A question about taxes

[iwantmap 0]

I want to create office demand in one of my new cities. So I lowered the taxes to around 3%. So my question is: Will they abandon the building if I raise taxes up to 7% when the city becomes bigger?

Thanks for the help.

[jacksunny 741]

It depends on what the demand is. If it is barely over 0, and you raise the taxes, you can bet that they will all abandon. If it is quite high, some might, but not all will.

[iwantmap 0]

It depends on what the demand is. If it is barely over 0, and you raise the taxes, you can bet that they will all abandon. If it is quite high, some might, but not all will.

So should I build demand over time and keep taxes at 7%? I watched a video on youtube and the guy put his taxes to 1% and had very high demand. How do I build high demand for offices then without lowering the taxes? Do I need to have well educated sims in the city? Because right now, there is no residents there but they are in neighbor city.

[jacksunny 741]

Well the one big thing you have to do is place your commercial in a place where a lot of Sims will pass through. The demand will increase if there are a lot of customers. To do this, put the commercial in between residential and industrial areas.

[Mithrik 562]

You should best go the natural way if you will build offices, that is getting a heathly external demand caused by your neighbors. Artificially making demand by lowering taxes can cause you trouble when you get them up again.

Well the one big thing you have to do is place your commercial in a place where a lot of Sims will pass through. The demand will increase if there are a lot of customers. To do this, put the commercial in between residential and industrial areas.

QFT

Make sure you have commercial zoning in high traffic areas, and look out for industrial pollution, as it lowers land value and prevents growth from everything but C$.

[cogeo 960]

Well the one big thing you have to do is place your commercial in a place where a lot of Sims will pass through. The demand will increase if there are a lot of customers. To do this, put the commercial in between residential and industrial areas.

Not exactly, "High customers" do NOT create demand. Instead customers affect the local conditionsm ie they determine where to grow (or upgrade) the building, not whether to grow or not (although a lack "High Customers" through C-zoned areas may cause the most demanding commercial types, ie CO$$, CO$$$ and CS$$$, not to develop). Demand for CO$$ and CO$$$ needs availability of a highly educated workforce. If EQ isn't high, you won't get CO$$$ demand, no matter how low you set your taxes (you may get some CO growth but they will soon get abandoned). Also, if you do have the workforce, but they are all employed in good jobs (eg CO$$, CO$$$, I-HT) you won't get demand either. And as educated workforce cannot be "imported" (newcommers have a very low EQ) your only option is to educate your workers. Build elementary and high schools as well as libraries covering all of your residential areas, plus a colllege or univeristy and a museum (play with the sliders & bus funding so that the bill is affordable).

You should best go the natural way if you will build offices, that is getting a heathly external demand caused by your neighbors.

I'm afraid I will have to disagree here too, neighbour conections do NOT create demand either. Instead they raise demand CAPS, ie they have a considerable effect only if you are close to hitting a cap. But they are still useful, they can bring in workers (or take your excess workforce to a neibhbour city) - and if they get a high traffic you can build commercials along them.

[Cob92 360]

The only way to get office demand is to develop a large, well educated population. If you're looking for big skyscraper offices, well you're not going to get any of that until your regional commercial population is over a certain level, and in order to get to that level you have to build a bigger city.

[frdrcklim 139]

Setting taxes affect your demand as mentioned. Basically, increasing taxes will decrease demand accordingly. People will only leave your office building if the negative demand has reached or exceeds the sims employed at the building. This building can be any building, but I find that high density buildings have a higher risk of becoming vacant than the rest. Never raise taxes when you have negative demand, it will make vacating offices worse. So only raise taxes when demand is good, but only set them in increments so that commercial offices would still sprawl.

Although, one way of artificially increasing demand without use of tax break is by performing u-drive-it missions that increase your mayor rating. It's not entirely cheating, and you do get reward money for it, but as a mayor, the important thing is the demand that it would bring from performing good missions. The more good will missions you perform, the higher the rating. If your rating was already full prior to performing the missions, it's still ok. The demand will still rise accordingly. This has a setback though. If you want demand to be artificially raised through this method, you have to perform this every year.

  Edited March 26, 2012 by frdrcklim