sandiego … maybe you didn’t get the grasp the concept of the post…

The point is that a new buyer may have to pay taxes based on the last buyers purchase price, which may be dramatically higher than what they may be expecting.

An example would be a home in Winchester ….
http://www.redfin.com/stingray/do/printable-listing?listing-id=1589897
that last sold for $520k, this person paid $8350 per year in taxes. This home is bank owned, so lest say someone snags it up for $250k which is doable. They are expecting to pay around $4000k per year. Assuming they put 20% down (50k) and finance 200k, the P&I is around $1200. They are expecting to pay $333 per month in taxes for a total payment of about $1533. Instead, at the close of escrow, they are told that they will be paying $695 per month in taxes, or a total payment of $1895.

This is a difference of over $4300 per year and over $360 per month, and yes, that would likely affect any prudent persons choice to buy, or at least the sales price.

BTW the base rate of 1% is hardly an accurate way of figuring property tax up here. Most newer homes in this area have special assessments galore added to the 1%. Depending on the purchase price, the annual taxes and assessments may easily exceed 2% of the homes value. The assessments aren’t affected by purchase price anyways.