L.A.’s ‘Mansion Tax’ Reaches $1B in Revenue in Under Three Years

After nearly three years, and myriad growing pains, Los Angeles’ Measure ULA transfer tax has surpassed the $1 billion mark.

Often called L.A.’s “mansion tax” — a misnomer carried over from its subsequent ballot measure — ULA imposed a two-tiered levy on the city’s high-dollar real estate transactions after its enactment in April 2023, ostensibly to fund affordable housing and homelessness prevention programs. Currently, transactions between $5.3 million and $10.6 million incur an additional 4 percent tax, while deals for $10.6 million or more incur an added 5.5 percent tax. 

ULA has generated more than $1.03 billion across 1,435 transactions as of Jan. 8, according to the L.A. Housing Department’s (LAHD) website, which includes December 2025 data. Sixty percent of those deals were for single-family residences, 24 percent were for nonresidential commercial properties, and 13 percent were multifamily sales. Transactions in the 90049, 90272 and 90077 ZIP codes — which encompass affluent L.A. neighborhoods such as Brentwood, Bel Air and Pacific Palisades — account for the largest share of deals generating ULA funds. 

The amount of revenue collected by ULA is growing each fiscal year, too. Over the past six months, ULA brought in $306.7 million, putting it on pace for fiscal year 2026 to surpass the previous year’s $413.2 million once the period concludes at the end of June. 

“ULA funding has enabled the largest Notice of Funding Availability in LAHD history, providing critical resources for the production and preservation of affordable housing,” LAHD staff said in a social media post over the weekend. “This revenue supports programs that help renters stay housed and educated on tenant protections, and assists in financing the construction of new affordable housing.”

ULA’s expenditure plans are broken down by fiscal year and annually approved by the L.A. City Council. Nearly 74 percent of fiscal year 2025-26 funds are allocated for affordable housing programs, such as multifamily development, preserving property affordability and a homeownership opportunities initiative to support first-time buyers and local land trusts. The remaining funds are allocated for homeless prevention programs, including short-term emergency assistance, eviction defense, and income support for seniors and persons with disabilities. 

“Just two years into implementation, ULA is now the largest local housing and homelessness-prevention initiative in the U.S.,” the staff of economic justice nonprofit Strategic Actions for a Just Economy said in a statement late last week. “If you live in L.A., and especially if you rent, it doesn’t take much to realize that we need an ambitious, long-term plan to address our severe lack of affordable housing. … Having the better part of $1 billion and counting to fund affordable housing construction is unprecedented. ULA is transformational, allowing L.A. to build housing at the scale and speed we need to ensure all Angelenos have a safe and affordable place to call home. But we need to let it work.”

Many commercial real estate investors in the region are strongly opposed to ULA, including Universe Holdings CEO and Chairman Henry Manoucheri, who opted to pause or cancel transactions in L.A. due to the tax. Manoucheri’s firm sold several properties in early 2023 before ULA went into effect, but the company hadn’t transacted on any since then as of last spring, he told Commercial Observer in April 2025. 

Indeed, a study by the UCLA Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies at that time found that the volume of non-single-family deals had declined by as much as 50 percent since April 2023. 

L.A. Mayor Karen Bass has also approached the tax with trepidation in recent months. Bass in March said her office was looking into methods to temporarily suspend ULA to assist Pacific Palisades residents affected by the L.A. wildfires last January, though she has since walked those comments back to instead seek more targeted relief.

Representatives for Bass’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment about ULA’s $1 billion milestone. 

Nick Trombola can be reached at ntrombola@commercialobserver.com.