What a sale actually costs in Los Angeles and Ventura counties. County and city transfer tax including Measure ULA, title and escrow on filed rates, the statutory disclosures, and your loan payoff.
Free. No sign up. Nothing is saved or sent.Transfer tax is the only figure here that can move by six figures, and it turns entirely on which city the house is in. Measure ULA applies inside the City of Los Angeles and nowhere else, so a Woodland Hills seller is exposed and a Calabasas seller three miles away is not.
Your mailing address does not settle it. ZIP 91302 alone covers the City of Calabasas, the City of Hidden Hills, unincorporated county land and the City of Los Angeles. Confirm by parcel number with the county assessor before you rely on any of this.
Every line is negotiable in the purchase contract. But custom runs deep, and custom is what the escrow officer writes down unless someone fights for different. In most of Southern California the seller typically pays the county transfer tax and the owner's title policy, and buyers and sellers split escrow. Custom flips county by county, which is one more reason the same sale price nets different money in different places.
The seller's side is the calculator above: agent compensation, transfer tax, title and escrow, recording fees, and any credits you agree to. Those come off your sale price at the closing table.
The buyer's side rides the loan. Loan origination fees. Points paid to buy down the interest rate. The appraisal the lender orders on the loan amount. Then the prepaid expenses collected up front: months of property tax and homeowners insurance premiums into an impound account. Buyers putting less than 20 percent down usually add mortgage insurance. VA loans cap some of the fees a veteran buyer is allowed to pay, which can move a line or two onto the seller's side of the sheet.
Rule of thumb: buyer closing costs typically run 2 to 5 percent of the purchase price. A seller's total runs higher as a share of the home price once agent compensation is in. Selling, use the closing cost calculator above. Buying, run the cost of buying calculator instead. It itemizes the buyer's side the same way.
The full write up on what it costs to sell walks every line with a source for each rate, and the capital gains estimator covers the tax side. Who pays closing costs in California goes deeper on the custom, county by county.