A couple caveats to that. I'm in NY and I bought a huge mansion in my upstate city. It cost me $250k for 8,000 square feet, turn of the 20th century woodwork, arts and crafts movement. My property taxes are $9k a year. And now you know why housing stock here is relatively cheap.

Our transaction taxes in NY are relatively high. it takes about $8k to close, but most of those are fees for title searches, surveys, appraisals and the like. Only $2k of that goes to the state as tax.

Lastly, I believe federal law has changed now and homes that sell for under half a million are no longer subject to capital gains.