Measure ULA July 2026 Thresholds and LA Pricing Strategy
If you own a home inside the City of Los Angeles priced anywhere near five million dollars, the number that matters this summer is not your Zestimate, your comp set, or the ten-year Treasury. It is $5,400,000. That figure is where the city's transfer-tax structure now cuts a $200,000-plus gash into seller proceeds, and the July 1, 2026 threshold reset did nothing to soften the edge. It only slid it up by $100,000.
Sellers who read the headlines about a possible statewide repeal on the November ballot are asking the wrong question. The question is not whether Measure ULA survives. The question is where your list price sits relative to a threshold that punishes a single dollar of overage with a six-figure bill.
Measure ULA is not a marginal tax. It applies to the entire sale price the moment a transaction crosses the line. Effective for transactions closing after June 30, 2026, the new ULA thresholds are $5,400,000 and $10,900,000. Transactions greater than $5,400,000 but less than $10,900,000 are assessed a 4% tax, and transactions of $10,900,000 or greater are assessed a 5.5% tax.
Run the math on a home that would have listed at $5.35M under the old thresholds:
| Closing sale price | ULA rate | ULA owed | Base city + county transfer tax | Total transfer-tax bucket |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| $5,399,999 | 0% | $0 | ~$30,240 | ~$30,240 |
| $5,400,001 | 4% | $216,000 | ~$30,240 | ~$246,240 |
| $6,000,000 | 4% | $240,000 | ~$33,600 | ~$273,600 |
| $10,899,999 | 4% | $436,000 | ~$61,040 | ~$497,040 |
| $10,900,001 | 5.5% | $599,500 | ~$61,040 | ~$660,540 |
Two dollars of extra sale price at the low threshold costs the seller roughly $216,000 in additional tax. That is the cliff. On the higher tier, the same two-dollar difference costs about $163,500 more. Because Measure ULA is based on gross sales price, there's no room for error in closing cost estimates.
This is why "price it a hair above the neighbor's comp" is a strategy that quietly destroys equity when the neighbor's comp sits at $5.29M and yours is a nicer house.
The rates did not move. The thresholds did. Before July 1, the 4% tier began at $5.3M and the 5.5% tier began at $10.6M. After July 1, those lines shifted to $5.4M and $10.9M. The value thresholds and their corresponding rates are adjusted annually based on the Bureau of Labor Statistics Chained Consumer Price Index.
For a specific slice of the market, homes that would have traded at $5.31M to $5.39M in June, the reset is real money. The same closing in August owes zero ULA instead of $212,400. For everyone above roughly $5.45M, the reset changes nothing meaningful. A $6M sale still owes $240,000, whether it closes in June or September.
The practical read: if your property was going to list in the $5.25M to $5.45M band, the July window matters. If you were going to list at $5.6M or $8M or $12M, the calendar reset is noise.
Measure ULA is a City of Los Angeles ordinance, not a county one. Homes a block outside city limits are not subject to it. Beverly Hills, Santa Monica, and Culver City are independent municipalities with their own transfer-tax structures. Unincorporated LA County areas outside City of LA jurisdiction are also exempt. If you're selling in Beverly Hills or Santa Monica, ULA is not part of your cost picture.
The neighborhoods where owners routinely misread the line include Brentwood, Bel Air, Pacific Palisades, Venice, the Wilshire Corridor, Hollywood Hills, Los Feliz, and Holmby Hills. All of those are inside the City of Los Angeles. West Hollywood, Beverly Hills, Santa Monica, and Culver City are not. A property one street south of Santa Monica Boulevard on the wrong block can carry a $240,000 tax differential from a listing across the street.
Two facts that need to be nailed down before you set a list price:
The city's own Measure ULA FAQ at the LA Office of Finance is the reference to bookmark.
Sellers keep asking whether to wait for the statewide repeal effort. Two things to hold in your head at once.
First, the tax is legally solid today. The California Court of Appeal upheld the tax in December 2025, rejecting the constitutional challenge brought by the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association. The LA City Council declined to place a reform measure on the June 2026 ballot. A city-level fix is not coming in 2026.
Second, the statewide measure is on the November ballot but is not a favorite. The statewide proposition would trim transfer taxes to just one-twentieth of 1% of a real estate sale's value. Measure ULA's top rate is 100 times higher. Reporting from CalMatters notes that more than 57% of likely voters, including a majority of Republicans, opposed the initiative when shown its title as it would appear on the ballot.
Planning a Q3 or Q4 close around the assumption that the tax disappears in November is a bet, not a strategy. And even if the measure passes, it would not retroactively refund ULA paid at a September closing. Anyone whose situation permits waiting six to nine months for a possible policy change should model both outcomes with actual numbers, not headlines.
Three practical moves separate sellers who net well from sellers who leave money on the table.
Price with the cliff in your peripheral vision. If a defensible market range for your home is $5.25M to $5.55M, the correct list price is almost never $5.45M. It is either $5,399,000 with a hard ceiling in the offer instructions, or $5,750,000 where the tax is already baked into the number and the incremental $350K in gross covers the $216K in ULA with room to spare. The dead zone between $5.4M and roughly $5.65M is where sellers accept an offer that nets worse than a lower one.
Model net proceeds, not gross price. A $5.6M offer with a standard seller-paid ULA nets roughly $5.36M before commissions and other closing costs. A $5.39M all-cash offer that closes fast nets roughly $5.36M without the ULA line item. The two offers are economically identical to the seller. Buyers know this. A contract can technically allocate the tax, but in practice on luxury LA sales, sellers pay. Buyers in this market have plenty of inventory to choose from in 2026 and rarely accept a ULA shift.
Confirm your parcel's jurisdiction in writing before you sign a listing agreement. For homes anywhere near a city boundary, this is a five-minute check that can be worth $200,000.
The market context reinforces the need for precision. Compared to the pre-implementation rush to sell in 2023, today's environment is defined by hesitation. Owners and buyers remain cautious, particularly when transaction values fall near ULA thresholds. Hesitation on the buy side means offers cluster below thresholds, not above them. That is a pricing signal, not a coincidence.
Can a 1031 exchange defer Measure ULA? No. Measure ULA is a transfer tax, not a capital gains tax, so it cannot be deferred through an exchange. A 1031 defers federal capital gains. It does not touch a city excise tax owed at recording.
Does the tax apply if I sell to a family member at below-market price? It applies to the consideration or value conveyed, and the city uses the state's ownership-change framework to determine what counts. Intra-family transfers frequently trigger ULA anyway. Confirm with counsel before assuming otherwise.
Are new-construction and commercial properties treated differently? Not currently. The tax applies broadly to residential, multifamily, and commercial sales over the threshold. The levy falls not just on mansions, but apartments, condos, multi-use and commercial developments, too. Proposed carveouts have been discussed at City Hall but none have been enacted.
Does the tax scale with time on market? No. It is a closing-day calculation based on the recorded sale price. A property listed at $5.6M that sits for six months and closes at $5.39M owes zero ULA. Time on market does not create liability; price does.
A high-value LA sale in 2026 is a math problem before it is a marketing problem. Every meaningful list-price decision inside the city runs through the ULA thresholds, and the difference between a seller who nets what they expected and one who does not usually comes down to a conversation that happened before the sign went in the yard.
If you are weighing a sale in Brentwood, Pacific Palisades, the Wilshire Corridor, Los Feliz, or anywhere else inside the City of Los Angeles, Karean Wrightson can model your net proceeds against the current thresholds, confirm your parcel's jurisdiction, and build a pricing strategy that respects the cliff. Request a complimentary market consultation to run the numbers on your specific address before you commit to a list date.
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