Los Angeles Dodgers first baseman Freddie Freeman sold a home in Los Angeles for less than he originally paid for it. He still wrote a check for roughly $2 million at closing, according to the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association's account of the sale, which the group has cited in its ongoing legal challenge to the tax that caused it. That tax is Measure ULA, the city's transfer tax on high-value property sales, and it does not care whether you made money on the deal. It taxes the sale price, not the profit.
Here is the part that gets lost in most market comparisons: none of that would have happened if the same house had been a few blocks away, inside the city limits of Beverly Hills instead of the City of Los Angeles. Beverly Hills is its own incorporated city. It runs its own police and fire departments, sets its own zoning, and is not subject to Measure ULA at any price point. A $20 million estate on one side of a municipal boundary can close without a dollar of ULA tax. A $6 million home a short walk away, technically inside Los Angeles proper, cannot.
Two Cities, One Zip Code
Anyone comparing listings across the Westside eventually runs into the confusion built into the 90210 zip code. Beverly Hills the incorporated city and the area known as Beverly Hills Post Office, or BHPO, share the same mailing address, but they are not the same jurisdiction. BHPO carries the glamour of the zip code without carrying the city's own municipal services, and depending on the exact parcel, it can fall under Los Angeles city jurisdiction rather than the incorporated City of Beverly Hills.
That distinction is not cosmetic. The ULA exemption follows the actual city boundary, not the mailing address on the listing sheet. A buyer or seller who assumes "90210 means exempt" can be wrong by hundreds of thousands of dollars. The reliable way to confirm which side of the line a specific parcel sits on is to look it up directly through the LA County Assessor's public portal, which lists the tax rate area and jurisdiction for any address. Zip code tells you almost nothing here. The assessor's record tells you everything.
The Tax That Only Applies on One Side of the Line
Measure ULA took effect on April 1, 2023, as a City of Los Angeles transfer tax layered on top of the standard documentary transfer taxes charged at every closing. It does not apply to sales in Beverly Hills, Santa Monica, West Hollywood, or any other independently incorporated city. It applies only inside the City of Los Angeles proper, and its thresholds move every year on July 1, adjusted for inflation using the Chained Consumer Price Index.
| Effective period | 4% threshold | 5.5% threshold |
|---|---|---|
| April 2023 (original) | $5,000,000 | $10,000,000 |
| July 2025 | $5,300,000 | $10,600,000 |
| July 1, 2026 (current) | $5,400,000 | $10,900,000 |
The rates themselves have not moved since 2023. Only the thresholds shift, and only upward, as the Office of Finance confirms in its own published guidance. What has not changed at all is the structure of the tax, and that structure is the part sellers underestimate. Measure ULA is not a marginal tax like an income tax bracket. It is a cliff. Cross the threshold by a single dollar and the entire sale price gets taxed at the higher rate, not just the amount above the line.
Run the numbers at the current threshold. A home that sells for exactly $5,400,000 owes nothing under Measure ULA. A home that sells for $5,400,001 owes 4 percent of the full price, or $216,000. At the upper threshold, a $10,900,000 sale owes 5.5 percent of the entire amount, or $599,500. One more dollar of sale price does not cost one more dollar of tax. It costs six figures.
What the Cliff Does to a Comp
This is where the comparison shopping most buyers and sellers do falls apart. Picture a $6 million single-family home. If it closes inside the City of Los Angeles, in a neighborhood like Beverly Grove, Brentwood, Bel Air, or Westwood, the seller owes roughly $240,000 in Measure ULA tax alone, on top of the standard city and county transfer taxes. If the same home closes inside Beverly Hills, the seller owes none of it. The only transfer tax due is the county's own 0.11 percent, because Beverly Hills sellers also skip the city's separate documentary transfer tax that applies inside Los Angeles.
That gap does not show up in a list-price comparison. Two homes can carry identical asking prices, sit on comparable lots, and even share an architect, and still produce net proceeds that differ by a quarter million dollars once escrow closes. A buyer weighing a Beverly Hills listing against a similarly priced home in an adjacent Los Angeles neighborhood is not just comparing square footage and finishes. They are comparing two different tax regimes wearing the same price tag.
For sellers with a home valued close to a threshold, the incentive runs the other way. A property likely to sell in the $5.3 million to $5.5 million range now has a real conversation to have about timing, since the threshold moves every July 1 and a sale that clears escrow just above one year's line might close under the next year's higher one. None of this requires a 1031 exchange strategy to matter, and it is worth being direct about the limits of that tool here. A 1031 exchange defers federal and state capital gains tax. It does nothing for Measure ULA, because the tax is triggered by the transfer of the deed itself, not by any capital gain the seller recognizes.
The Politics Aren't Finished
Sellers sometimes ask whether Measure ULA is likely to go away, and the honest answer as of this writing is no, not soon. The Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association's constitutional challenge to the measure was rejected by the trial court and then affirmed by the Court of Appeal in December 2025. The Los Angeles City Council considered a broader rewrite of the measure, including a 15-year exemption for new construction and relief tied to the 2025 Palisades fire, but declined to place that reform on the June 2026 ballot. On June 17, 2026, the Council voted 9 to 5 to direct the City Attorney to draft a narrower exemption for newly constructed multifamily and mixed-use housing, a measure that would still need to qualify for the November 2026 ballot and would not touch the existing single-family and resale market at all.
A separate, broader statewide initiative backed by the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association has also been circulating toward the November 2026 ballot, aimed at capping local transfer taxes generally rather than repealing Measure ULA on its own. Whether it ultimately qualifies is still an open question as of this writing. The practical guidance for anyone pricing a sale this year is to treat Measure ULA as fully in effect and plan around the current thresholds, not around a repeal that has not happened.
What This Means If You're Comparing Neighborhoods
If you are weighing a Beverly Hills address against a comparably priced home in Beverly Grove, Bel Air, Brentwood, or the Wilshire Corridor, the tax jurisdiction is not a footnote. It belongs in the same conversation as school access, lot size, and renovation potential, because it changes what a seller actually nets and what a buyer's negotiating room actually looks like. A listing agent who is not modeling Measure ULA into every comparison above roughly $5 million is leaving out a piece of the math that can move the outcome by hundreds of thousands of dollars.
This is also where a boundary-aware agent earns their keep before a home ever gets photographed. Confirming a parcel's actual jurisdiction, timing a listing around the July 1 threshold reset, and pricing a home with the tax already built into the seller's expectations are the kind of details that separate a smooth close from a surprise at the closing table.
FAQ
Does Measure ULA apply to condos as well as single-family homes? Yes. The tax applies to any real property sale within the City of Los Angeles above the threshold, including condominiums, co-ops, multifamily buildings, and vacant land. There is no carve-out based on property type.
Is there a primary residence exemption? No. Measure ULA has no exemption for sellers who have lived in the home for years or even decades. The tax applies the same way to an owner-occupant as it does to an investor.
If a property sits in BHPO, how do I know for certain whether it is exempt? Do not rely on the mailing address or the 90210 zip code. Look up the parcel directly through the LA County Assessor's public portal, which shows the tax rate area and confirms which municipality actually governs the property.
Comparing two homes across a city line is rarely as simple as comparing two homes. If you are weighing a purchase or a sale anywhere along the Beverly Hills border and want the tax exposure modeled before you write an offer or set a list price, Adam Dehrey can walk through the specific numbers for your address. Schedule a private consultation and get the full picture before the comps do the talking for you.
