ULA Tax Forces Homeowners to Think Twice About Selling

There was no shortage of news from the SoCal residential market this week as agents jumped ships, celebrity homes hit the market and brokers grappled with impacts of Measure ULA. 

Three years since its implementation and Measure ULA — the 4 to 5.5 percent transfer tax on all property sales in the City of Los Angeles above $5.4 million — is still top of mind for luxury homeowners, brokers and contractors alike. 

Oren Levy — founder of Gesh Group, a luxury homebuilder that also remodels existing single-family assets, said homeowners’ hesitancy to sell to avoid paying the tax has completely flipped his business. Rather than doll out the ULA levy, homeowners are renovating what they have. 

Pre-ULA, Gesh Group’s projects were 80 percent new development and 20 percent remodels. Now, that’s changed to about 60 percent remodeling and 40 percent new builds, Levy said. Data backs up his experience — as there was a 46 percent increase in remodel permits for high-priced homes in the City of L.A., according to Attom Data Solutions, which compared 2018 and 2019 activity (to control for pandemic influence) with the two years following ULA’s implementation.

The Agency’s Emil Hartoonian said the ULA tax “has become part of nearly every meaningful conversation we have about timing, pricing, renovation and whether a sale makes financial sense.” 

“In my experience, it has unquestionably caused some owners to delay selling — but it has also led others to conclude that tying up additional money and years of their lives in a renovation may carry even greater uncertainty than selling today,” Hartoonian said.

Luxury movement

That said, there are still deals happening in Los Angeles. A Hancock Park mansion at 344 South Hudson Avenue with a $16.5 million asking price was the priciest residential contract inked last week in the county — based on a luxury report compiled by Marcy Roth of Douglas Elliman’s Eklund Gomes team. 

The deal for the nearly 8,500-square-foot home in the leafy enclave officially closed on Friday for its exact list price. Sotheby’s International Realty’s Neyshia Go and Aaron Kirman of Christie’s International Real Estate Southern California held the listing.

All in all, the report tallied 23 signed luxury contracts last week for a total asking volume of $150.3 million. This was down from the week prior which saw $169 million among 19 contracts, but up by about 15 percent compared to the same week last year in terms of contract volume.

Next chapters

Aside from closing deals, brokers did some recent reshuffling.

Luxury condo broker Taaseen Qureshi jumped ship to the Mandarin Oriental Residences in Beverly Hills after spending the last two years heading up sales at the 8899 Beverly condos in West Hollywood. Back in March, one of the Mandarin penthouses traded for $13.3 million, or $3,852 per square foot — which at the time was the highest per square foot condo sale price in the county this year. 

Carolwood Esates nabbed Westside agents, Adriana Yedidsion and Bianca Fields, from The Agency — and the Beverly Hills Estates scooped three brokers from Compass: Tyler Neale, Stephen Apelian and Jessica Pasternak.

Musical mansions

Over in Malibu, the former beach house of Joni Mitchell hit the market at $27 million — its first listing in close to 40 years. 

After a land buy, Mitchell developed the five-bedroom home at 23758 Malibu Road in Malibu Colony in the early 1980s. The “Both Sides, Now” singer sold the property for $2.8 million in 1988 to an unidentified owner who has had the property since. 

Shifting to Calabasas, a 3-acre estate at 5192 Parkway Calabasas — once home to Stevie Wonder — returned to the market with a discounted asking price. Wonder’s ex-wife Kai Milla-Morris, who remained in the home after the divorce, listed the 11,120-square-foot home in spring 2025 for $15 million and is now asking $9.7 million. 

To no surprise, the home features a dedicated piano room.

“Steve, even the incredible musician as he is, he practiced every single day,” Milla-Morris told the Wall Street Journal. “We have several pianos throughout the house that the kids learned on.”

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