A Boring Dystopia

Tax the sales of property.

I'm thinking of the untended consequences of that policy. The first I can think of is people simply would never sell their houses because they'd get hit with enormous taxes (large enough to equal decades of property taxes). Home owners would simply rent out the houses when they need/want to move away. So home ownership for those living in the homes would collapse. Further, city services would likely starve from lack of funding because there would be no little revenue and what revenue they got would be very sporadic.

but you should be able to have a house to live in without paying the state for the privilege of them not taking it.

There are absolutely houses like that (in the USA at least). Those houses not in cities with police and fire protection, roads, sidewalks, snow plowing, public libraries, or any other kind of city services. If you want the benefits of a society someone has to pay the bill. Alternatively, some cities have income taxes or very high sales tax. Both of which you'd pay to live in the city.

Who are you suggesting paying the bill for your consumption of city services besides you?

My alternate take. This is a prime example of why housing shouldn't be viewed as an investment. If the value of a home outstrips the rate that wages increase then isn't this story always the logical conclusion?

You're planning to tax on events like sales and hope there's enough churn to still fully-fund the things property tax provides for? That's really hard to make a case for.

Given bungalows rarely deliver a town enough to recoup on providing and maintaining services anyway, you're starting with a very tricky goal to maintain. Detroit happened, and that was with consistent, recurring payments.

Then you want to put a home sales tax on that is big enough to pay the back taxes plus borrowing cost to hold the debt and you think people are gonna go for this? What if you've owned your home 15 years, paid no taxes on the infrastructure maintenance, ambulance fire or police service, mail service, street lights and pavement, and then your house burns down? You could very well owe more than the lot is worth alone. What do we tell the homeowner about that? The town can't absorb the loss given margins are so low.

Nah. I don't think you can sell that idea to the voters.

Why not tax the property for all value above X. Where X is some amount over the average or median property value. That way, if you can afford a luxury home you pay some tax on it.