The difficultly here is that a person who purchased a home years ago at a reasonable price is facing yearly property taxes based on the homes present value. Many people are being forced to sell their homes because not of making a bad choice for what they paid for the home, but from the ever increasing taxes. It really is a surprise when your tax bill goes from $3,200 per year to over $5,000 in one year and it is not that great of a house.

It really becomes counter productive to spend much money to improve one's home since it will ultimately increase your yearly property taxes.

>thankfully we don't have an annual tax on our houses here, but there is a tax on buying a house called stamp duty, it is a % of the cost, anything below 317k is exempt and then it is a sliding scale from 3%, i think, up for 9% for houses sold for more than about 800k. i England i think they have an annual tax, they used to at least in the poll tax.
>~M