Another possibility is community charge taxation.
All houses in a community might be taxed at a community/school district set rate (or rates).
There might be say a 25% discount if only one adult person lives there and a 35% surcharge for each adult in excess of two.
The problem with ad valorum taxation is that if the community average housing size is 2,000 square foot, the community won’t want to see a 1,000 square foot house built.
The bottom line is that property taxation needs to be fair (you must pay for the value of public services you get) and also there must not be an ever-increasing lock-out of lower-income folks.
In England houses are assessed according to bands.
The council(property) tax on the top band might be three times as expensive (4,200 pounds/annum) as the cheapest band (1,400 pounds/annum).
Banding does away with the expensive need to reassess properties annually.
ACK! Open floor plans! Bleech!
(Sorry...the mere mention of them makes me simply batty.)
Regards,
We want to break the need to have homebuyers pay say an extra $100,000 so the local school district can pocket a mere extra $1,000/year per new house.
As for “open plans” to bypass room count taxation, any room in excess of 200 square feet with a kitchen area might have that kitchen area broken off and counted as a separate room.
Any really large “open plan” room area (left) that has a floor point to floor point distance in excess of 2.2 times its ceiling height might be taxed as two rooms.
The property tax system needs to catch up in terms of equality with court mandated school funding requirements.
New Jersey suburbanites shouldn’t be paying extra so Newark slumlords can underpay the Newark school district.