Property taxes are the worst kind of taxes. Nobody should be fined just for owning something. Once it's taxed once, it should never be taxed again.
The Federal Reserve has also found they improve the affordability of buying homes, which leads to younger people getting into the housing market faster.
https://x.com/cremieuxrecueil/status/1955007478078255107
https://www.minneapolisfed.org/article/2024/how-higher-prope...
A land value tax is even better, because it doesn't financially discourage improving your property, and it strongly increases the incentive to sell or develop underutilized land.
Imagine the first guy arriving on the island claiming the whole land to be his, and any successive arrivers have to rent space from him in perpetuity, at rates he can decide. Not great, but not immediately obvious what a minimally-invasive improvement would look like. Now add a tax that forces the first guy to pay for every acre of land he claims. This incentivizes him to give up some of the space he's not actually using. Even in the most "rational agents in a frictionless vacuum" type of free-market macroeconomic model this is going to lead to a more efficient outcome, even more so in a more Keynesian-style model.
That reminds me of this comic, though it's more about how the first-guy can evolve some self-serving philosophies about it.
>younger people getting into the housing market faster.
Most places have this but Florida also has much more retirees on fixed incomes.
There's another bunch of buyers who can barely afford to get in to begin with, so another target group to be jetissoned after everything they have to give has been extracted. If other expenses are rising due to inflation that's enough of a threat, but taxes will naturally need to rise faster than inflation and that's what puts young first-time buyers over the edge along with the seniors.
Unfortunately that's a lot who are in a more precarious position relative to rising costs of any kind.
The very, very worst of which are non-discretionary costs.
And taxes of any kind are the biggest threat in that category.
The primary purpose of property tax is to have a claim to the property by the taxing authority, first & foremost.
Not like there's any question.
If the "owner" can't pay the tax during any of the perpetually-occurring critical periods, the property is lost relatively quickly.
OTOH with regular & proper payment of the tax, it will eventually cost more in taxes than the purchase price to begin with. Inflation will accelerate this process dramatically and if the property happens to have appreciated, the total expenditure per year can easily be more than any average small business can afford. And that's for a property which was originally purchased on a single income. Compare that to the security and sustainability of having it bought and paid for outright instead.
Property taxes are one of the major factors that put single incomes out of the running.
Obviously there's a difference in the equations you would use if you were limited to theoretical approaches, compared to witnessing first-hand how neighborhoods can rise right out of the Everglades, become populated, then everybody get taxed out of there in more-or-less one generation. Repeatedly. So fast it would make their head spin in California.
By the time 1978 rolled around I was watching Proposition 13 with interest because Floridians were so much more desperate already. That's the type of future Calif voted to prevent. In pre-air-conditioning Florida we were just a canary being non-industrial small-town retirement communities, California was always affluent and crowded so they had critical mass to do something about it.
Without Proposition 13, this is what you get, or something like this.
The least destructive tax is only on commerce, all others prove detrimental if not devastating, depending on rate.
Not just bad for "the" market, worse for a "free market", and chips away at the fundamental wealth a community could better rely on otherwise.