When Anthony Davis closed the sale of his Bel Air estate on 2100 Stratford Circle for $32 million this July, the closing statement carried a line item most sellers at that price point still underestimate: roughly $1.8 million paid to the City of Los Angeles under Measure ULA, the transfer tax Angelenos call the mansion tax. Davis bought the 17,000-square-foot home in 2021 for $31 million and put it on the market roughly a year before the sale closed, asking $39.9 million. By the time the deal closed, the discount and the tax combined meant he walked away with less than he originally paid.
That is the headline version of Measure ULA. It is also the least useful version for anyone actually pricing a Bel Air home right now, because the tax does not work the way most sellers assume. It is not a marginal rate that only touches the dollars above a threshold. It is a cliff. And in Bel Air, that cliff applies in a way it simply does not a few minutes away in Beverly Hills.
The tax does not care about your profit
Measure ULA charges a flat percentage of the gross sale price the moment that price crosses a threshold, with no carve-out for what the seller actually paid for the home or how much equity changed hands. As of today, closings after June 30, 2026 fall under updated thresholds: a 4 percent tax on sales at or above $5.4 million, rising to 5.5 percent at $10.9 million and above.
The mechanics create a genuine cliff rather than a gradual slope. A Bel Air home that sells for $5,399,999 owes nothing under Measure ULA. The same home, negotiated up by two dollars to $5,400,001, owes 4 percent of the entire price, not just the two dollars above the line. That is $216,000 in tax triggered by a rounding error in the final offer. There is no bracket system that only taxes the marginal dollars, the way federal income tax does. Cross the line by a dollar and the tax applies to every dollar.
That single design choice is why Measure ULA reshapes negotiating behavior differently than a conventional transfer tax would. A buyer and seller negotiating within $50,000 of the $10.9 million threshold are not just haggling over a marginal price difference. They are deciding whether the sale owes roughly $434,000 in tax at the 4 percent rate or jumps to $599,500 at 5.5 percent the moment the price crosses the line.
Why the line falls differently in Bel Air
Here is the detail that catches people off guard when they are comparing Bel Air to the neighborhoods around it: Measure ULA only applies inside the incorporated City of Los Angeles. Bel Air sits entirely within that boundary. Several of its closest architectural and price-point peers do not.
| Neighborhood | Incorporation | Subject to Measure ULA |
|---|---|---|
| Bel Air | City of Los Angeles | Yes, without exception |
| Beverly Hills | Independently incorporated city | No |
| Malibu | Independently incorporated city | No |
| Santa Monica | Independently incorporated city | No, though its own Measure GS transfer tax applies |
| West Hollywood | Independently incorporated city | No |
A buyer touring a $9 million estate in Bel Air and a comparable $9 million property in Beverly Hills is not just comparing lot size and finishes. They are comparing a transaction that owes $360,000 in city transfer tax against one that owes none. That gap does not show up on a listing sheet. It shows up on the closing statement, and it belongs in the pricing conversation from the first meeting, not the last one.
What the math looks like at the very top
The cliff effect scales all the way to the top of the market. A Bel Air compound built by the Qatari royal family over the past decade, with roughly $430 million invested since the empty lot sold for $35 million in 2010, is currently seeking to become the highest-priced home sale in U.S. history at an asking price near $400 million. Because the property sits inside City of Los Angeles limits, a sale at that price would trigger an estimated $23.8 million in mansion tax alone, according to reporting on the listing this spring. No amount of square footage or provenance moves a property outside the boundary that determines whether the tax applies.
That is the pattern worth sitting with. Measure ULA does not scale down for smaller, well-negotiated deals and it does not scale up gently for larger ones. It is the same flat percentage whether the sale is $5.5 million or $400 million, and the only variable a seller actually controls is which side of each threshold the final number lands on.
The tax is not going anywhere before your next listing
Sellers weighing whether to wait out a repeal should know where things stand as of this summer. On July 6, 2026, the Los Angeles City Council voted down a proposal that would have exempted new multifamily housing from Measure ULA and sent a rewrite to voters, opting instead to study a smaller pilot tax-credit program that has not been finalized. A separate, broader campaign to cap transfer taxes across California also stalled out over the summer without unwinding any tax currently in effect.
The practical takeaway for a Bel Air seller is straightforward. Whatever legislative fights continue in Sacramento or downtown, Measure ULA applies in full to any qualifying sale that closes today. Pricing strategy should be built around the thresholds that exist now, not a repeal that has not happened and shows no sign of happening before your escrow closes.
Pricing around a cliff, not a slope
Because the tax applies to the full price rather than the marginal amount, a home priced at $5.45 million and a home priced at $5.55 million both fall inside the same 4 percent tier and both trigger a six-figure tax bill, while a home priced at $5.35 million triggers none at all. That asymmetry means there is often very little financial reason to list, or to accept an offer, in the narrow band just above a threshold. A seller who might have accepted $5.42 million nets more by holding firm for something closer to $5.6 million, where the higher price at least clears the tax by a wider margin, or by pricing to stay comfortably below $5.4 million in the first place.
Getting that positioning right requires knowing the comparable set closely enough to judge whether the market will actually support a price on the far side of the cliff, and being willing to walk a negotiation to the number that makes the tax worth crossing rather than settling just above the line by accident. That is the kind of pricing discipline The Go Group builds into every valuation for a Bel Air listing, alongside the presentation and buyer outreach that Sotheby's global reach makes possible. A tax that turns two dollars into $216,000 is not something to discover after an offer is already on the table.
Does Measure ULA apply if a Bel Air home sells for exactly $5.4 million? Yes. The thresholds are inclusive at the stated dollar amount, so a sale at exactly $5.4 million falls into the 4 percent tier.
Is the tax based on profit or on the sale price? The gross sale price. Measure ULA is a transfer tax, not a capital gains tax, so what the seller originally paid for the home, any improvements made, or the remaining mortgage balance have no effect on the calculation.
Does Beverly Hills or Malibu have anything similar? Beverly Hills, Malibu, and West Hollywood are independently incorporated and are not subject to Measure ULA. Santa Monica is also outside ULA's reach but has its own separate transfer tax, Measure GS, which applies under different rules.
Will the tax change again soon? The thresholds adjust automatically each July 1 based on inflation, so the numbers will move again next summer. The underlying 4 percent and 5.5 percent rates, and the requirement that Bel Air properties pay them without exception, have not changed and show no sign of changing in the near term.
A sale that crosses a Measure ULA threshold by the wrong number is not a technicality. It is a six-figure decision made without realizing a decision was being made. If you are weighing when and how to bring a Bel Air property to market, Neyshia Go and The Go Group can walk through the pricing math specific to your address and your timeline. Schedule a Confidential Consultation before you set a number.
