Your understanding is not correct. When you buy the house your tax rate is 1% (+ local fees) of your purchase price. Every year thereafter, it goes up by at le

Your understanding is not correct. When you buy the house your tax rate is 1% (+ local fees) of your purchase price. Every year thereafter, it goes up by at least 2%. The assessed value will go up by 2% (that's prop13) so the base tax will go up by 2%. However, local city and county can add their own fees on top of that (so they do), therefore in many years the actual dollar amount increase will be more than 2%. (Source: my property tax bill over the last 23 years.)