The Landlord Lens - Property Taxes Going to ZERO in 2026?

Episode Date: February 20, 2026

Property taxes could go to ZERO in 2026 but can states actually pull it off?Several states are proposing major property tax reforms, including plans to eliminate or drastically reduce property taxes for homeowners. In this episode, we break down which states are pushing for it, how they plan to replace the lost revenue, and what it could mean for landlords, investors, and homeowners.We cover:• Which states are proposing property tax elimination• Whether these bills have actually passed• How schools and local services would be funded• The impact on home prices and rental markets• What landlords should be thinking about nowIf property taxes disappeared tomorrow, would housing become more affordable  or would costs just shift somewhere else?Let us know in the comments: Should property taxes be eliminated on primary residences?

Property taxes are being assessed by states across the country right now. Ron DeSantis putting forward that he wants to actually eliminate property taxes in Florida. Ron is not alone, nor are the citizens of Florida getting excited about the idea of not paying rent to the government. Hey everybody. Welcome to another episode of Landlord Lens. And today we're going to talk about a topic that is probably on your mind right now at the beginning of the year. And that's property taxes. Oh yeah.

I got my little postcard in the mail the other day. from the beautiful state of Colorado letting me know exactly how much they're going to screw me this there. Yeah, yeah, and that number on there is a little higher than my estimate. How about you? Oh, yeah, mine went up and you can fight these, you know, but I actually did some work on my house, and it looks like that's not yet been assessed yet. So I'm in a tough position because I'm not going to fight that one for fear they look a little deeper. Oh, dear. Well, okay, but property taxes are being assessed by states across the country right now. We did a video about Ron DeSantis putting forward that he wants to actually eliminate property taxes in Florida. Do you think it's fine that you buy property, you buy a home, you own it outright, free and clear,

and yet you have to continue to pony up money to the government just for the courtesy of using your own property? Well, it turns out this is a bipartisan idea and a bunch of states are considering it. Yeah, Ron is not alone, nor are the citizens of Florida alone and getting excited about the idea of not paying rent. to the government. That's right, exactly. And that's the idea that has won the day is property taxes, even after you've paid your mortgage, even if you've got, you know, you own this property outright, you still got to pay every year to the government some amount of money based on the value of property. Yeah, and it doesn't taste real great. But John, tell us where property taxes actually came from, this concept. Totally. So this is a very, very, very old idea. The tax base

of England, starting in 10,000 was actually mainly property taxes. The Norman Conquerors came up and they were like, hey, we're going to do a quick catalog of all the value of everybody's land here. And we're going to do levy taxes on you based on the value of that land. And that has gradually changed over time into more locally managed parish level stuff in England. And then the colonies brought it over because they brought over a lot of stuff from England. And we've been with it ever since. It's property taxes have been the primary source of funding local goods like schools, firehouses, police, right? It's been property taxes that have funded that.

it just strikes me for the first time that maybe Robin Hood was a result of these property taxes back in the day. What do you think? Maybe. What I love about this is we basically cast Ron DeSantis as Robin Hood. Yes. Not sure that's exactly accurate. I don't think so. Here's the big problem with eliminating property taxes, right?

And we talked about it a little bit in the context of Florida, but we also need to address it in the context of these other states that are interested in removing it, which is how do you pay for the goods and services that property taxes? property taxes cover today. And I think the biggest one that most people think of, or at least I think of, is schools. Right. Yeah. Schools is certainly the easiest one to point to because it has the most obvious social good and impacts the most people every day. Right. If you've got a kid in school, they likely go to a public school funded by the property taxes in your area. Yep. And so let's talk about this dirty half dozen of states in Florida, Illinois, Kansas, Ohio, Pennsylvania and North Dakota. Let's kind of break down which each of them are thinking. All right.

We'll start with Florida, which is the one that kicked off this conversation more legitimately in politics in America with Ron DeSantis putting it forward. How are they thinking of replacing property taxes in their budget? So Ron DeSantis, a.k. Robin Hood is doing something a little bit of trickery, I would say, which is first he's going to split what is today property taxes into two separate taxes, one of which is property tax still, the other of which is school taxes. he is then going to eliminate the property taxes and supplement the revenue loss there through likely a higher sales tax as well as what they're calling a tourism tax, which is an interesting thing to implement. You know, my thought is it's probably on like tea times and jet ski rentals. Yeah.

Yeah. Okay. Tea times, jet ski rentals, you tax those a little bit more and then you keep taxing the property owners based on what the schools need. That's what it sounds like. and that part is a little fuzzy, I would say, right now and how that would be implemented, which makes sense because if you're Ron DeSantis, it sounds a lot better to say, stop paying rent to the government than it does.

Stop paying some of your rent to the government. Yeah. But you're still going to pay for the schools in your area. Exactly. And you still get the points for the people that feel like the school should be funded for sure and not from some new experimental tax. Okay. So that's Florida.

What's next on the list? I want to jump to Illinois. Illinois and Florida? on the same list. So Illinois has a very interesting angle that was proposed, which is to eliminate property taxes on people that have owned their property for 30 or more years. Oh, interesting. What are they calling it? A homestead exemption. Oh, interesting. Kind of calling back to the 1860s with that one, huh? Yes, very little house on the prairie. Very little house on the prairie. And so what would be the impact of this one? Well, the impact would probably be a lot of people

really angry at people that have owned their houses for more than 30 years, because that is a population who may have already paid off their mortgage. Right. And it would eliminate their housing expenses down to zero, which great for them, makes retirement easier. But I'm not sure that it does anything to help the affordability crisis that people are feeling today, which is typically a combination of both a higher interest payment as well as higher taxes kind of right on top. In theory, we go back to Florida, we think about how they're going to split property taxes into and keep property taxes, I'm sorry, school taxes for some of that, right? Ideally, the same sort of outcome might be achieved here, is the idea?

Like, you split the property taxes based on how long the persons live there, and then you can still fund schools? Yeah, that's the idea. I think that this is not very popular in Illinois, though, and they're going to have to go back to the drawing board because it does really look like those that have a lot are going to just get a lot more. Yeah, one more handout for the rich. All right, we are now going to Kansas. Kansas? Yes. That's our neighboring state, believe it or not. So in Kansas, Representative Blake Carpenter has suggested that they eliminate property taxes and they fund it

through closing some exemptions today in their sales tax. And apparently, by closing those exemptions, they should see revenue increased by about $2 billion, which would then go a long way, to supplementing the revenue generated from sales tax today. All right, so I found the exemptions. And there are exemptions that I think are pretty, well, I'll let you react. The very first one implemented January 1st of last year is the food and food ingredients. So food and food ingredients are today zero percent sales tax. Gotcha.

But that was just implemented within the last year. So it would be easy to reverse that one. It might, but it'll probably be experienced by the population as just like, like sudden increase in prices at the grocery store, which is not politically popular, right? No, not at all. Then you've got resale and business use exemptions, so things like wholesale purchases are exempt from sales tax, and then government and qualified nonprofit exemptions. So purchases made by the state, political subdivisions, et cetera, which seems silly.

I think this would be awesome to see for Kansas. What's next on the list? We're going to go to Ohio. And this has actually been a grassroots campaign where the citizens have come together and said, hey, let's get rid of property tax. Today, it is called the Citizens for Property Tax Reform, and it's trying to abolish those taxes by amending the actual state constitution. How are they going to fund it? Kind of crickets. We're not sure yet exactly how they're going to fund it or where they will pull the money. So that, I would say, is early stages, just an idea

bubbling up in the state of Ohio. What's interesting about Ohio here being a grassroots movement, so Ohio actually has a way for the citizenry to amend the Ohio Constitution through popular ballots, similar to California in the propositions that make it through in the news. And Ohio has a higher than average homeownership rate at 70%. So it's likely that a well-messaged bill with a campaign behind it could actually land on the Constitution of Ohio, and legislators are going to have to just figure it out. Yeah, that's that's super interesting.

And for a couple thousand dollars a year, probably up to even, you know, 10 plus thousand dollars a year, it would certainly encourage me to get out to vote if I was in Ohio. Yeah, absolutely. It would definitely cause me a lot of heartburn as a legislator, though. That's a to not have a plan, right, and have this land on your constitution of like, you can't, this tax is illegal now. All right. Then the final two states we're going to talk about are my favorite, just based on how they're

thinking about paying for this. Okay. So we're going to go to North Dakota. Okay. is considering abolishing property tax and funding it through oil and gas exactly and they're thinking about doing it in an iterative fashion so basically they generate all this revenue from the oil and gas industry taking some of that revenue to supplement taxes via a refund that would just increase every year so they have a $500 refund already on the books they're increasing that

I believe to 1500. And the ideas keep stepping that up until the amount of refunds given out equal the amount of property tax revenue generated, and then you can abolish property taxes. That's super interesting. So this would basically lift the tax rate on profits from oil companies in North Dakota.

That's the idea, in the back end. So they actually already have an existing legacy fund, they call it, that has $9 billion sitting in it. So they're actually using that $9 billion to supplement these refunds. But it sounds like the taxes from the oil and gas are already generating some pretty strong revenues for the state. Super interesting. And what's the next one? You said it's interesting.

How they're paying? Pennsylvania. So, yeah, Pennsylvania. And I think it's so awesome how diverse these states are, right? It's not like all the sunbelt is like, let's get rid of property taxes. So Pennsylvania's proposal is to remove property taxes with House bill 900. But it doesn't have a very clear. plan right now for how to generate the revenue. One of the ideas proposed, though, by one of the

state senators is to tax the large private university endowments within the state of Pennsylvania. That is a fascinating idea. The endowments of these universities, which are huge, right, about $874 billion in university endowments in the United States right now, the gains on those are not taxed like your gains and my gains. Because the universities are all nonprofits, the gains on those endowments are considered non-profit as well. And so they're not taxed. So what I do think is a really interesting idea and would be awesome to see Pennsylvania push this idea further

because other states that are very dense in their university population could really follow suit. But let's get some of the capital gains on taxes on those gains via the adornments. Absolutely. And at the very least to offset the existing property taxes, if not eliminating them entirely, right? Exactly. Wild. Yeah. I mean, that seems like a very interesting. If Pennsylvania pulls that off, there's a number of states I think we can all think of that have a high concentration of these, you know, universities with huge endowments that might be like.

Oh, yeah. California, Massachusetts, Connecticut, right? A lot of the Northeast, honestly, there's some really good opportunities there. Very interesting. Cool. Okay. Those are so far, so far, I'm the only six, but it sounds like the ball's rolling now and all these states. are really considering it. Yeah, and I can't imagine seeing a state go property tax free and not want that for yourself. Right. So I do think that as momentum builds and the math starts mathing, right, as to how you're going to make up for the revenue. I think a lot of states are going to get really excited about it. It's also going to produce, I think, healthy migration to those states. Yeah. If you know you can move into a space where you're not going to be paying property tax, there's a huge advantage to that.

you Seamus for walking us through those six days. Yeah, very exciting. Always cool to see new creative solutions that will hit citizens' pockets. Thanks so much for tuning in. Like and subscribe. If you're aware of any initiatives that we didn't talk about today, about property taxes in your state or somewhere else, please let us know. We're definitely interested in hearing about it. TurboTenant is the all-in-one platform for landlords to manage their rental properties. From vacancy to tenancy, we have you covered with industry-leading tools and expert advice. Landlord better from anywhere for free at turbotenant.com.