Yes it is true. Basically the formula for your taxes are (appraised home value / total appraised value of all houses in the town) * budget of the town. The market does absolutely take it in effect, like I said, towns with lower taxes sometimes become wealthy enclaves were people will drop 2 mil on a house and then have basically no taxes. My only issue with the system is it winds up being regressive sometimes because the wealthier an area is the lower the taxes tend to be.

We seem to mostly agree.

My observation is that the system is neither regressive nor progressive for people who don't already own a home.

Renters basically don't see this tax at all, and people who are considering buying a home see the same total burden of tax plus mortgage payments.

(Or for people who buy outright with spare cash instead of a mortgage, the constant burden is tax plus opportunity cost of capital.

A mortgage is just a way to rent some capital from a bank in return for compensating them for the opportunity cost.)