PRICIEST MARKETS—The median home price sale in the Conejo Valley for homes, including those in the Wildwood tract in Thousand Oaks shown here, recently exceeded $1.1 million. Photos by MICHAEL COONS/Acorn Newspapers
Homes may not be selling at the blistering pace they used to, and prices on the real estate market may finally have cooled, but the annual taxes owners pay to the government aren’t any less.
A twice-yearly statement from the county collector showing an increase in property taxes goes without saying, and this year is no different. Unlike sales prices, property taxes go up and rarely come down.
Assessments are higher
The taxes are based on what the county deems to be the intrinsic value of a home or business depending on the date of purchase, and owners pay an annual tax based on that value.
In the assessment business, business is good. The 2026-27 Ventura County assessment roll topped $194 billion, a 4% increase over last year. Los Angeles County taxable properties have reached a record $2.27 trillion in assessed valuation, marking the 16th consecutive year of growth despite last year’s major wildfires and a cooling real estate market.
Keith Taylor
The 2026 Los Angeles figure, released last week by L.A. County Assessor Jeff Prang, increased by $96 billion, or 4.40%, over the previous year. The assessment roll establishes the taxable value of all property in the county as of Jan. 1 and serves as the calculation fulcrum for local property tax collections.
The increase is expected to generate more than $27 billion in property tax revenue to help fund public schools, public safety, health care, libraries, parks and other local government services.
“When I presented the forecast to the Board of Supervisors in May, I emphasized 2025-2026 was a challenging year, and the impact of January’s devastating wildfires will be felt for years to come,” Prang said. “Even so, Los Angeles County’s economy continues to demonstrate remarkable resilience.”
Some of the county’s smaller cities experienced particularly strong growth. Hidden Hills recorded an 11.7% increase in assessed value, while Irwindale and Vernon posted gains of 15% and 13.3%, respectively.
The assessor’s office said the transfer of properties—primarily home sales— accounted for the largest share of the increase, adding more than $49 billion in assessed value to the county. New construction contributed another $12 billion to the roll.
The record assessment comes in the face of broader economic uncertainty and signs of moderation in the housing market.
Although home sales have slowed compared with the frenzied market of recent years, prices have remained strong. The assessor reported the countywide median home sales price reached $982,000 during the assessment period. In the Conejo Valley, the median home price sale recently exceeded $1.1 million, underscoring how the region continues to rank among Southern California’s priciest housing sub-markets.
Prop. 13 comes into play
Under California law, rising market values do not necessarily translate into property tax increases for the homeowners, but mostly they do.
In Ventura County, for example, the Assessor’s Office mailed approximately 250,000 annual notices to property owners, with fewer than 3 percent being told their property’s market value is lower than its Proposition 13 factored base year value, indicating a temporary reduction in assessed value.
As most properties do rise in value, their assessment remains protected by Prop. 13, which generally limits annual increases in the worth of the parcel to the lesser of 2% or the rate of inflation. Because the California Consumer Price Index exceeded that threshold, the maximum allowable 2% inflation adjustment was applied this year, adding approximately $43 billion to the assessment roll.
Roughly 2.25 million L.A. County parcels will see assessed values increase by 2%, unless the property changed ownership, underwent new construction or previously received a temporary reduction in value.
What this means locally
A Thousand Oaks home purchased in 1998 for $350,000 may now be worth $1.2 million but have an assessed value of only about $630,000 after 28 years of 2% annual increases. That owner’s annual tax bill might be around $7,000, not $13,000 to $14,000 if the same home were bought today.
A Calabasas home purchased in 1995 for $450,000 could now be worth $2.2 million while being assessed at roughly $800,000, producing a tax bill around $9,000–$10,000 instead of $23,000 based on a closing deal today. Proposition 13 intentionally creates these disparities by tying taxes to acquisition value rather than current market value.
Simi Valley and Moorpark have relatively stable populations with many long-term homeowners. Much of the housing stock was built between the late 1960s and early 2000s, and turnover is lower than in many California markets. Consequently, a significant share of homes still carry assessed values established many years ago and increased only by the annual Prop. 13 inflation factor.
The Simi Valley median-priced home costs about $950,000–$1 million, and Moorpark is about $1.05–$1.15 million. If the average assessed value is roughly 65%–75% of current market value, those homes would be taxed on values of $700,000 to $760,000 for Simi and $760,000 to 870,000 for Moorpark, yielding a lower annual property tax bill.
Diving deeper
The L.A. County assessment roll includes nearly 2.4 million taxable real property parcels, along with more than 157,000 business property assessments, nearly 32,000 boats, and more than 3,500 aircraft.
The assessor’s office also reported nearly $95 billion in property tax exemptions, providing an estimated $948 million in tax savings. Those include about 891,000 homeowners’ exemptions totaling more than $6.3 billion, approximately 9,100 disabled veterans’ exemptions valued at $1.6 billion and roughly 15,000 institutional exemptions for religious and nonprofit organizations totaling $87 billion.
Commercial real estate takes a hit
The report also reflects continuing changes in the commercial real estate market. While residential property values remained relatively stable, the assessor’s office said several downtown office buildings experienced substantial declines in value as they changed hands, with some selling for more than 50% below previous values. Those losses, along with property tax relief provided to wildfire victims, reduced the assessment roll by more than $9 billion.
Overall, the latest L.A. figures suggest that while the real estate market has cooled from its pandemic-era pace, property values across the region have remained resilient, continuing a growth trend that has now stretched to 16 straight years.