Proposition 19
If you bought here in the nineties or the early two thousands, your property tax is built on a number that has almost nothing to do with what your house is worth now. Losing it is the quiet reason a lot of people stay in a house that stopped fitting years ago. Since 2021 you have not had to.
Proposition 13 froze your assessed value at roughly what you paid, plus a small annual bump. Somebody who bought in El Dorado Hills in 1998 is often paying tax on a number in the low three hundreds while the house next door, sold last year, is taxed on seven figures.
That is a wonderful thing to have and a terrifying thing to lose. For years the arithmetic of moving looked like this: sell the big house, buy something smaller and easier, and watch the property tax bill triple anyway. So people stayed. They stayed in four bedrooms they did not use, with stairs they had started to think about, because moving felt like it came with a permanent penalty.
Proposition 19 changed that in April 2021. Most of the people it was written for still do not know it exists.
Homeowners 55 or older on the date the original home is sold, homeowners who are severely and permanently disabled, and victims of a wildfire or a Governor-declared disaster.
Three times in a lifetime, if you qualify on age or disability. The old rule allowed it once. Disaster victims are not capped at three.
Anywhere in California. The old rule kept you inside your own county, or inside the handful of counties that had opted in. That restriction is gone, which for a lot of people here is the whole point: it is what makes moving to be near the grandchildren in San Diego or Sonoma possible rather than theoretical.
Up to 100 percent of what your current home sells for, if you buy before you sell. 105 percent if you buy within the first year after the sale, and 110 percent if you buy in the second year.
Buy above that line and it is not a disaster. Only the amount above the line is added to your old assessed value, not the price of the whole house. That one detail is the most misunderstood thing about Proposition 19, and there is a worked example of it below.
The replacement home has to be bought or newly built within two years of selling the original. The claim goes to the assessor in the county where the replacement home is, on the state’s Form BOE-19-B, within three years of buying it or completing construction. File later than that and the benefit is not backdated.
If you are qualifying on disability rather than age, it is Form BOE-19-D together with BOE-19-DC.
You bought in 1998. Your assessed value is $310,000, and your tax bill is built on that number rather than on what the house is worth today.
You sell for $900,000. Within a year you buy a single story somewhere for $700,000.
The one-year ceiling is 105 percent of $900,000, which is $945,000. You came in well under it. So your new home is assessed at $310,000, not $700,000, and your tax bill barely moves.
Same start. Assessed at $310,000, you sell for $900,000. But this time the house you actually want costs $1,100,000, and you buy it within the first year.
The ceiling is still $945,000, so you are $155,000 over it. People assume that blows the whole benefit up and they get assessed on the full $1,100,000. It does not work that way.
Only the excess is added. Your new assessed value is $310,000 plus $155,000, which is $465,000. Not $1,100,000. You keep most of the benefit even though you went over.
These are illustrations with round numbers, not a quote on your house. The arithmetic on a specific move is worth doing properly before you count on it.
It is the question I get asked most, and Proposition 19 is part of the answer rather than all of it. Buying before you sell holds you to 100 percent rather than 105, but it also means you are not moving twice. Selling first gives you the higher ceiling and a known number in the bank, and sometimes means renting for a few months.
Which is right depends on your equity, your tolerance for carrying two houses, and how tight the thing you want to buy actually is. The orders are walked through properly on the buyers page, and the net proceeds calculator will tell you what you would actually walk away with before you decide anything.
The claim is always filed with the assessor in the county where the replacement home is. If you are selling in El Dorado Hills and buying in Cameron Park or Placerville, that is the El Dorado County Assessor. If you are selling here and buying in Roseville or Rocklin, it is Placer County. If you are moving to be near family somewhere else in the state, it is whichever county that is, and Proposition 19 is what makes that possible at all.
Worth knowing if you are staying in the county: the property tax bill is not only the assessed value. Most of El Dorado Hills built since the early nineties sits inside a Community Facilities District, so there is a Mello-Roos special tax on top, and it does not transfer with you. Send me the address you are moving to and I will pull the special tax on that parcel before you commit, because a move that saves you on Proposition 13 can quietly hand some of it back in Mello-Roos.
This information is for general educational purposes and is not tax advice. Consult a qualified tax professional to understand how property tax rules apply to your individual situation.
It is also a simplified version of a rule with real edges to it. Before you count on any of it, read the state’s own explanation at the Board of Equalization, talk to the assessor in the county you are moving to, and run it past your CPA. I am happy to walk through how it applies to a specific move, and I will be the first to tell you when a question belongs with an accountant instead.
Bring me your assessed value and a rough idea of where you might go, and I will tell you what Proposition 19 would actually do for you. If the answer is that it does not help much in your case, I will say that too.
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No contract, no obligation, and no pressure to be further along than you are. Plenty of people write to me a year before they are ready, and that is genuinely the right time to write.
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