Once more into the Legislature...

and find some way to cap this blatantly-corrupt property-appraisal tax farming.

We're in special session again to find some other way of funding the public schools besides property taxes. I hope they come up with something, because currently they're using property taxes, and rather than having to actually pass tax increases and suffer the political consequences, they just have their appraisors decide that your house is more valuable. And they can get away with mandating extra value for your house, because they do it all the way across the area.

Five years ago when I moved back into the country, you could get a house in my area and comparable to mine for somewhere in the 90s. Probably high 90s as mine has a finished room in back that slightly pops the square footage, but still nineties. Now my house is worth 142.

This is the Dallas suburbs, not Boston or Fairfax county. The region has had mild house-price increases... but I can tell you right here and now, it's only partially because of demand. There's no way the market here, however healthy it is, justifies the average house in my area appreciating in value by roughly a third in less than five years. From high-90s at the turn of the millenium, you now can't get into a house around here for less than 110-115, and we're not talking comparable properties, but instead houses that need an awful lot of work, like the house down the street we used to call the "crab shack."

It's a mess.