"buy a house, they can't ever raise the rents on you again" - A common trope My mortgage went up this year by 13% from property taxes and insurance

Yeah, these townships and insurance companies have this nasty habit... I can't even make believe I'm annoyed at the lender, because I don't have escrow (bunch of ganovim, holding ~$5k of my money at 0% interest—do I look like a gemach for Wells Fargo??)

In addition to the rental increasing by a small percentage from landlords, the price of rent has been increasing a ton in general so if someone wants to move now and rent somewhere else, they will probably be charged a ton more (considering they want to continue living in the same neighborhood).

Who do you think is paying that 13% increase? If your a landlord in a normal state (i.e not NY) then you pass it on to the tenants in the form of rent.

That’s if you have tenants.

I rarely increase rents for my tenants. I'd rather keep tenants longer and create better relationships so they take care of my properties.

Don't taxes go up in large part because the house value went up, which is a benefit you get from buying but not renting.

I don't think so. In the areas I'm familiar with (not that many), tax valuation has little to do with market value

I was thinking indirectly. Everything, including services, costs more, which causes an increase in the tax which is collected to cover the costs, but also means house value is going up (since it would cost more to buy the house too).

Inflation?