The value of my home has more than tripled in nine years. Prop. 13's 2% limit on annual increases of assessed value is saving me several dollars per day in property tax. It's not my fault the housing market in my neighborhood has gone insane. Market prices have gone up much faster than I expected. I bought my home to live in, not as a business or speculative investment.
http://www.boe.ca.gov/proptaxes/pdf/pub29.pdfJADP - My mom bought a house in 1965 that QUINTUPLED in value by 1978, the year Prop. 13 was voted in. She also sold the place that year. Although before 13 there was supposed to be an average 5 year interval between reassessments, her property got hit for a tax increase every single year she owned that house. The San Diego County assessor's behavior was scandalous, and statewide reaction to that kind of abuse led to Prop. 13. If the counties had abided by the existing law it might never have passed.
Mom's former house sold in January 2004 for $995,000. The present assessed value is $583,664. It's no nicer of a place to live than it was in the '60s and '70s but it's a lot less affordable (i.e. affordable to a lot fewer people) if you compare housing prices to income levels.
County assessors and municipalities try to screw with homeowners all the time. Here in San Diego a few years ago a proposal was floated to base the trash collection assessment on the width of your lot, i.e. how many linear feet of curb easement the city has. That would have hit me hard because my lot is wide and shallow. Someone with a narrow, deep lot of the same size would have paid less for the exact same services. Corner lot owners would have taken it in the shorts.