Culver City charges its own real property transfer tax on top of the Los Angeles County documentary transfer tax, and the rate depends on the sale price in a way that catches a lot of sellers off guard. Under Measure RE, approved by voters on November 3, 2020, and in effect for sales closing on or after April 1, 2021, Culver City’s tax runs from 0.45% to 4% of the property’s value — a very different number than the flat county-only rate most California sellers expect.

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The County Tax Everyone Pays First

Before Culver City’s own tax even enters the picture, every property sale in Los Angeles County carries the county’s documentary transfer tax: fifty-five cents per $500 of value, which works out to $1.10 per $1,000. This applies whether the property is in Culver City, unincorporated county territory, or any other city that has not adopted its own additional tax. Most Los Angeles County cities stop there — the county rate is the whole bill. Culver City is one of a small number of cities in the county that layers its own tax on top.

Measure RE’s Four Rate Tiers

Measure RE replaced Culver City’s old flat rate of $4.50 per $1,000 with a tiered, marginal-rate structure similar to how income tax brackets work — each tier only applies to the portion of value that falls within it, not the entire sale price. Rounding the sale value down to the next whole dollar, the brackets are:

$1,499,999 or less: 0.45% of the value
$1,500,000 to $2,999,999: $6,750 plus 1.5% of the amount over $1,500,000
$3,000,000 to $9,999,999: $29,249.99 plus 3.0% of the amount over $3,000,000
$10,000,000 and above: $239,249.96 plus 4.0% of the amount over $10,000,000

The tax applies to the value of the property “including the value of any lien or encumbrance” remaining on it at the time of sale — in plain terms, it is calculated on the gross sale price, not on the seller’s net equity after paying off a mortgage. A $1.8 million sale with a $1.2 million mortgage balance still owes Measure RE tax calculated on the full $1.8 million, the same way it would if the property were owned free and clear.

A Worked Example

Say a Culver City single-family home sells for $1,800,000. The first $1,499,999 is taxed at 0.45%, producing roughly $6,750. The remaining $300,001 falls in the second bracket and is taxed at 1.5%, adding about $4,500. The Measure RE portion of the bill comes to roughly $11,250 — before the county’s $1.10-per-$1,000 tax, which adds another $1,980 on the same sale. Combined, the transfer taxes on that transaction run north of $13,000, a figure that surprises sellers who are used to thinking of transfer tax as a rounding error on the closing statement.

A Second Example at a Higher Bracket

The gap between brackets becomes more dramatic as sale prices climb, which is worth seeing in a second example. A $4,200,000 Culver City property sale breaks across three brackets: the first $1,499,999 at 0.45% (about $6,750), the next $1,500,000 at 1.5% (about $22,500), and the remaining $1,200,001 at 3.0% (about $36,000). That totals roughly $65,250 in Measure RE tax alone, before the county’s additional $1.10-per-$1,000 rate adds about $4,620 more — a combined transfer tax bill approaching $70,000 on a transaction that many sellers would otherwise think of primarily in terms of agent commissions and ordinary closing costs. At this level, the transfer tax is no longer a line item to glance at; it is a number worth building into your pricing and net-proceeds expectations from the start of a listing, not discovering on a closing statement near the end.

Why the Brackets Keep Moving

The three dollar thresholds that define the brackets — $1,500,000, $3,000,000, and $10,000,000 — are not permanently fixed. Measure RE built in an adjustment every five years tied to the Consumer Price Index, so the dollar amount that separates the 0.45% tier from the 1.5% tier today will not be the same figure five years from now, even though the percentage rates themselves stay fixed. A seller comparing Culver City’s tax to a figure they read a few years ago should confirm the current bracket thresholds rather than assuming the 2021 numbers still apply, since an inflation adjustment can shift a borderline sale from one bracket into the next.

The Affordable Housing Carve-Out

Measure RE taxes the entire value of a qualifying deed-restricted affordable housing property, and the first transfer of qualifying newly constructed multifamily housing, at the lowest 0.45% rate regardless of sale price — the higher-tier rates simply do not apply to those transactions. This matters for owners of properties with recorded affordable-housing covenants or recent multifamily construction, who should confirm their deed restriction or construction history qualifies before assuming the top brackets apply to them.

How Culver City’s Rate Compares to the City of Los Angeles

Culver City is not the only Los Angeles County city with its own added transfer tax, and the comparison is useful context. The City of Los Angeles adds roughly $4.50 per $1,000 under its base rate, with an additional 4% or 5.5% kicking in above thresholds set under Measure ULA (the “mansion tax,” currently around $5.3 million and $10.6 million as of mid-2025, adjusting again in mid-2026). On a lower-value sale, Los Angeles’s flat-ish base rate can actually be cheaper than Culver City’s 0.45% minimum tier; on a high-value sale, Measure ULA’s top brackets are considerably more aggressive than Measure RE’s 4% ceiling. Sellers who own property in both cities, or who are deciding where to price a listing near a Culver City border, sometimes find it worth running both calculations rather than assuming the two cities tax similarly just because they are adjacent. We’ve broken down how Measure ULA’s thresholds and rates work in the City of Los Angeles if you want the full comparison.

How the Tax Gets Collected

Unlike income tax, there is no separate return to file or payment to mail weeks after closing. The Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk collects both the county’s documentary transfer tax and Culver City’s Measure RE tax at the moment the deed is recorded, as part of the recording process escrow handles. The deed itself carries a declaration stating the amount of transfer tax due and the value it was calculated on, and recording will not go through without that tax being paid. In practice this means the tax is baked into your closing statement and settled out of escrow funds before the sale is officially complete — there is no separate bill arriving afterward, and no realistic way to record the transfer without the county receiving payment for both taxes simultaneously.

This also means the numbers on your preliminary closing statement from escrow are worth checking closely if you are near a bracket boundary. Escrow and title companies calculate these taxes routinely and generally get them right, but an error in the stated sale value — for instance, failing to separate out personal property included in the sale, which is not supposed to be taxed as real property value — can push a transaction into a higher bracket than it should sit in. Ask your escrow officer to show you the breakdown rather than only the total due.

Does It Apply the Same Way to Every Property Type?

Measure RE’s language covers the transfer of real property generally, which includes single-family homes, condominiums, multifamily buildings, and commercial property within Culver City limits. The tiered rate structure applies regardless of whether the property is residential or commercial — a $4 million apartment building and a $4 million single-family home fall into the same 3.0% bracket on the portion of value above $3 million. Where property type matters more is in the exemptions: the affordable-housing carve-out is specifically tied to deed-restricted affordable housing and newly constructed qualifying multifamily housing, not to residential property generally, so an ordinary market-rate multifamily building does not get the reduced rate just because it has multiple units.

Vacant land and partial-interest transfers (a deed adding or removing a co-owner, for instance) can raise their own questions about what value the tax is calculated against, since there may be no arm’s-length sale price to anchor the calculation. These situations are exactly where talking to your title company or a real estate attorney before recording, rather than after, saves a dispute over the declared value.

Common Mistakes Sellers Make With This Tax

A few patterns show up often enough in Culver City transactions to call out specifically. The first is assuming the old flat $4.50-per-$1,000 rate still applies because that is what a seller remembers from before 2021 — Measure RE replaced that rate entirely, and anyone running old numbers will understate their tax exposure, sometimes significantly, on a higher-value sale.

The second is confusing Culver City’s tax with the City of Los Angeles’s Measure ULA, especially for properties near the border between the two cities or for sellers who read about one while researching the other. They are separate ordinances, in separate cities, with different bracket structures, and a property’s address determines which one (if either) applies — there is no scenario where both cities’ added taxes apply to the same sale, since a property sits within one city’s limits or the other, or within unincorporated county territory subject to neither.

The third is overlooking the gross-value calculation when estimating net proceeds. Sellers who are highly leveraged — a large mortgage balance relative to sale price — sometimes mentally calculate “my tax rate” against their equity rather than against the full transaction value, which understates what they will actually owe by a meaningful margin on a thin-equity sale.

Who Actually Pays This at Closing

California law does not dictate which party pays a documentary or local transfer tax — it is a matter of local custom and whatever the purchase contract says. In most Los Angeles County transactions, including Culver City, local custom has the seller paying both the county and any city transfer tax out of sale proceeds, and most standard purchase agreements default to that allocation unless negotiated otherwise. It is worth confirming this explicitly in your contract rather than assuming it, since a buyer’s agent unfamiliar with Culver City’s added tax can sometimes draft an offer as if only the county rate applies.

When a Cash Sale Doesn’t Make This Go Away

It is worth being direct about something a lot of cash-buyer marketing glosses over: Measure RE applies to the transfer of the property regardless of who the buyer is or how the sale is structured. Selling to an investor, a wholesaler, or a traditional buyer does not exempt the transaction from Culver City’s transfer tax — the tax attaches to the recorded transfer itself, not to the type of buyer. The only paths around it are the narrow statutory exemptions (certain transfers between spouses, into a revocable trust, or similar changes that are not treated as a sale) and the affordable-housing carve-out described above. If you are selling specifically to avoid a large transfer tax bill, structuring around the sale itself — timing it relative to a bracket adjustment, or confirming whether a transfer genuinely qualifies for an exemption — matters more than who buys the house.

When you sell to us, we pay the standard closing costs, including the county and city transfer taxes, escrow and title, which is different from the usual arrangement in a traditional listed sale where that cost is typically subtracted from the seller’s proceeds.

When Selling Makes Sense Despite the Tax, and When It Doesn’t

For most Culver City sellers, Measure RE is a real but manageable cost — a five- or low-six-figure line item on a transaction that still nets a substantial amount, especially given how much Culver City property values have appreciated. It rarely makes sense to avoid selling altogether just because of the transfer tax. Where it matters more is at the margins: a sale priced just over a bracket threshold, where a small price adjustment either way changes which marginal rate applies to the top slice of value, or a sale of a property with a thin equity position, where the gross-value calculation (remember, liens are not subtracted) takes a larger relative bite out of what the seller actually walks away with. In those situations, running the exact numbers before setting a list price, rather than after an offer is already on the table, is worth the extra hour.

It is also worth separating the transfer tax from the decision of whether to sell at all. Some sellers, on seeing a five-figure or six-figure transfer tax number for the first time, start wondering whether holding the property instead is the better move. That is a separate question from the tax itself — Measure RE is a cost of transferring the property, not a cost of owning it, and it has no bearing on your property tax bill, your insurance, or any other ongoing carrying cost. The right way to weigh it is simply as one more number in your net-proceeds calculation alongside your mortgage payoff, agent commission if you list traditionally, and ordinary closing costs — not as a reason on its own to delay a sale that otherwise makes sense for you.

First Steps Before You List in Culver City

Get the property’s current estimated value and run it through the four Measure RE brackets to estimate your city transfer tax exposure.
Add the county’s $1.10-per-$1,000 rate on top — it applies regardless of the city tax.
Confirm which year’s CPI-adjusted bracket thresholds currently apply rather than relying on the original 2021 figures.
Check your purchase contract’s allocation of who pays the transfer tax rather than assuming seller-pays by default.
If your property carries an affordable housing deed restriction, confirm it before assuming the higher brackets apply.

For more on how California’s capital gains rules interact with a sale like this, see our breakdown of the capital gains tax exclusion when selling your California home, and if you’re weighing whether to sell or hold a Culver City rental, our guide to the 1031 exchange on a California rental property covers the deferral option.

If you’d rather skip the guesswork and get a straight number, Cash Home Buyers CA can give you a no-obligation cash offer on your Culver City home, as-is, with the transfer tax math already accounted for in what you’d actually net.

What Culver City’s Measure RE Transfer Tax Actually Costs at Closing