You don’t buy it. Land. You just rent it. The ‘buy’ price is just a security deposit so that the King, Dukes, staff, minions, cops, unions can hold that security deposit against you if you don’t pay them. When you leave, you may be allowed to get some of it back.
50% effective taxation and massive debts are the price we pay for civilization ( /s )
After renting for 11 years, I got the “itch” to buy a home a month or so ago, and started looking, since the price of homes had dropped. I found that not only are property taxes higher, closing costs have increased proportionally since when you close on a property you have to put 12-months of taxes in escrow.
I’ve decided to remain a renter.
An extreme example in my neighborhood is a home that started out at $150K last year, and has dropped in price several times to $97K. Sounds like a bargain, except the property taxes on it are still $5200! That’s almost as much as I pay in rent a year.