You almost make a good point, the problem with it is that if land use tax actually only assesses the value of the land, you&#x27;ll still have speculators speculating on the value of the <i>buildings</i> increasing for the same reason that the land does. Because the value of the building is also dependent on the location.<p>Which brings up a good question. There are plenty of places where there is a 50-unit ten-story apartment building on a lot of about the same size as the surrounding single family homes, e.g. because the houses have yards and the apartment building fills the entire lot. So what is the assessed value of the &quot;land&quot; supposed to be then? If it&#x27;s anything the owners of the single family homes could afford then it wouldn&#x27;t make the slightest dent in the rents collected by the owner of the apartment building.<p>It&#x27;s actually a very hard problem. Because in theory any of the home owners could build a large apartment building on their lot and be collecting large rents but if they all did that then rents in that area would crash. But the land is equivalent between the apartment buildings and single family homes, so they &quot;should&quot; all be assessed at the same value.