Who pays closing costs in California, the buyer or the seller?

Last updated August 19, 2026

By Kurt Mellinger, Principal Agent, Ascension Estates at Equity Union Real Estate. DRE #02238998.

Both sides pay, and they pay different lines. California has no statute that assigns most closing costs to one party. Custom sets the starting point, custom changes from county to county, and the purchase contract has the final word on every line.

That last sentence is the one that saves people money. Almost everything below is a default, not a rule. Write it differently in the contract and the contract wins.

The line by line split, and who customarily pays it here

This is how a Los Angeles or Ventura County escrow usually opens before anyone negotiates. Treat it as the opening position.

Southern California and Northern California do not agree on the owner's title policy. Down here the seller customarily buys it for the buyer. In much of the Bay Area the buyer pays for their own. Neither version is the law. If you moved here from up north, this is the line that will surprise you.

Who pays the transfer tax in Los Angeles County?

The seller, by custom, in both Los Angeles and Ventura counties. It is a contract term, so a buyer can agree to pay it or split it, and on a hot listing that occasionally happens.

The county rate is the same in both counties. It is $1.10 per $1,000 of value, and Revenue and Taxation Code section 11911 has it computed on each $500 or fraction of a $500, which is why the number rounds up in odd little steps.

Run it on real medians from our archive. A $1,224,000 sale, the median in Woodland Hills over the last year, produces $1,346.40 in county transfer tax. A $1,762,500 sale, the Calabasas median, produces $1,938.75. Those are small numbers next to the rest of the sheet.

Then there is the city layer, and the city layer is where the money is.

No city in Ventura County levies its own transfer tax. Not Thousand Oaks, not Simi Valley, not Camarillo, not Ojai, not Oxnard. Every Ventura County sale is the county rate and nothing more.

Los Angeles County is different, but less different than people assume. Only five cities in the whole county add a city transfer tax: the City of Los Angeles, Culver City, Santa Monica, Pomona and Redondo Beach. Calabasas, Agoura Hills, Westlake Village, Hidden Hills and Malibu are all county rate only.

Woodland Hills is the one that catches people. It is not its own city. It sits inside the City of Los Angeles, so it carries the Los Angeles city transfer tax and it sits inside Measure ULA territory. Calabasas is a few minutes up the road and carries neither.

What is Measure ULA and does it apply to my house?

Measure ULA is an extra transfer tax charged by the City of Los Angeles on high value property sales. It applies only inside Los Angeles city limits. If your house is in Calabasas, Agoura Hills, Westlake Village, Hidden Hills, Thousand Oaks or anywhere in Ventura County, ULA does not touch you.

The mechanism is the part that matters, because it is unusual. ULA is a cliff, not a bracket. Cross the threshold by one dollar and the rate applies to the entire sale price, not just to the part above the line.

Per the Los Angeles Office of Finance Measure ULA FAQ at finance.lacity.gov, the tax is 4% of the full price starting at $5,400,000, and 5.5% of the full price starting at $10,900,000. Those thresholds took effect for closings after June 30, 2026. They are re-indexed to the Chained CPI every July 1, so they move. Check the Office of Finance page for the current figures before you price anything near the line.

Here is what the cliff does, straight out of our engine. A Los Angeles city sale at $5,399,000 pays $30,234.40 in total transfer tax. The same house sold at $5,400,000 pays $246,240. One thousand dollars more in price costs the seller about $216,000 more in tax.

One honest limitation. ULA thresholds are indexed and re-set every July 1, and ballot measures can change city rates outright. The figures above were current in our engine as of August 2026. We rebuild them off the primary sources every year, and you should still confirm your own number with the Los Angeles Office of Finance or your escrow officer before you make a pricing decision on it.

If your price is anywhere near a threshold, run it both ways in the seller closing cost calculator before you set a list price. It picks up the city and applies the cliff.

Title and escrow, the two lines people mix up

There are two title policies in a normal sale, and they insure two different people.

California is a filed rate state. Every title underwriter files its own residential schedule with the California Department of Insurance, so the premium is a published table, not a percentage someone made up. Our engine runs the Corinthian Title and Doma Title Insurance filed residential schedule. On a $1,224,000 sale that schedule produces an owner's policy of about $2,804. Other underwriters file different numbers.

Escrow is the neutral third party that holds the money and the documents. In Southern California the escrow fee is customarily split between buyer and seller. Escrow companies publish their own schedules, and the common Southern California shape is a base fee plus an amount per thousand of sale price.

The small lines: recording, HOA documents, hazard report, warranty

These are the ones nobody thinks about until they read the estimated settlement statement.

What the buyer pays on the loan side

These are the buyer's alone. A seller never sees them unless they agreed to a credit.

Loan origination is what the lender charges to make the loan. Discount points are prepaid interest, paid up front to buy the interest rate down. Points are optional and the math only works if the buyer holds the loan long enough to earn the money back. Ask the lender for the break even month in writing.

The appraisal is ordered by the lender and paid by the buyer, usually up front rather than at closing. There is also an underwriting fee, a credit report fee, a flood certification and prepaid items: the first year of homeowners insurance, and the tax and insurance impound account the lender collects at closing. Impounds are not a cost. That is the buyer's own money going into their own escrow account, but it still has to be wired at closing.

Lender fees vary a lot between lenders. That is what the Loan Estimate is for. It is a standard form, so two Loan Estimates can be laid side by side and compared line for line.

How prorated property taxes work

The California property tax year runs July 1 to June 30. Installments are due November 1 and February 1, and they go delinquent December 10 and April 10. At closing, escrow divides the year's bill by the calendar. The seller owns the days from July 1 to the closing date. The buyer owns the rest.

If the seller already paid past the closing date, they get money back at closing. If they have not paid yet, the amount comes out of their proceeds. So this line can be a debit or a credit, and which one it is depends entirely on what month you close in.

One thing worth knowing before you estimate it. The current bill is based on the assessed value under Proposition 13, not on your sale price. A house owned for 25 years can have a tax bill a fraction of what price times rate would suggest. Use the number off your actual bill, not a percentage of the sale price.

Supplemental tax bills are a separate thing that arrives after closing, when the county reassesses at the new price. That one lands on the buyer.

This is not tax advice. Talk to your CPA. This is not legal advice, and the purchase agreement, the disclosures and the transfer tax affidavit are legal documents, so have your own attorney review anything you are unsure about.

Who pays the real estate agents?

Compensation for real estate brokers is negotiated between the parties and written into the contract. It is not set by law, by any association, or by any multiple listing service, and there is no standard number for us to quote you. Following the 2024 National Association of Realtors settlement, compensation for a buyer's broker is negotiated separately and is not assumed to be paid by the seller. It is agreed in writing, and it can be paid by the buyer, by the seller, or split.

We cannot tell you what yours will be, because it is your negotiation. What we can do is show you what any figure you agree to actually does to your bottom line. The seller closing cost calculator has a field where you enter your own agreed percentage, and it leaves that field blank until you have one. It never fills in a rate for you.

How much are closing costs in California for a seller?

It depends far more on your city than on your price, which is why a single percentage is a bad way to think about it.

Look at the mechanics. On a $1,224,000 sale outside the five taxing cities, the third party lines are modest: county transfer tax of $1,346.40, an owner's title policy around $2,804 on the filed schedule our engine uses, escrow in the low thousands, and a few hundred dollars of flat fees for the hazard report, the sub escrow charge, wire fees and the payoff demand. Add negotiated broker compensation on top, whatever you agreed to.

Now move that same house inside Los Angeles city limits and add the city transfer tax. Move it above the ULA line and the transfer tax alone becomes the largest single line on the sheet after compensation. That is the whole answer. There is no useful average, because the spread between two houses at the same price in the same county can be six figures.

Do not price off a percentage you read somewhere. Put your address and your price into the closing cost calculator and get your own number. It is free, nothing is saved and nothing is sent.

Are closing costs negotiable?

Yes, and in two separate ways that people collapse into one.

First, who pays. Every line in the split above is a term of the purchase agreement. Escrow split, city transfer tax, the owner's policy, the hazard report, the warranty, and a seller credit toward the buyer's loan costs are all negotiated. In a market where the buyer has leverage, more of the sheet slides to the seller. When the seller has leverage, it slides back.

Second, what it costs. You choose the escrow company and the title company, subject to agreeing with the other side, and they do not all charge the same. The buyer chooses the lender, and lender fees are where the widest spread lives.

What is not negotiable: the county documentary transfer tax rate, any city transfer tax rate, Measure ULA, the recording fees and the property tax proration. Those are set by statute or by a fee schedule. You can move who writes the check. You cannot change the amount.

Do closing costs come out of pocket or out of the sale proceeds?

If you are selling with equity, they come out of the proceeds. Escrow subtracts every seller cost from the sale price at closing and wires you the difference. You write no check and you send no money in advance. That is why sellers often do not feel these costs the way buyers do.

Two exceptions on the seller side. Anything you pay before closing, like a pre-listing inspection or repairs, comes out of your own pocket at the time. And if your loan payoff plus your costs exceeds the sale price, you bring the difference to escrow.

Buyers are the opposite. A buyer wires their closing costs to escrow in cash on top of the down payment, before closing, unless the seller agreed to a credit. That is the single most common budgeting mistake a first time buyer makes.

Since the seller costs come off the top, the only number that means anything to you is what lands in your account afterward. That is what the home value report gives you for your address: your projected list price, your net proceeds after every cost, and a real cash offer range. No cost.

What we watch go wrong here

Our archive holds 104,995 closed sales, and 51,707 homes closed across Los Angeles and Ventura counties in the twelve months to August 18, 2026. Three failures show up over and over on this specific topic.

• The wrong city. A seller in Woodland Hills prices as though they are in Calabasas. They are inside the City of Los Angeles and they are not. That mistake is discovered by escrow, late, and by then the price is set.
• The ULA cliff, priced into. A house that would net more at $5,399,000 gets listed a hair above the line. Then it sells at the line and the seller pays the full rate on the whole price for a thousand dollars of extra list price.
• The tax proration surprise. A seller closing in October assumes the property tax line is nothing. They have not paid the first installment yet, so the seller share of July through October comes out of proceeds. It is not a new cost, it is a bill they already owed, but it lands as a debit they did not budget for.

Every one of those is preventable a week before you list. Get your address run before you set a price, not after.