Does Measure ULA Hit a South Bay Property Sale?

Published August 10, 2026

Measure ULA is a City of Los Angeles tax and applies only inside LA city limits. El Segundo, Manhattan Beach, Hermosa Beach, Redondo Beach, Torrance, and Hawthorne are independent cities outside that boundary. Nearby LA neighborhoods like San Pedro and Wilmington are inside it.

The short answer

No, not if the property sits in one of Schofield's coverage cities. Measure ULA, formally the Homelessness and Housing Solutions Tax, is a City of Los Angeles ordinance and applies only to sales of property located inside the City of Los Angeles's own boundary. El Segundo, Manhattan Beach, Hermosa Beach, Redondo Beach, Torrance, and Hawthorne are all separately incorporated cities outside that boundary, so a sale there never triggers Measure ULA. Nearby LA neighborhoods like San Pedro and Wilmington are a different story.

Last verified: August 10, 2026

ULA is a city tax, not a county or state tax

Measure ULA was approved by City of Los Angeles voters in November 2022 and began applying to property sales on April 1, 2023. It is layered on top of the City of Los Angeles's own existing documentary transfer tax, which is itself layered on top of the Los Angeles County documentary transfer tax that applies countywide under Revenue and Taxation Code section 11911. All three of those taxes, county, city base rate, and ULA, apply only to a deed that conveys property physically located within the taxing jurisdiction. For ULA, that jurisdiction is the City of Los Angeles, and nowhere else.

This matters because "Los Angeles" gets used loosely in everyday speech to mean the whole metro area, the county, or even Southern California generally. For a tax question, it means one specific municipal boundary, and none of the South Bay's independently incorporated cities fall inside it.

Every South Bay coverage city is its own incorporated city, outside LA's boundary

El Segundo, Manhattan Beach, Hermosa Beach, Redondo Beach, Torrance, and Hawthorne each has its own city government, city council, and city limits. None of them is a neighborhood or district of the City of Los Angeles, and none of them is subject to a City of Los Angeles ordinance like Measure ULA. A sale in any of these six cities owes the Los Angeles County documentary transfer tax under Revenue and Taxation Code section 11911, and in Redondo Beach's case that city's own added transfer tax, but never the Los Angeles city rate and never the ULA surtax.

This is confirmed by how the Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder itself administers the tax: its rate schedule lists "Los Angeles" as its own line item, with the current rate reflecting the base city tax plus the ULA tiers, entirely separate from the rates listed for Redondo Beach or any other city. If a property isn't recorded under Los Angeles's own city code on that schedule, ULA was never in play for that transaction.

The places nearby that are actually inside the City of Los Angeles

The boundary gets genuinely confusing near the harbor, because several communities that read as "South Bay adjacent" on a map are, legally, part of the City of Los Angeles rather than independent cities. San Pedro, Wilmington, and Harbor City are Los Angeles neighborhoods, not separate municipalities. They connect to the rest of the city through Harbor Gateway, a narrow corridor annexed into Los Angeles in 1906 specifically to link the harbor communities to the main body of the city. Harbor Gateway itself is flanked by the independent cities of Torrance and Gardena on its west side and Carson on its east side, which is part of why the boundary is easy to misjudge from a map alone: an owner can cross from Gardena into Los Angeles's Harbor Gateway strip and back into Carson within a few blocks, with the tax treatment changing at each line.

A sale of property in San Pedro, Wilmington, Harbor City, or Harbor Gateway is a sale inside the City of Los Angeles, and Measure ULA applies on the same terms as a sale in Hollywood or Westwood. A sale in Torrance, Gardena, or Carson does not trigger it, because those are independent cities that border but are not part of Los Angeles.

Why this boundary question matters more than the rate itself

Measure ULA's rate only applies above a high-dollar threshold, so most single family and small multifamily sales anywhere never reach it regardless of location. But the jurisdictional question is binary and matters at every price point, because it determines whether ULA is even a live possibility for a given address. An owner selling a $6 million apartment building needs to know immediately whether the property is inside LA city limits, since that answer alone decides whether a multi-hundred-thousand-dollar tax is on the table. An owner selling a $700,000 duplex in Torrance can rule ULA out entirely and move on, since the threshold is far above any realistic sale price there, but confirming that the property is outside LA's boundary is still worth doing before assuming anything about a total tax bill.

FAQ

Is Torrance, Gardena, or Carson part of the City of Los Angeles?

No. All three are independently incorporated cities with their own governments. Only the specific communities of San Pedro, Wilmington, Harbor City, and the Harbor Gateway corridor are part of the City of Los Angeles in that part of the county.

My property has a Los Angeles mailing address but I think it's in an unincorporated area or a different city. How do I check?

A mailing address alone doesn't establish municipal jurisdiction, since USPS ZIP codes and city boundaries don't always match. Your county assessor parcel record and your title company can confirm the actual incorporated city or unincorporated county status for a specific parcel.

Does Measure ULA apply to unincorporated Los Angeles County areas, like parts of Lennox or West Carson?

No. ULA is a City of Los Angeles ordinance and does not extend to unincorporated county territory, which is governed directly by Los Angeles County rather than any city.

If my property is just outside LA city limits, do I still owe the Los Angeles County documentary transfer tax?

Yes. The Los Angeles County tax under Revenue and Taxation Code section 11911 applies to every recorded sale anywhere in the county, regardless of which city the property is in. Only the additional city-level ULA and base LA city tax are limited to property inside Los Angeles city limits.

Is there a South Bay equivalent to Measure ULA that I should watch for?

Nothing comparable is currently in effect in El Segundo, Manhattan Beach, Hermosa Beach, Redondo Beach, Torrance, or Hawthorne as of this writing. Any future ballot measure in one of those cities would need its own voter approval and would not automatically mirror Los Angeles's ordinance.

This is general information, not tax advice. Confirm the exact municipal jurisdiction of your property and its transfer tax exposure with a CPA or your title officer before you list.

Topics: taxes, Measure ULA, documentary transfer tax, South Bay

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