The Boundary Line Beverly Hills Buyers Don't See Until Escrow

Anthony Davis closed on the sale of his Bel Air mansion this July for $32 million. He'd bought the place in 2021 for $31 million, so on paper it looks like a wash with a small profit. It isn't. The 17,000-square-foot estate on Stratford Circle sits inside Los Angeles city limits, which means the sale crossed into Measure ULA's top tier, the 5.5 percent transfer tax that applies once a deal clears $10.9 million. That tax bill ran close to $1.8 million. Factor it in against what Davis originally paid, and he walked away with less money than he put in five years ago, even though the sale price went up.

Nothing about that outcome shows up on a listing sheet. The house didn't lose value. The market didn't turn against him. He simply sold on the wrong side of a line that most buyers never think to check, because the line has nothing to do with the neighborhood's name, its zip code, or how the property looks from the street. It has to do with which city government has authority over the parcel of dirt underneath it.

The Zip Code Isn't the Jurisdiction

Beverly Hills is its own incorporated city. It has run its own police and fire departments since 1914, and because it's a separate municipality, it has no exposure to a City of Los Angeles tax. Measure ULA, the transfer tax voters approved in November 2022, only reaches property inside LA city limits. Beverly Hills proper, meaning the Flats, Trousdale Estates, and the Beverly Hills Gateway near the hotel, sits entirely outside that boundary. None of it is subject to ULA. That's not a workaround or a loophole. It's a straightforward consequence of Beverly Hills never having been part of Los Angeles in the first place.

The confusion starts with the hills just north of the city. The area known as Beverly Hills Post Office, or BHPO, stretches from a few blocks above Sunset Boulevard up to Mulholland Drive, bordered by Beverly Glen Boulevard on the west and Coldwater Canyon Drive on the east. It shares the 90210 zip code with Beverly Hills, because the US Postal Service assigned that code to both areas back in 1963. But BHPO was never annexed into the city. It's part of Los Angeles. A property there can carry a "Beverly Hills, CA 90210" mailing address and still be fully exposed to a Los Angeles city tax that a home three blocks south, inside the actual city, will never see.

Bel Air and Holmby Hills sit in the same position. Both are Los Angeles neighborhoods, not independent cities, so both are fully inside ULA's reach regardless of how the address reads or how the properties compare in price and prestige to their Beverly Hills counterparts.

What the Line Actually Costs at Closing

Run the numbers on a $10 million sale and the gap stops being theoretical. A property inside Los Angeles city limits currently owes three separate transfer charges at closing: the LA County documentary transfer tax at 0.11 percent, the city's own base transfer tax at 0.45 percent, and Measure ULA itself. At $10 million, that sale falls into ULA's 4 percent tier, which as of this summer applies to transactions between $5.4 million and $10.9 million following the tax's annual inflation adjustment on July 1. Add it up and the seller owes roughly $456,000 in combined transfer taxes.

The identical $10 million sale inside Beverly Hills owes only the county's 0.11 percent, or about $11,000. Same price. Same size of check written at the closing table. A $445,000 difference that has nothing to do with the house.

Measure ULA is a gross-receipts tax, not a marginal one. Cross the $10.9 million line by a single dollar and you don't pay 5.5 percent on that extra dollar. You pay 5.5 percent on the entire sale price.

That structure is what makes the tax genuinely dangerous to misprice around, and it's also why the boundary matters more than most cross-shopping buyers realize. A seller in BHPO, Bel Air, or Holmby Hills has real financial reasons to land a listing just under a threshold rather than just above it, because the entire sale price shifts brackets at once. A seller in Beverly Hills never has to think about that math at all.

Why the Median Beverly Hills Price Sits Right on the Line

Here's the detail that makes this more than a curiosity for $20 million estates. As of May 2026, the median sold price for a single-family home in Beverly Hills was roughly $5.62 million, according to CRMLS transaction data. That number sits almost exactly on Measure ULA's lower threshold of $5.4 million.

In other words, the typical Beverly Hills home, the one right in the middle of the market rather than a Trousdale trophy or a teardown, is priced at a level that would trigger the tax the instant it crossed into LA jurisdiction. It doesn't, because it's inside a city boundary that predates the tax by more than a century. That's not a coincidence buyers should read as reassurance about value. It's a reminder that "median price" numbers pulled from portal searches mean something different depending on which side of Sunset Boulevard the search box is drawing from.

The broader market has felt this split for three years now. Transaction volume above $5 million in LA-jurisdiction neighborhoods including Bel Air, Holmby Hills, and Brentwood has dropped by roughly 38 percent since the tax took effect in April 2023, and UCLA researchers have found the odds of any Los Angeles property selling above $5 million fell by as much as 55 percent over the same period. Beverly Hills hasn't experienced that same drag, because it was never subject to the mechanism causing it.

What This Means If You're Comparing Two Listings Across the Line

• A Beverly Hills asking price and a BHPO or Bel Air asking price at the same number are not the same net cost. Run the seller's side of the math before comparing them as equivalents.
• Ask which jurisdiction controls the parcel, not which zip code the listing uses. A 90210 address tells you nothing about tax exposure.
• If you're the seller, remember the threshold resets every July 1 for inflation. A price that cleared the line comfortably last year may sit closer to it this year.
• The statewide fight over Measure ULA is not settled. A Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association-backed initiative aimed at capping local transfer taxes was still alive as of early 2026, even after the LA City Council declined to rewrite the measure itself in January. Anyone pricing a multi-year hold in an LA-jurisdiction neighborhood should treat the current rules as durable for now, not permanent.

A Few Questions Worth Asking Before You Write an Offer

Does the 90210 zip code mean a property is exempt from Measure ULA? No. Zip codes are a postal designation. Tax exposure depends on which city government has jurisdiction over the address, and BHPO, despite sharing 90210 with Beverly Hills, is part of Los Angeles.

Who actually pays the tax at closing? The seller, in nearly every transaction. It's collected through escrow on the gross sale price, not the profit, so a seller who bought the property years ago for far less still owes tax on the full current sale amount.

Does the threshold ever change? Yes. It adjusts every July 1 based on the Chained Consumer Price Index. The current tiers, in effect since July 1, 2026, are $5.4 million and $10.9 million.

The line between a Beverly Hills address and an LA-jurisdiction one doesn't show up in a listing photo or a walk-through. It shows up in escrow, on the settlement statement, in a number that can run into six figures depending entirely on which side of Sunset Boulevard the deed is recorded. If you're comparing homes across that boundary, that number belongs in the conversation from the first showing, not the closing table.

High-End Estates works these blocks street by street, from the Beverly Hills Flats up through BHPO, Bel Air, and Holmby Hills, and can walk you through exactly how a specific address is likely to be taxed before you make an offer. Request Private Access — call or WhatsApp Rajaa for a confidential consultation.