The L.A. Mansion Tax Comes for "Selling Sunset"

The star of the seventh season of Netflix’s real estate reality show Selling Sunset isn’t former fish-out-of-water, now powerhouse realtor Chrishell, or the addition of mysterious potential Oppenheim Group new girl Cassandra, or brokerage president Jason’s commitment to wearing horrible Gucci shirts. It’s the specter of Measure ULA, repeatedly referred to as "the Mansion Tax," which has fully rocked the realtors at the Oppenheim Group’s world.

We find ourselves apparently some time soon before April 1 of this year, when Measure ULA is set to go into effect. Having passed in November of 2022, the contentious vote applies a transfer tax on properties over $5 million in the city of Los Angeles (excluding properties such as affordable housing projects, government buildings, or land trusts). In the months since, the measure has survived lawsuits, though debate continues to go on as to whether it is or will be successful in raising the money the city needs, or simply dampen business.

Where the Oppenheim Group stood on this matter was clear long before this season started airing on November 3. In October, a lengthy blast sent by Jason, head honcho of the brokerage and an executive producer on Selling Sunset, called it a "death blow to high-end real estate."

"We are not against wealth taxes when intelligently applied and implemented, but this tax is a travesty of common sense and will cause far more harm than good," Oppenheim wrote at the time, outlining several examples of how the tax would deter homeowners and buyers from doing business in LA.

Watch Selling Sunset, however, and you wouldn’t get a sense that anyone on that show supports any kind of wealth tax. And left out of the discussion entirely is why voters went for the Measure—57 percent of them: the money goes to build a variety of affordable housing in a city desperately grappling with the homelessness crisis, as well as rental assistance, eviction defense programs, and tenant protections. "Measure ULA, also known as the Mansion Tax, is something that’s going to be going into effect next month," Nicole explains early in the new season’s first episode. "Any properties going to be sold over $5 million are going to have an additional 4 percent tax, and anything over $10 million is now $5.25 million additional tax. Those are huge numbers, and I think it’s going to be a massive detriment to the real estate market as a whole." A strange positioning, given an early season of the show had Chrishell and her fellow cast mates raising money for L.A. anti-homelessness organization Upward Bound House, a charity apparently close to Chrishell’s heart given that she struggled with housing instability as a child.

The continued railing against the tax, without any explanation or nuance, demonstrates its use as a big bad wolf of tension throughout the season, a drumbeat of actual meaning behind the regular catty infighting that is the show’s real purpose. In the third episode, Jason teaches us that "everyone is trying to sell any house over $5 million," and this means that Emma must reduce the price on her $20 million listing by $6 million before April 1. "I have never had to ask a client to reduce their listing by 30 percent," Emma says in an interview. Not mentioned is why saving $700,000 in tax by reducing a listing by $6 million—which wouldn’t make it below the $5 or $10 million cutoffs designated by ULA—have much to do with one another. (Another property that we’re told was listed at $300 million a few years ago has been reduced to $60 million; a chyron across the screen tells us that would mean a $325,000 Mansion Tax. The home is still on the market.)

It’s not just ULA that casts a shadow over this glitzy world. "We’ve got to overcome the high interest rates, overcome the mansion tax, overcome the ordinances restricting development in the hills, overcome the fact that we’ve lost probably 30 percent in luxury volume…" Jason explains, saying more here than he intends: That ordinance in question was set up to protect local wildlife, much to the chagrin of, of course, those who want to develop in the area or homeowners who don’t want to be told what they can do on their land.

Meanwhile, the agency is expanding into an expensive office next door—something Jason claims no other brokerage is doing in this challenging climate. The group travels to their Cabo office (ahem, been there done that during last season of Selling Sunset’s sister show, Selling the OC) and of course it’s emphasized that "They don’t have a Mansion Tax here—so if you have wealthy clients, Cabo’s the place to be."

But by the end of the season, the drama surrounding the cost of the new office has died down, the finale episode party held at the blingy new space. "I think the market is going to pick up a little bit—inflation is going to calm down," Jason says optimistically.

Indeed, it’s what they don’t say on this show that speaks the loudest, if you know what to listen for. In the second episode, the women visit John Lautner’s iconic Sheats-Goldstein residence ("I actually knew that!" Emma squeals as Jason explains its history), now owned by businessman James Goldstein, eventually to be donated to LACMA. Goldstein may be a steward for an important and historic property, but as the Washington Post reported last year:

"An owner of mobile home parks throughout California, most of them seniors-only, Goldstein has been unrelenting in his quest to defeat limits on the amount of rent he can charge his tenants, according to court records and interviews with tenants and the city officials with whom he has done battle.

Goldstein has filed dozens of legal claims against California municipalities, seeking damages totaling in the hundreds of millions of dollars, for blocking his plans to increase rents by as much as double or more. In justifying the rent hikes, which continued throughout the pandemic, he often claims economic hardship as a landlord. Once, records show, after pioneering a method that effectively stripped rent control from one of his parks, then defeating a city’s efforts to stop him, he sued the city for having tried—as a warning to others."

"You’re robbing from the poor to pay the rich," Carson Mayor Lula Davis-Holmes told the Post of Goldstein. (For his part, Goldstein says he doesn’t believe in rent control.)

But design or real life isn’t really the point here; they’re but tools to be molded in the use of whatever storyline serves the shiny world of Selling Sunset the best. (My favorite line is when Jason tells the women touring the Sheats-Goldstein residence, which makes every other newly built monstrosity featured this show pale in comparison: "Just remember, you’re paying for architecture in this house.") The house is but a backdrop for Chrishell to have a panic attack and have to leave dramatically; for a dinner party later to celebrate the brokerage’s 10 year anniversary where more drama ensues. Why make it factual when it’s just filler?

Top photo courtesy of Netflix.

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