I remember the first time I heard someone say, “You don’t own your house — the bank does.” It took me a while to really understand what that meant: if you stop paying your mortgage, the bank takes the house.
But there’s a deeper layer most people miss. Because property taxes are usually bundled into mortgage payments, it’s easy to overlook the fact that even after the mortgage is paid off, you’re still paying — this time to the government. Stop paying property taxes, and they’ll take the house too.