What is a city transfer tax?
Do you have to pay for it?
What is a city transfer tax and more importantly, do you have to pay it? We're talking about the Bay Area here in California, and there's a lot of different cities and counties in the Bay Area, and they all have different rules, but the rule of thumb is that the older the city and the closer they are to the water, the more likely it's going to have a city transfer tax like San Francisco and Oakland and Berkeley.
City Transfer Tax
They all have 'em. So what are they? Well, a city transfer tax is essentially a way that the city gets in your pocket when you buy a house. The way it works is that, for instance, Oakland charges you $15 for every $1,000 of a purchase price, and if you're doing the math at home, that means that for a $1 million purchase price, it's $15,000 of a city transfer tax, which is a lot of money. But here's the thing, usually it's structured where buyers and sellers split the cost. So buying a house in Oakland, for instance, or Berkeley, is more expensive than buying one in, say, Walnut Creek because Walnut Creek and a lot of the cities out in Contra Costa County, they don't have a city transfer tax.
Alameda County is pretty transfer tax-happy. For example, Albany and Emeryville are $12 per every thousand. Oakland and Berkeley, 15 bucks for every thousand. That's a lot. There are a lot of other fees that go into buying and selling homes beyond just the transfer tax. If you're curious about more and you want to know exactly how much it's going to cost you, all you got to do is ask.
