[derekp7]

Also current homeowners don't care about house prices, since they are locked into fixed mortgage payments - other than how it affects insurance and property taxes. And taxes are mainly affected if your property value rises higher relative to the rest of the community.

[dragonwriter]

> Also current homeowners don't care about house prices, since they are locked into fixed mortgage payments - other than how it affects insurance and property taxes.

They do if they want to refinance, sell the house, or demonstrate favorable asset:debt ratios for other purposes.

> And taxes are mainly affected if your property value rises higher relative to the rest of the community.

Property taxes are usually % of value, so dependent on absolute value changes, not changes relative to the rest of the community.

[derekp7]

> Property taxes are usually % of value, so dependent on absolute value changes, not changes relative to the rest of the community.

I may be completely wrong, but this is what I've been told by people I've known in the past that held some local public office (such as a coworker in one case, and a neighbor in another, they were both local aldermen). I've also google searched it, and came up with similar answers.

Typically, a city / county budget is set, and they then need to collect it from the pool of property owners by taking the assessed value and using a multiplier to reach their budget target. Now the budget may increase due to inflation or other factors, but I'm not aware of any local government that suddenly finds itself flush in cash due to doubling of property values. If your elected officials do things differently and look at rising property values as their own windfall, well then you and your neighbors need to vote them out of office real fast.

I've verified this with my own house (both the last one and current one, about 30 years of home ownership). The 2008 - 2009 crash had negative affects on property values, but my property taxes didn't go down, and insurance quadrupled (because the insurance companies lost a lot on investments and had to make up for it). And plotting property tax increases over the last 10 years where my property doubled in value, the taxes were just under 5k when I bought and now are just barely over 5k.

One thing that can happen, is as budgets go up with inflation or new initiatives, absolute dollar amount taxes rise accordingly. And people don't like to pay more taxes, so a lot of people will appeal their tax assessment. And a good attorney can get it lowered to some degree. That means that everyone who hasn't fought (and won) against their tax assessment (the assessed value of their home), will see their taxes increase more as their assessed value is now higher relative to the neighbors who fought their assessment.