You’re half right.
You don’t have to pay every week.
For example, if you decide to go on holiday for 6 weeks, you dont need to pay rent for all your stay. It’s not cumulative.
I had my houses since like lvl 25, i only bought small houses so the total I pay per week is like 550coin. Our settlement where we had the house was taken by a cheating company called Ruthless Army, so I refused to pay my housing tax for weeks, in sign of protest(the rats set taxes to extreme). I couldn’t use it for travel, but I didn’t have to pay any extra.
My advice, only buy houses when you can easily make the rent gold in a few hours of play.
You can pay all your tax on like two houses purely from doing the faction missions that day for the 10x daily bonus.
Big No For These, Also If You Didn’t Pay Tax You Still Own The House Just Can’t Access The Extra Storage ( House Chest ) And Teleport , To Use These Then Pay Up