There's a guy on my street that owns 27 houses, all bought in the 90s. While that guy is getting subsidized income by paying less taxes on high value property he is less likely to sell that property to developers who will build higher density housing. The same can be applied to the people who own vacation or retirement homes out here (there's a surprising amount of vacant property out here). The taxes that aren't being paid by all those people has to be made up for somewhere, so the taxes on new property owners are higher (as are the number if different fees and things like sales tax).