But everybody is paying higher property taxes. Don't use escrow. I remember on my first house the mortgage payment was based on the previous owner's taxes, (which were locked because she was old and had the exemption). The next year our mortgage doubled because they based it on not having an exemption, (which meant they took more than they should have because we did get the homestead exemption once we filed), and then year three everything settled in place. As soon as we could get to 20% the PMI went away which meant we had more money to apply to principal to whittle down the mortgage and we had no escrow, (kept that ourselves so we could pull the interest off it). We could cash flow once we got our property tax bill and made life much easier.

Taxes should be figured into the payment when choosing a home. You are correct in that nobody could really foresee the massive increases by the counties and cities which is why it was very important for them to get a cap on how much they could go up. And those entities knew it was coming and was maxing out those appraisals as best they could before they got shut down. Damage was done though. Downside of no state income tax is they have to fund it somehow. I would much rather pay a higher sales tax and a lower property tax but that then becomes an unfair tax on lower income earners with less margin in their budget. (Flat consumer tax is the way to go with things like groceries tax exempt but that's a whole other can of worms). But guess where a bunch of those property taxes are going.....the schools that most of the residents don't even have kids in so that we can pay teachers more. See the cycle?