In any case, the lower tax rate in CA gets baked into the property value (hence the sky-high valuations) so you're paying for it either way. Comparing equivalent homes in NYC/Jersey City or Boston to those in Silicon Valley or LA makes it easy to see the effect property taxes have on valuations.
[1] https://www.redfin.com/TX/Austin/2015-Ploverville-Ln-78728/h...
The tax estimate is based on an assessment based on a sale that happened 6 years ago, which ends up valuing the house at $100k (roughly 25%) less. :-) A new buyer would have a hard time paying the same tax because this would involve successfully arguing that the property is worth $100k less than what they just paid for it. $800/mo is likely in the ballpark of what the new owner would be looking at.
EDIT: Since millage rates are public, we don't have to guess. The topline Austin (Travis County) millage rage is 2.1767, so if that property were in the city of Austin its taxes on a $385k assessed value would be 8,380.29, or $698/mo. It may actually be in Pflugerville (hard to tell at a glance) where the taxes are lower due to letting Austin taxpayers pay for the big shared muni services.
The other effects are interesting, but my experience living in TX is it is definitely not a low-tax state.
> but my experience living in TX is it is definitely not a low-tax state
Dunno, I'd take property taxes (i.e. taxes on consumption of real estate) over income taxes. Particularly since income taxes are progressive whereas property taxes are a flat percentage. Even if I paid $2k/month in additional property taxes, the difference in income taxes would still make TX cheaper.
The killer with high property taxes is that you have to keep earning more as your property increases in value, or there is a real risk of you falling behind. Similarly if you are ever unemployed you might prefer a tax proportional to your income. Obviously this also makes retiring early even more difficult. But there’s a system to suit every need, I guess.
That's a feature, not a bug. The entire reason California's real estate market is so dysfunctional is that people are disincentivized from selling due to Prop 13, so you have people living in oversized houses paying a tiny fraction of the property tax their neighbors are.
You "falling behind" means someone else gets a fair shot at living in the area without being disadvantaged by a 10x higher property tax.
Ideally the property would never increase in value in the first place, because we'd build enough housing to prevent that.
This is the key takeaway from all of my experiences reading about and owning property. We'd all be much better off if we built a ton more housing, but that doesn't fall within the Overton window and so likely will not happen.
Not if the municipality has a fixed budget and all property values are rising in the municipality. The mill-rate changes so that you only pay more taxes if your property has gone up relatively more than other properties in your municipality. See thread here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32528916
Also if your property value has gone up, you have gained equity, so that may offset increased taxes (depending on divers factors).
In an area where property values are rising, other costs typically increase as well. Municipalities can't often provide the same services on a fixed budget any more than businesses can do so.
> Also if your property value has gone up, you have gained equity, so that may offset increased taxes (depending on divers factors).
This doesn't help unless you borrow against the increase in equity. Otherwise it just means less money in your pocket monthly.