You Can Tell a Bad Idea

By how hard you have to work to sell it.

My friendly neighborhood watering hole prolly spends close to zero dollars on advertising.  I might be wrong, but seriously, pretty close to $0.00.

And the flippin’ place is FULL.  It’s great.  I get to watch my Vikings, have some beer and burgers and they get to stay in business.  Wonderful arrangement.  Very easy.

But this, this just sounds silly:

Oakland has become the latest city to allow residents to finance solar panels, insulation, new refrigerators and other efficiency improvements through their property tax bills.

The plan allows residential and commercial property owners to make energy improvements without paying up-front costs. Instead, they pay installments through their property tax bill over a 20- or 30- year period, in most cases at a lower interest rate than what they could obtain individually.

And that’s not all.  Not only can you now fund your home improvement projects through the State of California, you can obtain credits and rebates from the Federal Government.  Heck, even the utilities are in the game:

rebates as high as $15,000 from Pacific Gas and Electric Co.

If this idea was such a good idea, they wouldn’t have to work this hard.

By the way, I wonder how this works:

The property tax payments stay with the property even if it is sold.

Is it possible to buy a new refrigerator, freezer, washer and dryer and then move?  Would you have to list that when selling the house?  Can you imagine buying a house in California, not have this be required to be disclosed and get your first city property tax bill?

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