Do you have water rights with your land? Sounds like you did get a good deal as things worked out... and I agree on Prop 13.
The previous owners had tried to turn it into a conference center to accommodate 500 people. 500 people can’t exist on 1300 gallons of water per day,and the State wouldn’t increase the gallons per day allotted so the conference center plans were never approved. The absentee owners continued to pay the taxes, but they let the ranch sit empty for 10 years. It was vandalized heavily. We found it one day and fell in love with it. We spent the next two years trying to talk the owners into selling it to us. They finally caved, because the place had been a huge loss and financial burden to them.
Water rights is the next big battle. When the State finances were run into the ground by Grey Davis, the Water rights board was told that they needed to self finance. So they started billing water rights holders for the water. For our place the bill is only $100.00 per year, but for the large farmers and ranchers, they can pay hundreds of thousands of dollars per year, for the water they have a documented right to for free.