A couple of years ago I marketed a home in Palos Verdes Estates for a sister and brother who had inherited the property from their mother a year earlier. After the escrow closed, my clients phoned me to say they had received a bill for “unsecured property taxes” in the amount of $4400. After some investigation (because I had never heard of unsecured property taxes), I discovered that when a person dies and the property is inherited, it is considered a transfer just as if the property were sold, and the property is reassessed as of the date of death of the decedent. Because the property was sold a year after the death, my clients were charged with the difference between the property taxes owed before the death and the re-assessed value at death plus steep penalties for their being late. Because the sales price was used as the basis for the value at death, that value was used for the unsecured property tax assessment. My clients should have been excluded but an application for parent to child exclusion had not been submitted to the Tax Assessor.
This parent/child or grandparent/grandchild exclusion must be filed within three years after death/transfer, put prior to the date of transfer to a third party, or within six months after mailing of a Notice of Assessed Value Change, issued as a result of the transfer of property for which the claim is filed. An application may be obtained by calling 213-893-1239. This information was obtained from the Los Angeles Tax Assessor web site: www.assessor.lacounty.gov.
