A year ago, the New York Times released a list of cities that had seen the sharpest rise in property taxes in recent years. Indianapolis, Atlanta, Jacksonville, Tampa, Miami, Orlando, Dallas, Denver, and Fort Worth topped the list. All of the cities saw around a 45–65 percent increase since 2019 in their median property tax bill. On a monthly basis, for most, that means three-digit increases. Outpacing taxes, somehow, is home insurance costs. Nationwide, policy premiums are up 70 percent percent since 2021; if inflation is the “silent killer,” these are the silent inflations.
If that weren’t enough to keep homeowners up at night, try tacking on the likelihood of lost value. Zillow recently published a report that found 53 percent of homes nationwide lost value (according to the site’s “Zestimate”) between 2024 and 2025, with the average drawdown at 9 percent. And as has become axiomatic in recent reporting on the economy, this is the largest move down since the Great Recession. The losses come as a shock to the system cognitively but aren’t being realized yet at scale, as sellers are delisting homes at record rates, refusing to negotiate on price, or refusing to move despite a desire to do so.
Real estate transactions have tanked to the point where the real estate profession itself is undergoing an existential crisis. Agents can’t close, buyers don’t want to pay their fees, and sellers are stuck in a psychedelic state induced by the post-pandemic frenzy, when bidding wars were the norm and institutional buyers were — quite literally — door-knocking with a wad of cash. Now sellers outnumber buyers by a half a million, and sales are taking place at their slowest rate since — you guessed it — the tail end of the Great Recession. Once that protracted process has run its course and seller meets buyer, home sales are getting canceled at record highs: around one in seven fall through.
So, what does this mean when taken together? We have a…
Auteur: Clark Randall
