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That’s a big problem here in NJ (retirement); your taxes will be frozen when you’re 65, but they are frozen at such a high level already they would eat up too much of your monthly income. As a result, retirees flee, and are replaced by young immigrants who add schoolchildren (driving those costs higher).

Property tax caps are a Band-Aid applied to a gaping wound; a friend who live in CA for years described how settled areas deteriorated due to the caps (because they cut into services), and prospective homebuyers shied from those areas because they would buy in at a higher tax level than the existing residents (a new neighbor could pay twice as much as you for the same exact home, property lot, etc.). Instead, a new development would spring up further down the road (in another municipality), and the oldest areas would suffer.

Here in NJ there isn’t much land left develop; there is nowhere “down the road”, so those prospective buyers simply cross the Delaware River and live in PA. Lower costs (for now) in exchange for longer commutes; it doesn’t bode well for NJ...

“Property tax caps are a Band-Aid applied to a gaping wound; a friend who live in CA for years described how settled areas deteriorated due to the caps (because they cut into services), and prospective homebuyers shied from those areas because they would buy in at a higher tax level than the existing residents (a new neighbor could pay twice as much as you for the same exact home, property lot, etc.). Instead, a new development would spring up further down the road (in another municipality), and the oldest areas would suffer.”

That is the achilles heel of Prop 13. In it's effort to keep people from being taxed out of their homes ( particularly for retirees who may not have the resources to stay on at the higher rates), the law essentially slowed the turnover in places where incomes are lower. Here where we live, home are quite expensive and incomes of residents, and future residents are high enough that there isn't a big problem with affordability. As an example, we build our home in 1983. Home values in the area are now around $ 2million. The home across the road just sold for $2.1million. The taxes the former owner paid on the home for which he paid something on the order of $1.5 million, were in the neighborhood of $18,000 per year. OTOH, our taxes are around $7,000 since we've been here for more than 30 years. The real problem is that the property tax, should be relegated to paying just for property-related services, but today they are mostly comprised of taxes to support public schools and county government, but making the needed changes are too hard for today's legislators. They are happier legislating plastic grocery bags out of existence, messing with gun laws and other de minimus acts where courage isn't required.