There are a lot of people who over pay for properties, but those are the ones who end up in foreclosures when the market turns and the rent decrease while vacancies increase and they can no longer afford the mortgage payment.

I spoke with the property manager about this, and she said the board doesn't enforce it, it's unenforceable (apparently the development period has passed so it's no longer a valid rule since it said DURING the development period specifically; she said it was requested by the developer to prevent investors from buying the homes and renting them out initially which would decrease resale value) and they have no intention of enforcing it, in fact, they want to take it out because they'd rather have the houses occupied than empty, which causes other problems.But she also said that they will actually be meeting with several home owners to discuss as some want cap or outright ban.

No guarantee that people don't fudge the numbers, but since the expenses decrease their tax burden if they are getting creative they would be overstating expenses, not under.  

Truthfully, we'd do this even if we were paying a slightly higher rate, but the decrease made it all the more palatable.

I'm also basing my analysis on buying at a 20% discount with 25% down which decreases the mortgage payment substantially of course.  

So even if your values decrease, your taxes may still increase.Working in a tax office, I can tell you, that house you are looking at could very well end up costing more in taxes at 75k next year than it does at 92k this year.

The way things are going the HOA will be bankrupt if we don't increase assessments and a bankruptcy will decrease the market value of units. 

Any opportunities to decrease expenses?

Going through the county website I found my neighbors property is assessed about 40K less then mine after a borough decrease.

I haven't checked into how to do it legally in a lease, but I'm going to try and start finding more ways to motivate my tenants to decrease utility use with some type of financial dividend that gets returned to them quarterly if use is low.