The house at 4322 Hayvenhurst Avenue first came to market in June 2024 at nearly $12 million. In April 2026 it sold for about $6.8 million, slightly more than the $6.6 million the seller paid for it in 2020. Encino is inside the City of Los Angeles, so the sale owed the Measure ULA transfer tax, and The Real Deal reported that the 4% charge came to $273,400. That tax was larger than the roughly $200,000 gap between the 2020 purchase price and the 2026 sale price.
To compare Encino with its neighbors, you have to know how that tax works. ULA doesn't rise gradually as prices go up. It switches on at a specific dollar figure and applies to the whole price. That one line affects Encino list prices, sale prices and owners' decisions about whether to sell at all. A few miles west in Calabasas, the line doesn't exist.
One dollar over the line costs about $216,000
The Los Angeles Office of Finance sets the current schedule. For transactions closing after June 30, 2026, a sale above $5,400,000 and below $10,900,000 pays a 4% ULA tax. A sale at $10,900,000 or more pays 5.5%. Both sit on top of the city's base transfer tax of 0.45%, so the combined city rates are 4.45% and 5.95%. The Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder adds its own documentary transfer tax of $1.10 per $1,000 on top of the city's charges.
The ULA rate applies to the full price, not just the part above the threshold. A sale at exactly $5.4 million owes no ULA. A sale at $5,400,001 owes 4% of everything, about $216,000. The table below runs the transfer taxes alone at several prices near the line. It leaves out commissions, escrow and every other closing cost, and it assumes the seller pays the transfer taxes.
| Sale price | Encino: city base + ULA + county | Encino: proceeds after transfer taxes | Calabasas: county only | Calabasas: proceeds after transfer taxes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| $5,400,000 | $30,240 | $5,369,760 | $5,940 | $5,394,060 |
| $5,500,000 | $250,800 | $5,249,200 | $6,050 | $5,493,950 |
| $5,600,000 | $255,360 | $5,344,640 | $6,160 | $5,593,840 |
| $5,700,000 | $259,920 | $5,440,080 | $6,270 | $5,693,730 |
In Encino, a $5.5 million sale leaves the seller about $120,000 less than a $5.4 million sale. The price has to reach roughly $5.63 million before proceeds after transfer taxes get back to what a sale at the line produces. Every price between $5.4 million and about $5.63 million is worse for the seller than the threshold itself. In Calabasas, a higher price always leaves the seller with more.
Buyers don't pay more to cover the seller's tax
If buyers raised their offers to cover the tax, the gap would close. According to The Real Deal's July 2026 reporting, agents working Sherman Oaks, Studio City and Calabasas say they don't. One Valley agent told the outlet that ULA comes up in nearly every serious conversation about timing, pricing and renovation, and that buyers generally don't assign extra value to a home just because its seller owes a large ULA bill.
Research on the full city shows how prices have responded. A July 2025 UCLA Anderson working paper by Yingru Pan found significant responses in prices sold below the tax threshold and in the number of units sold. It describes ULA as a "notched tax scheme." Using 2020 to 2024 transactions, the UCLA Lewis Center estimated in April 2025 that ULA cut the odds of a Los Angeles sale landing above the threshold by about 50% in the tax's first 20 months.
Encino sales on both sides of the line in 2026
Recent Encino sales and listings fall into all three tiers.
- 4626 Encino Avenue, Rancho Estates. The roughly 11,400-square-foot house was custom-built in 1989 for Tom Petty. It was listed in May 2026 at $6.5 million, and The Real Deal reported in September that it sold for $5.4 million. That is the exact figure the city's current schedule uses as the line.
- 4322 Hayvenhurst Avenue. This sale closed in the 4% tier in April 2026 for about $6.8 million and owed $273,400 in ULA. To come out ahead of a sale at the line, a seller in the 4% tier has to clear the dead zone by a wide margin.
- 4525 Woodley Avenue. It sold for $16.4 million in January 2026 and was Encino's highest-priced residential sale of the year as of mid-April, according to The Real Deal. At the 5.5% rate, ULA on a price that size works out to about $900,000.
- 3904 Valley Meadow Road, Royal Oaks. The current owners bought it in 2024 for $17.1 million. In November 2026 it was listed at just under $18 million, The Real Deal reported. At the asking price, the 5.5% tier works out to nearly $1 million in ULA. That is more than the roughly $900,000 gap between the 2024 purchase price and the asking price.
The Hayvenhurst sale and the Valley Meadow listing follow the same arithmetic. On a home that hasn't gained much value since its last purchase, ULA alone can be larger than the gain.
Some owners remodel instead of selling
If selling above the line costs this much, some owners skip selling. Oren Levy of Gesh Group, a luxury builder and remodeler, told The Real Deal that before ULA his firm's projects were about 80% new development and 20% remodels. Now they are about 60% remodels and 40% new builds. Many of those remodels, which typically run $1 million to $6 million on homes that would sell above the threshold, are in Sherman Oaks, Encino, Bel Air and Brentwood. In one Brentwood case he described, the tax plus commissions would have taken about 11% of the sale proceeds, so the owners put that money into their existing house.
The same article cites ATTOM data showing a 46% increase in single-family remodel permits for high-priced homes in the City of Los Angeles. The comparison was between 2018–2019 and the two years after ULA took effect, and mid-priced homes showed no statistically significant change. Pan's paper reaches the same conclusion: luxury owners increasingly chose to remodel rather than sell.
For a buyer comparing Encino with Calabasas, this affects supply. An Encino house that might have been listed at $6 million could be getting a full renovation instead. An Encino listing that does come up in that range has a seller who already weighed the tax and decided to sell anyway.
Calabasas has only the county rate
The County Recorder's list of cities that charge their own transfer tax rates has five names: Culver City, Los Angeles, Pomona, Redondo Beach and Santa Monica. Calabasas isn't one of them. A sale there pays the county's $1.10 per $1,000 and no city charge at any price. On a $6 million sale, that's $6,600. The same price in Encino carries $267,000 in city transfer tax, plus the same county charge.
So an Encino price and a Calabasas price aren't directly comparable above $5.4 million. Two homes listed at the same figure on either side of the city limit leave their sellers with very different amounts, and that difference affects how much room each seller has to negotiate. Below the line, the two areas differ by the 0.45% city base tax.
The line moves every July
ULA thresholds are adjusted every year based on the chained consumer price index, The Real Deal noted. The county's schedule shows the change. From July 1, 2025, the 4% tier started above $5.3 million and the 5.5% tier at $10.6 million. Since July 1, 2026, those figures have been $5.4 million and $10.9 million. The closing date determines which line applies. A sale that crosses from one fiscal year into the next can end up on a different side of the threshold.
The November 2026 ballot didn't change this for Encino. Measure TE, a five-year ULA exemption for Pacific Palisades homeowners affected by the 2025 fire, was leading with 62.3% of the vote in returns reported November 6. Its relief is limited to those Palisades owners. Statewide, Proposition 43 would have raised the vote needed for future voter-initiated local special taxes and wouldn't have repealed existing ones. In CalMatters' preliminary count, it was trailing 56.8% to 43.2%. As of January 8, 2026, the tax had raised more than $1 billion from 1,435 transactions citywide, The Real Deal reported.
Quick answers
Does ULA apply only to the amount above $5.4 million? No. The Office of Finance applies the 4% or 5.5% rate to the full value conveyed once a sale crosses the threshold.
Is Encino taxed differently from other Valley neighborhoods in the city? No. ULA applies to every sale within City of Los Angeles limits, including Sherman Oaks and Studio City.
Does the tax affect smaller properties? Yes, indirectly. One contractor told The Real Deal that multifamily owners sometimes add fewer ADUs than state law allows so the building's value stays below the threshold.
This post is general information, not legal, tax or financial advice. The tax on any particular sale depends on its own facts, so confirm yours with a tax professional or escrow officer before setting a price.
If you own an Encino home that could sell near $5.4 million, the list price and the proceeds you keep can be far apart. Angela Waters can help you work out where your home falls relative to the line and compare a traditional listing with an auction. Schedule a Free Consultation to go through your numbers.
