Updated August 27, 2026
Yes if the price clears the threshold — Koreatown is inside the City of Los Angeles. But whether your building clears it is a genuinely different question here than it is a few miles west, and the answer surprises owners in both directions.
Measure ULA is a City of Los Angeles transfer tax charged on sales above two inflation-adjusted dollar thresholds. The current figures and rates are in what Measure ULA is. This page is about what it means in Koreatown specifically.
In Hollywood, roughly two-thirds of this desk's closings sat above the current lower ULA threshold — it is the normal case there.
In Koreatown, most closings in this record sat below it. That is a direct consequence of the two composition effects that make this submarket price the way it does: the median per door is the lowest of the ten covered, and long-tenanted rent-stabilized income keeps prices modest relative to unit count. A twenty-four-unit Koreatown building can sit comfortably under the threshold where a twenty-unit Hollywood building sits well over it.
So for a large share of Koreatown owners, Measure ULA is genuinely not the dominant cost of exiting. That is worth knowing before it is modeled as one.
Large buildings. Koreatown holds the biggest buildings in this record. A property of forty units and up, or a well-positioned corridor building, can clear both thresholds — and the tax is charged on gross sale price, not gain. An owner who bought in 1985 and an owner selling at a loss both pay on the whole number.
Portfolios sold together. Owners here frequently hold more than one building, and how a multi-building sale is structured affects whether individual transfers clear the thresholds. That is a question to model before pricing, not after.
Buildings near the line. Because the thresholds are cliffs rather than slopes, a building priced just above one can net less than the same building priced just below it. That is a pricing problem with a real answer — see pricing a building near a Measure ULA threshold.
Model it on the gross number, early, and then find out it does not apply. That is the common and welcome outcome here, and it changes the rest of the analysis — a seller who is not paying a percentage of gross has more room on price than one who is.
Do not carry a Hollywood assumption across. The two submarkets are governed by identical rules and produce opposite practical answers, purely because of what buildings cost in each.
The full cost stack for a sale here is in what it costs to sell a Koreatown apartment building.
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