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>>But middle class people benefit in exactly the same way - if you pay $250k for a house and a year later because of a housing boom it is now worth $350k, you d

>>But middle class people benefit in exactly the same way - if you pay $250k for a house and a year later because of a housing boom it is now worth $350k, you don't pay taxes on that $100,000 you "made". Just to note, you don't pay taxes on the speculative "profit", but you do pay property tax as some percentage of it's "value" upon reassessment by a blackbox. >>If the whole world decides a random rock in your back yard is worth $10M, you shouldn't need to give the government $3M while the rock just sits there. I totally agree. Unfortunately, that's exactly what governments do with cars and boats. No one should be forced to pay a tithe for owning property or risk being thrown in jail for refusing.

oh_sigh 5y ago
At least where I live, property tax is assessed based on home value, but the multiplier varies based on the overall budgetary requirements for the town. So it's not like you are just always taxed 1% of your home value(or whatever). If every house in the town doubles in price, and the budget remains the same, then whatever multiplier is used would halve. Which makes sense - if home prices increase it doesn't mean that the town actually needs to provide more services to the same amount of residents. Of course, towns frequently see increasing home prices as a sign that they can siphon more money out of people via budget increases, but that is a separate issue.