and local govts agree, which is reflected in the growing interest in LVT enabling legislation (noted by our allies at the Center for Land Economics). progressandpoverty.substack.com/p/land-value...
re. BAFTAs and John Davidson's involuntary vocal outburst - Listen to this exceptional young woman on Tourette’s Syndrome 👇
![From Wikipedia "The earliest known reference to Transylvania appears in a Medieval Latin document of the Kingdom of Hungary in 1078 as ultra silvam, meaning "beyond the forest" (ultra meaning "beyond" or "on the far side of" and the accusative case of sylva (sylvam) "woods, forest"). Transylvania, with an alternative Latin prepositional prefix, means "on the other side of the woods". The Medieval Latin form Ultrasylvania, later Transylvania, was a direct translation from the Hungarian form Erdő-elve, later Erdély, which has been adopted phonetically into Romanian as Ardeal.[27][28] That also was used as an alternative name in German überwald ("beyond the forest") (13th–14th centuries) and Ukrainian Залісся (Zalissia)."](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:rzvpflyh2rmt33psp2dmu2uq/bafkreihfqwygze4hmk3x7liuyal4oj6os2dciy3gxmcilum5bxp2757lta)
