Drive north out of the Beverly Hills flats into Benedict Canyon or Coldwater Canyon and the mailing address stays the same, but the city changes. Los Angeles City Planning's Bel Air–Beverly Crest Community Plan counts Beverly Crest, Benedict Canyon, Coldwater Canyon and Franklin Canyon as Los Angeles neighborhoods. The Bel Air–Beverly Crest Neighborhood Council draws its boundaries to exclude the City of Beverly Hills. Trousdale Estates falls on the other side of that line. It is regulated under the Beverly Hills Municipal Code, and the city runs its own view restoration process there.
That line decides which transfer tax applies when a home sells. According to the 2026 research, Measure ULA's biggest effect at the 90210 line is on the Los Angeles side, where hillside owners above the threshold are holding instead of listing and the sales that do happen cluster just under it.
Five hundred dollars and about $216,000
The Los Angeles Office of Finance has set the Measure ULA thresholds for transactions closing after June 30, 2026 at $5.4 million and $10.9 million. Inside city limits, the 0.45% base tax rises to a combined 4.45% on sales over $5.4 million and below $10.9 million, and to 5.95% at $10.9 million or more. The rate applies to the full value conveyed, not only to the amount above the threshold. Every sale in Los Angeles County pays the county's documentary transfer tax of $1.10 per $1,000. The County Recorder's declaration form names Culver City, Los Angeles, Pomona, Redondo Beach and Santa Monica as cities that add their own tax on top. Beverly Hills is not on that list.
Here is the arithmetic at a few prices, using those published rates. The figures are rounded to the dollar.
| Sale price | City of Beverly Hills: county tax only | BHPO, City of LA: county plus city tax |
|---|---|---|
| $5,400,000 | $5,940 | $30,240 |
| $5,400,500 | $5,941 | $246,263 |
| $8,000,000 | $8,800 | $364,800 |
| $12,000,000 | $13,200 | $727,200 |
Look at the second row. On the Los Angeles side, adding $500 to the price adds roughly $216,000 in tax. On the Beverly Hills side, the same $500 adds about 55 cents. The cliff at $5.4 million is the main thing to understand about BHPO pricing.
Where the deals went: they mostly didn't happen
If the tax pushed buyers across the line, transaction counts would have fallen in Los Angeles and risen in neighboring cities. In a paper dated May 15, 2026, Green, Jambulapati, Liebersohn and Velayudhan tested exactly that. Their study of the Los Angeles mansion tax estimates that Measure ULA cut the rate of transactions in the city by about 50 percent. They also checked whether that activity reappeared elsewhere. In the paper's words:
"The evidence does not point to a large spillover: sellers cannot relocate a Los Angeles parcel, placebo estimates show no offsetting rise in transactions outside the city, and buyer and seller identity checks do not show a shift toward non-Los Angeles markets."
The authors call those tests imperfect. Buyers could still substitute toward homes outside Los Angeles, and that substitution could show up in prices without showing up in sale counts. Even so, the main finding points at supply. A Benedict Canyon owner who might have sold an $8 million house in a pre-ULA market faces a $364,800 combined transfer tax bill under the 2026 rates. Many owners in that position simply keep the house.
The paper also explains why the effect compounds. A sale that doesn't happen also delays the property tax reassessment that comes with a sale. The benchmark calculation finds that lower future property tax collections offset about 80 percent of ULA's revenue. For a buyer, that means the long-held hillside homes that would normally turn over are turning over more slowly.
The crowd just under the line
The other half of the evidence comes from RAND. Its May 28, 2026 report by Jason Ward, Lizhong Liu, Elizabeth Selby and Phoebe Rose Levine estimates a 31 percent reduction in high-value transactions over ULA's first three years. The more useful finding for a BHPO buyer is where the remaining sales landed. RAND found no meaningful clustering around the threshold before ULA. After it took effect, transactions just below the line rose sharply, and RAND estimated that volume in that narrow band was up 118 percent. Nearly 75 percent of those clustered sales were single-family homes or other small residential properties.
That study period used the original $5 million threshold. Under the 2026 numbers, the pressure point is $5.4 million. In BHPO, that turns a range of the market into a negotiation over whether a deal can close at or under the line. For a house that might otherwise trade at $5.6 million, the combined Los Angeles-side bill is $255,360 at that price and $30,240 at $5.4 million. Cutting the price by $200,000 saves $225,120 in tax.
The same pull gets stronger as prices rise. In May 2026, the Los Angeles Times reported that a Bel-Air compound listed at $400 million would owe an estimated $23.8 million in Measure ULA tax if it sold at its asking price. In its November 2024 analysis, The Real Deal reported that Council District 5, which includes Bel-Air and Beverly Crest, had logged 138 ULA sales raising $83.3 million. High-end sales still happen on the Los Angeles side. They carry a cost that sellers on the Trousdale side of the line don't pay.
What the early headlines measured
The idea that the tax handed Beverly Hills an edge began with 2024 coverage. The Los Angeles Times reported in April 2024 that single-family sales over $5 million in the City of Los Angeles fell from 366 to 166 in the 12 months after ULA took effect. Over that same stretch, such sales fell 24 percent in Beverly Hills, 29 percent in Santa Monica and 28 percent in Malibu. In July 2024, the New York Post reported appraiser Jonathan Miller's comparison: monthly sales over $5 million were down about 40 percent in Los Angeles and about 20 percent in Beverly Hills after ULA.
Those numbers show Beverly Hills holding up better than Los Angeles, but sales still fell there. That pattern matches what the 2026 studies describe. Beverly Hills kept more of its normal volume because its sellers face no city cliff. It did not see a jump in sales from buyers leaving the Los Angeles side.
Reading a listing on either side of the line
For someone choosing between a Trousdale Estates home and a house a few minutes up Coldwater Canyon, the evidence points to a few practical things:
- Confirm the city before you compare prices. Two homes with 90210 addresses can face very different transfer tax bills. Use the Bel Air–Beverly Crest planning map and the City of Beverly Hills zoning map to see which side of the line a property sits on.
- Expect fewer BHPO listings just above $5.4 million. Owners whose homes would sell a little above the line have the strongest reason to wait or to price at the threshold, and RAND's bunching finding shows how often deals settle there.
- Beverly Hills prices can move without sales counts moving. The Green paper notes that buyer substitution may show up in prices alone, so a premium on the Beverly Hills side may not appear in transaction volume.
- The bracket matters as much as the tax. At $10.9 million and above, the Los Angeles rate rises to 5.95 percent, which adds a second cliff for the largest BHPO estates.
None of this is tax advice. It's general information about published rates and research, so confirm your own transaction with a qualified tax professional or attorney before acting on it.
Quick answers
Does a BHPO home pay Beverly Hills taxes because of the 90210 address? No. Benedict, Coldwater and Franklin Canyons and Beverly Crest fall under the City of Los Angeles community plan, so the Los Angeles transfer tax applies there.
Is anything on the November 2026 ballot changing ULA for these neighborhoods? The only ULA item on the November 3, 2026 Los Angeles ballot was Proposition TE. It covers residential properties damaged or destroyed in the Palisades Fire, not BHPO homes in general.
Do the thresholds change? Yes. The Office of Finance says the thresholds are adjusted every year using the Bureau of Labor Statistics Chained Consumer Price Index. The $5.4 million and $10.9 million figures apply to closings after June 30, 2026.
If you own on one side of the 90210 line and are thinking about buying on the other, the transfer tax math belongs in your plan before the listing price does. Mark Gallandt can run the numbers at your likely price points with you and help you decide how to price or bid when the threshold is in play. Let's Connect.
