Property taxes are killing middle-class ownership nationwide



Texans take pride in low taxes. We believe in keeping what we earn. But property taxes undermine that principle — not just in Texas, but across America.

What started as a local way to fund roads and schools has metastasized into a national scandal: a form of government rent on homes we’ve already paid for. Unlike sales taxes, which reflect voluntary spending, property taxes punish ownership itself — a direct affront to freedom and a quiet war on the American dream.

America was built on the promise of land and liberty. Unchecked property taxation makes a mockery of that promise.

It’s not just a Lone Star problem. From New Jersey to Illinois, California to Florida, families are being taxed out of their homes. Soaring appraisals and bloated local budgets trap homeowners on an endless treadmill: Pay off your mortgage, and you’re still stuck with escalating annual bills. That’s not ownership. That’s serfdom cloaked in paperwork.

A rigged system

Local governments dress up this shakedown. They cite needs like schools, roads, and emergency services. But where’s the accountability? Budgets balloon, bureaucracies swell, and taxpayers foot the bill while public trust evaporates. Politicians boast of stable or “lowered” tax rates, yet the truth is plain: When your appraisal jumps, so does your bill. It’s a rigged game of smoke and mirrors.

This system is a bipartisan betrayal. It punishes young families trying to build a future and retirees trying to hang on to what they’ve earned. It squeezes small businesses and destabilizes communities. For those on fixed incomes — especially seniors — it’s a slow-motion eviction notice signed by the state. Even in places like Denton County, Texas, where limited relief exists, it’s just a patch on a broken dam. The broader trend is unmistakable: rising appraisals, rising taxes, and rising resentment.

Who really owns your home?

At the root, property taxes don’t treat citizens as owners. They treat us as permanent tenants of the government. If the state can hike your bill every year based on speculative market guesses, who really owns your land? Not you. The government does. You’re just paying them to stay on it.

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  Photo by Douglas Rissing via Getty Images

 

This is an assault on middle-class stability — and it’s intentional. The ruling class, backed by urban technocrats and local cronies, thrives on an ever-expanding tax base. They want your home to bankroll their pet projects. Can’t afford to keep up? They’ll auction your house on the courthouse steps and call it “revenue recovery.”

Enough.

Time to fight back

The solution isn’t complicated. States need hard caps on tax hikes, not flimsy guidelines. Require automatic rollbacks when appraisals skyrocket. Mandate full transparency on every dollar spent. And no more sneaky tax hikes disguised as “market adjustments.”

If local governments want more revenue, let them make their case to voters in the open — not hide behind bloated Zillow estimates. Critics whine that this would “tie local officials’ hands.” Good. Their hands need tying. We’re not funding empires. We’re protecting homes.

Arthur Laffer’s warnings still ring true: Tax too much, and you kill growth. Over-tax property, and you kill ownership itself. Texas drew families and entrepreneurs by avoiding income taxes and offering stability. If property taxes keep climbing, that magnet will flip — and families will bolt.

Nationwide, it’s already happening. Americans are uprooting from high-tax states, chasing affordability that’s disappearing fast. Census data shows that millions are voting with their feet. But if states don’t overhaul how they fund local government, the problem will follow. The escape hatch is closing.

This isn’t just about economics. It’s about sovereignty. If the government can claim an ever-growing slice of your home’s value, it effectively owns a piece of your life. That’s not freedom — that’s feudalism in a modern shell.

America was built on the promise of land and liberty. Unchecked property taxation makes a mockery of that promise. A nation of owners is becoming a nation of renters — forever indebted to a system that never stops taking.

It’s time for a reckoning.

Texas can lead the way by tightening rollback rules, streamlining protests, and forcing every taxing entity to justify every penny. Other states must follow. Because this isn’t just a local fight. It’s a national crisis.

If we fail, we’re not just losing our homes. We’re losing our country. Put homeowners ahead of bureaucrats. Stop pretending the government owns a stake in our houses. Restore the American dream — not just in speeches, but in law.

Government broke the housing market — only this will fix it



If you’re frustrated with being unable to buy a home today, you’re not alone. According to the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, homeownership affordability has been near an all-time low since 2023. The deadly combination of both home prices and interest rates skyrocketing broke the housing market, but simply lowering interest rates today won’t fix it.

To understand why, it’s important to know what caused this housing affordability crisis. Over the last several years, the federal government spent trillions of dollars it didn’t have in the world’s largest-ever borrowing binge. The money came from the Federal Reserve, which created those trillions of dollars out of nothing, depressing interest rates.

The real solution is not to manipulate rates lower and spawn further inflation, but to get government out of the way so interest rates can come down naturally.

The predictable result was a rapid devaluation of the dollar, manifesting as 40-year-high inflation, followed by the fastest rise in interest rates in just as long to cool off the inflation.

Rates aren’t the problem

Not only did home prices become stratospherically high relative to incomes, but financing costs became prohibitively expensive. Consequently, during the four years of the Biden administration, the monthly mortgage payment doubled on a median-priced home.

For the housing market, this was a one-two punch that cratered affordability and consigned millions of Americans to renting for the foreseeable future.

The Fed’s artificially low interest rates helped cause the problem in the first place. Home prices rose not only because the dollar lost value (taking more dollars to buy the same home), but also because lower interest rates meant potential home buyers could borrow more and bid up the price of homes.

What’s most important to someone when considering buying a home is not the home’s price but the monthly mortgage payment. While the payment is clearly dependent on the whole price, interest rates are also a major factor. When those rates fell below 3%, people were willing to spend much more on the same home because the monthly payment didn’t change much.

As the months passed, however, and the bidding wars continued, prices just kept rising. Once interest rates returned to more normal levels, everything fell apart as monthly mortgage payments exploded. It now takes over two-thirds of the median household’s take-home pay to afford a median-priced home.

Historically, when interest rates rise, home prices fall, but that didn’t happen this time. So many people locked in home loans at interest rates below 4% — or even below 3% — that they can’t sell their homes today, because doing so would mean losing that interest rate and getting a new mortgage at 7%, 8%, or 9%.

The only way to make the math work is if homeowners sell at a huge premium, giving a massive down payment on their next home, minimizing the amount borrowed at a higher rate, and therefore preventing their monthly payment from skyrocketing. The large and fast increases in interest rates pushed home prices even higher instead of lower.

Get government out of the way

The temptation today is for the Fed to simply lower the federal funds rate (its benchmark interest rate), under the assumption that such a move will push down interest rates throughout the economy, including mortgages. Sadly, instead of fixing the broken housing market, it would likely have the opposite effect.

Last autumn, in a move that could only be described as blatant election interference, the federal funds rate was reduced when there was no empirical justification for doing so. But the move buoyed stock prices. Market participants saw through the charade and realized the artificially low rates would ultimately lead to more inflation, which prompted private market interest rates to rise.

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  Photo by e-crow via Getty Images

Lenders don’t like inflation because it reduces the value of the money being repaid in the future. To compensate, creditors demand a higher rate of return. That’s why the yield on Treasury debt at the end of last year jumped 100 basis points after the federal funds rate fell 100 basis points, demonstrating the Sisyphean nature of the problem.

Additionally, interest rates and home prices have recoupled. If interest rates fall one or even two percentage points, that will again prompt potential home buyers to borrow more, thereby bidding up home prices again. Unless rates drop substantially more, existing homeowners will remain trapped by the golden handcuffs of their 2% or 3% interest rates.

The real solution is not to manipulate rates lower and spawn further inflation, but to get government out of the way so those rates can come down naturally. If the government spent much less, then there would be less demand for borrowed money. Reducing demand in turn reduces the price, and the price for borrowed money is the interest rate.

Profligate government spending broke the housing market. Only fiscal restraint at the federal level will fix the problem.

Crushing fraud and DEI: Trump’s plan to restore the American dream of homeownership



The U.S. housing market has been a rollercoaster since the pandemic. First, lockdowns and economic uncertainty slowed the market to a crawl, followed by record-low mortgage rates that spurred a buying frenzy. Limited inventory worsened by construction delays and supply chain issues then spiked prices, creating a fierce seller’s market with frequent bidding wars.

In 2021, Biden’s economic policies, later called “Bidenomics,” drove inflation through the roof and prompted the Federal Reserve to spike interest rates, which doubled monthly mortgage payments for a median-priced home and made home ownership impossible for a huge percentage of American families.

Although the market has cooled slightly, affordability issues, elevated prices, and limited inventory continue to put homeownership out of reach for many Americans.

But thankfully, President Trump, as he always does, has a plan to fix what’s been broken.

Matthew Peterson, Blaze News editor in chief and co-host of “Blaze News Tonight,” recently sat down with Bill Pulte, director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, to discuss President Trump’s plans to restore the American dream of homeownership.

 

The FHFA is in charge of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac – two government-sponsored enterprises that keep the housing market running smoothly by making sure banks have money to lend.

“My view on [FHFA] is that we are here to restore the American dream,” says Pulte. “For the last four years under President Biden, there was a significant amount of inflation, and nobody could afford a home, and so what we're really focused on is restoring the American dream of home ownership.”

However, what’s standing in the way of that goal is rampant fraud, waste, and abuse.

“There was a lot of fraud and a lot of waste and abuse that went on in 2008, and as a result, the government had to take over Fannie and Freddie, and so what we're focused on is getting rid of the fraud, getting rid of the waste, getting rid of the abuse to make sure that these entities are stronger than ever before,” says Pulte.

To further these efforts, FHFA has instituted a “tip line” where anyone can report fraud and has terminated employees for “fraudulent or misleading activity.”

Another issue that’s been standing in the way of restoring the American dream of homeownership is DEI. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have “affordable housing mandates” that encourage lenders to provide more loans to low-income borrowers, minority groups, and underserved communities above others.

“Everybody should be treated equally and our policies need to do that, and so we terminated the DEI executives at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac,” says Pulte.

While it’s a long and complicated road to rooting out corruption and making homeownership more accessible again, Pulte is confident President Trump is the person to see it done.

“Under President Trump’s leadership, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac will be great American icons once again,” he says.

To hear more of the conversation, watch the episode above.

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Biden mortgage trick will raise inflation while Americans will own nothing and not be happy



The Biden administration is pulling out all the stops to make sure Americans will “own nothing and be happy.”

Its latest tactic is encouraging more consumer debt spending through second mortgages, which seems to be less about helping Americans and more about buying votes before the election.

Carol Roth, author of “You Will Own Nothing,” believes Americans need to be warned.

“It’s the arsonists who are burning down your house, and then, they bring a water bottle and say, ‘Hey, I’m going to help put out the fire and rebuild it. It is frustrating,” Roth tells Glenn Beck before explaining what the government is doing now.

“Freddy Mac had this great idea because people have so much equity in their homes. Let us go ahead and offer second mortgages,” Roth says. “But second mortgages don’t get you into housing. Those are consumer loans. Those are people taking money out of their homes and using them whatever it is. And that equity is perceived equity.”

Meanwhile, the homeowners haven’t cashed out the house or sold the house, so it’s not guaranteed.

Roth believes the second mortgage will be “people taking their wealth, their ownership, and going and blowing it on things.”

“That’s what will happen,” Glenn agrees, noting that people will use it to pay down a credit card with a 25% rate in order to use the 9% mortgage rate instead.

“Obviously, we would rather use other money if we can to pay down 25% and taking down your ownership,” Roth says. “I think we have to ask ourselves a few questions here. One, why is it that the taxpayers should all of a sudden back consumer loans? Why is it that we want to encourage more consumer debt spending, particularly during a time of inflation?”

“And why do we want people to reduce the ownership, the equity in their homes?” she adds.

Glenn and Roth both believe this has a lot to do with the 2024 election.

“All these things make him look like the economy is doing better,” Roth explains, but if these programs are implemented as Biden is planning, the economy will be even farther from actually doing better.

“Inflation next year is going to be insane,” Glenn says, and Roth agrees, noting that programs like this are what “started the whole ball rolling with the Great Recession/financial crisis.”

“I’m super excited for taxpayers to back consumer loans,” she continues. “You’re not even backing first mortgages, you’re now backing consumer loans. Way to go, really glad that the government wants to get into that.”


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It’s no secret that the housing market in the U.S. is a giant disaster. Interest rates have skyrocketed, prices have quadrupled, and these mysterious entities seem to swoop in with cash offers and buy up many of the available homes on the market.

What’s going on?

Democratic candidate RFK Jr. recently addressed these issues on the "Tim Dillon Show."

“Not only are we, you know, suffering inflation from the constant wars,” but “also you have these three giant companies – BlackRock, State Street, and Vanguard,” who “ already own everything, and now they've decided they're going to buy every single-family home in America.”

“They're on track now to control, to own … 60% of the single-family homes in America within six years,” he explains.

It’s no wonder young people feel so discouraged these days. This is a death sentence to many people’s dreams of owning a home.

“Think about this for a second,” says Dave Rubin. “They're telling us and have been telling us for years: ‘You will owe nothing and be happy.”’

“Now the banks have gone from 2.5%-3% interest rates” to “around 9%, so the average person now if every month you have to pay 9% on that mortgage, now you're paying an awful lot,” Dave explains, “and suddenly you can't get that mortgage, you can't buy that house, and then what happens?”

“You have to end up renting,” which means “you're getting no equity, you're not building wealth over time,” and most importantly, you’re not owning anything, which is exactly what these mega corporations want.

“You can see the connection,” Dave says. “If the banks raise interest rates high enough, the average person is like, ‘I can't take out the loan’…and then BlackRock and Vanguard and these other companies come in … and they just buy the house for cash.”

Once they acquire the house, “they let it be empty … or they then allow it to be rented,” meaning they own everything, while people own nothing, which is exactly what they’ve said their plan is.

“So you see how the banks are connected to exactly what BlackRock is doing,” Dave concludes.


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