Journal · 17 October 2026
None of these made the local news. All three change what a move is worth to somebody who has owned a home in El Dorado Hills for a long time. Every figure below carries the date it was checked, because these numbers move.
If somebody dies owning a house and there is no living trust, the default assumption is a full probate. Twelve to eighteen months, a court file, and a lawyer.
Assembly Bill 2016 changed that for a decedent’s primary residence. Where the home is worth $750,000 or less, a Petition to Determine Succession to Real Property can take its place. That is a court filing, but a far shorter road. It applies to deaths on or after 1 April 2025.
The previous limit was $184,500, which almost no house in El Dorado Hills has met in twenty years. At $750,000 it starts catching real homes here, particularly condominiums, the smaller Cameron Park and Shingle Springs properties, and anything bought before the market ran.
The separate affidavit for personal property rather than real estate moved at the same time, to $208,850, under Probate Code sections 13100 to 13116. Both routes need forty days to pass after the death first.
When a parent’s home passes to a child, Proposition 19 lets the child keep the parent’s old assessed value only up to a limit. Above that limit, the excess is added on top.
That allowance is adjusted for inflation every two years. It is $1,044,586 for transfers between 16 February 2025 and 15 February 2027. It was $1,022,600 for the two years before, and $1,000,000 when Proposition 19 started in 2021.
Which means there is a date on the calendar. On 16 February 2027 it steps again. For a family sitting near the current line, that is worth knowing before deciding when to transfer anything.
The part that catches people is not the ceiling though. It is the condition underneath it: the child has to move in as their own primary residence within one year and claim the homeowners’ exemption. The Board of Equalization is blunt that there is no exception to the one year rule. Miss it and the house is reassessed at market value, whatever the allowance says.
Since 1 January 2025, California law has required a written representation agreement between a buyer and an agent before that agent can be paid on a purchase. That is Assembly Bill 2992. It followed the national settlement that, from August 2024, required one before showing any home listed on the MLS. The California law went further and covers every property, listed or not.
Most buyers meet it for the first time standing on a doorstep, which is the worst possible moment to read a contract.
It is not a trap and it is not optional. But what goes in it is negotiable, and the law caps the term at three months, which surprises people who assume they are signing away a year. A three month exclusive covering every house in the county is still a very different thing from an agreement written for one property on one afternoon.
The same rule is what makes the new construction question so expensive. If an agent is not named on the first visit to a model home, most builders will not recognise them afterwards, and the buyer has given up their own representation without being told that is what happened.
Every figure on this page was checked on 17 October 2026 against a primary source: the California Probate Code for the succession and affidavit thresholds, Assembly Bill 2016 for the $750,000 limit, the Board of Equalization’s own publication for the Proposition 19 allowance and the one year residency rule, and Assembly Bill 2992 for the buyer representation requirement and its three month cap.
These numbers move, which is why the date is on them. If you are reading this long after October 2026, check the current figures before relying on any of them, and take the specifics of your own situation to an attorney or a CPA. I am a broker, not either of those.
If any of this touches a move you are thinking about, send me the address and what you are weighing up. I will tell you what I can see, and where the question belongs with somebody other than me.
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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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