While the county documentary transfer tax is $1.10 per $1,000 of the sale price on home sales in Los Angeles County, Redondo Beach is one of only five cities in the county that charges the tax in addition to the county’s rate.

The combined rate is $3.30 per $1,000, and can add up quickly. Many people selling homes in Redondo Beach don’t take the difference into account when filling out closing cost calculators, and assume the county rate is the case everywhere.

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The Two Layers Every Redondo Beach Seller Pays

Los Angeles County’s base documentary transfer tax, under the county’s own current schedule, is $0.55 for every $500 of consideration — which works out to $1.10 per $1,000 of the sale price — and it applies to essentially every property sale recorded anywhere in the county.

On top of that, the Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk’s own current transfer-tax bulletin lists “special rates” that apply to exactly five cities: Culver City, Los Angeles, Pomona, Redondo Beach and Santa Monica.

For a sale inside any of those five cities, the Recorder’s office calculates the county’s own $1.10-per-$1,000 portion at the full rate — it is not reduced or waived just because the city is also charging its own tax — and then adds the city’s separate rate on top.

For Redondo Beach, city code 59 on the county’s schedule, that added city rate is $2.20 per $1,000 of consideration, bringing the combined county-plus-city transfer tax on a Redondo Beach sale to $3.30 per $1,000.

Why Only Five LA County Cities Have Their Own Added Tax

Most of the roughly 88 cities in Los Angeles County never adopted their own documentary transfer tax, so a sale there is taxed at only the county’s $1.10 per $1,000.

Culver City, Los Angeles, Pomona, Redondo Beach and Santa Monica are the exceptions, each having adopted its own city-level transfer tax ordinance at some point, and each structured differently. Pomona’s rate happens to match Redondo Beach’s exactly, at $2.20 per $1,000.

The city of Los Angeles charges a flat $2.25 per $500 ($4.50 per $1,000) plus an additional supplemental rate under Measure ULA on sales above roughly $5.3 million, rising to 5.5% on sales above roughly $10.6 million, with the exact thresholds adjusting annually and a new set of thresholds taking effect July 1, 2026.

Culver City and Santa Monica both use tiered, percentage-based rates that climb sharply at multi-million-dollar price points under their own separate measures. None of that applies to Redondo Beach, where the rate is flat regardless of sale price: $2.20 per $1,000 whether the house sells for $700,000 or $7 million.

What $3.30 Per $1,000 Actually Costs on a Real Sale

On a Redondo Beach house that sells for $1,200,000, the combined transfer tax works out to $3,960 — $1,320 from the county’s $1.10-per-$1,000 portion and $2,640 from the city’s $2.20-per-$1,000 portion. On a more typical Redondo Beach condo or smaller single-family home selling around $900,000, the combined tax comes to $2,970.

Compare that to an identical sale happening a few miles away in an unincorporated part of the county or in a city with no added transfer tax, where the same $900,000 sale would owe only $990 in county transfer tax — roughly a third of what a Redondo Beach seller pays for the identical sale price.

That gap is entirely the result of Redondo Beach’s own city ordinance, not anything about the county’s general rules, and it is the kind of number a seller should confirm directly rather than estimate from a generic online calculator built around the countywide rate.

Who Actually Pays It in a Regular Sale

By local custom in Los Angeles County, the seller typically pays the documentary transfer tax in a conventional, agent-listed sale, though this is a matter of custom and contract rather than a flat legal requirement — the purchase agreement can allocate it differently if both parties agree.

In practice, buyers rarely agree to absorb it, so sellers should plan on the combined $3.30-per-$1,000 figure coming out of their proceeds at closing in a typical Redondo Beach transaction, in addition to the county’s base rate, agent commissions, escrow and title fees, and any outstanding liens that need to be cleared before the deed can record.

How the Recorder Actually Collects It

The combined transfer tax is collected at the time the deed is recorded with the Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk, and the amount is calculated directly off the Preliminary Change of Ownership Report and the stated sale price on the deed itself — the escrow or title company handling the closing calculates both the county and city portions and remits them together as part of recording the transfer, rather than Redondo Beach billing the seller separately after the fact.

Because the Recorder’s office lists Redondo Beach under its own city code (59) on the special-rate schedule, an escrow officer unfamiliar with Redondo Beach specifically can sometimes apply only the countywide rate by mistake, which shows up as a shortfall the Recorder’s office will flag before the deed is allowed to record — delaying closing until the correct combined amount is paid.

Exemptions That Can Reduce or Eliminate the Tax

The combined county-and-city rate applies by default, but California’s Documentary Transfer Tax Act, Revenue and Taxation Code §§11911 through 11930, carves out specific transfers that pay none of it, or pay it on a reduced basis, and the same statewide exemption list applies whether the Recorder is calculating Redondo Beach’s rate or the plain countywide rate elsewhere.

A bona fide gift with no consideration is exempt under §11911, as is a transfer where the outstanding liens already equal or exceed the property’s value — the “liened to full value” exemption.

A transfer between spouses caused by or made in anticipation of a divorce is exempt under §11927.

A trustee’s deed on a foreclosure sale or a deed in lieu of foreclosure is exempt specifically on the lien portion of the value under §11926, though that exemption statement notes it does not include any equity value above the lien — so a foreclosure sale with real equity above what was owed can still owe transfer tax on that excess.

Transfers into or out of a trust, and transfers made as an inter vivos gift or by reason of death where the interest passes outright, are exempt under §11930.

None of these exemptions are automatic: the specific statutory wording has to be written on the deed itself at the time it is recorded, and the Recorder can require additional verification before accepting the claimed exemption.

A Probate, Divorce or Trust Sale Still Usually Owes the Full Tax

Selling a Redondo Beach house through probate, as part of a divorce, or out of a trust does not automatically avoid the combined $3.30-per-$1,000 rate.

The §11927 exemption only covers a transfer between the spouses themselves caused by or made in anticipation of their divorce — it does not extend to a later sale of that same house to an outside buyer, which still owes the full tax on the sale price like any other transaction.

The §11930 trust exemption covers moving title into or out of a trust, not a trustee then selling the house to a third party for cash, which is a taxable sale in the same way an individual owner’s sale would be.

A personal representative selling a house out of a probate estate is simply selling real property, taxed the same as any other sale unless one of the specific statutory exemptions actually applies to that transaction.

The exemptions are narrow by design, and assuming one applies without the Recorder actually accepting the claimed exemption language on the deed is a common way a closing gets delayed at the last step.

A City Shaped by Its Harbor, Not Just Its Tax Rate

Redondo Beach incorporated on April 29, 1892, and had grown to a population of 71,576 as of the 2020 census, up from 66,748 in 2010.

The city’s identity has long been tied to King Harbor and the Municipal Pier rather than to the aerospace and manufacturing base that shaped some of its South Bay neighbors, and its housing stock spans everything from older beach bungalows near the water to newer hillside construction further from the coast.

None of that changes how the transfer tax is calculated — it is a flat $2.20 per $1,000 regardless of which part of the city a house sits in — but it does mean Redondo Beach sale prices, and therefore the dollar amount of the transfer tax itself, can vary enormously between a small inland condo and a larger view property near the harbor, even though the rate applied to each is identical.

A Flat Rate Has One Advantage Over Tiered City Taxes

Because Redondo Beach charges a flat $2.20 per $1,000 regardless of price, a seller does not have to worry about crossing a threshold into a higher tier the way a Los Angeles city seller has to watch the Measure ULA thresholds, or a Culver City or Santa Monica seller has to watch their own percentage brackets.

The transfer tax on a Redondo Beach sale scales in a straight line with the sale price, which makes it one of the easier city-level transfer taxes in the county to estimate in advance — the harder part is simply knowing that it exists at all, since a seller moving from a city with no added tax, or comparing notes with a friend who sold in a city without one, can easily be caught off guard by an extra several thousand dollars at the closing table.

What Counts as the Taxable Amount

In most ordinary Redondo Beach sales, the taxable amount is simply the full contract sale price — the tax is not reduced just because part of the proceeds goes toward paying off an existing mortgage at closing.

Sellers sometimes assume that only their net equity, or only the amount above what they owed the bank, gets taxed, which is generally not how the Documentary Transfer Tax Act works outside the specific exemptions listed above.

Escrow typically calculates the transfer tax directly from the sale price stated in the purchase agreement and the deed, collects it as part of the seller’s closing costs, and remits the combined county-and-city amount to the Recorder when the deed is submitted for recording — there is no separate bill or invoice that shows up later, and no way to record the deed without the tax being paid or a valid exemption being claimed on the document itself.

How Redondo Beach Stacks Up Against Its Special-Rate Neighbors

Of the five Los Angeles County cities with their own added transfer tax, Redondo Beach and Pomona are the only two with a simple flat rate. The other three all scale with price in ways that can cost far more on an expensive sale.

We’ve broken down what Los Angeles sellers actually pay above $5.4 million under Measure ULA, and separately the base city of Los Angeles rate that applies with or without that supplemental tax.

Santa Monica’s own tiered system works similarly — see what every Santa Monica seller actually pays under Measure GS — and Culver City runs a comparable percentage structure of its own.

A Redondo Beach seller never has to think about crossing into a higher bracket the way sellers in those three cities do, which is one of the only upsides to having a city-level transfer tax at all.

Transfer Tax Is a Closing Cost, Not a Capital Gain

It’s worth keeping the documentary transfer tax separate in your head from any capital gains tax that might be owed on the sale itself.

The transfer tax is charged on the transaction regardless of whether the sale produced a taxable gain, while capital gains tax depends on the seller’s basis in the property and whether the federal and state home-sale exclusions apply.

We’ve covered the capital gains tax exclusion available when you sell your California home separately, and the two costs should be budgeted side by side rather than confused for each other — a seller who owes no capital gains tax at all under the exclusion still owes the full $3.30-per-$1,000 transfer tax on a Redondo Beach sale, and a seller who does owe capital gains tax does not get any credit against it for the transfer tax paid at closing.

One more detail worth checking before signing anything: the Recorder’s special-rate schedule is tied to the city limits as recorded, not to the mailing address on the listing.

A property with a Redondo Beach mailing address that actually sits in an unincorporated pocket of the county, or just across a boundary line in a neighboring city, would not owe Redondo Beach’s added rate at all — and the reverse mistake, assuming a property inside the city limits is exempt because of its mailing quirks, is just as easy to make without confirming jurisdiction directly with the title company before closing.

Before You List

Confirm the sale price and run the math at $3.30 per $1,000 — not the $1.10 countywide rate alone — to budget accurately for closing
Ask your escrow or title company to confirm they are applying Los Angeles County’s special city rate (code 59) for Redondo Beach specifically
Factor the transfer tax in alongside any outstanding liens, agent commissions, and repair costs when estimating real net proceeds
Get the sale price and transfer-tax math in writing before signing a listing agreement or accepting an offer

As mentioned before, there aren’t really reasons to avoid selling in Redondo Beach. The combined rate is just one additional factor that sellers must take into account along with agent commissions, title fees, escrow fees, and the condition of the home that comes up during a buyer’s inspection.

Sellers can get an estimated closing statement with the combined rate beforehand by requesting it from their escrow or title company. Knowing the combined rate gives the seller an idea of what their actual net proceeds will be at closing.

If you’d rather know your actual net proceeds up front instead of discovering the combined transfer tax at the closing table, Cash Home Buyers CA can make a no-obligation cash offer on a Redondo Beach house and we pay the standard closing costs, including the county and city transfer taxes, escrow and title.

We buy directly from homeowners across Redondo Beach, and you can find us on our Google Business Profile to see how we work before you reach out.

Redondo Beach’s Own Transfer Tax: What a Seller Pays on Top of the County