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Comment by skuhn | Hacker News Reader

I don't see how the article addresses this point at all. The owner_name is simply text in a field, and could represent a subsidiary of another entity, a front company or an LLC established simply to own that piece of property (common in California business real estate).

Even a simple typo or difference in conventions at the time of data entry will obfuscate that multiple parcels are owned by the same entity.

The article's method simply performs exact matches on owner_name, which is a place to start. It makes no attempt to delve deeper to piece together the true ownership structures that this data represents, an admittedly far harder problem.

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Exactly, an interesting query would be some regex to see if owner_name is like address, e.g., "1234 Street Address Holdings, LLC"

A surprising number of homes in my LA neighborhood are owned by trusts. I used to assume they were trusts for the people living in them, but then I noticed many of the trusts own a number of properties. There's probably an interesting story or three to be told there with some data digging.

My understanding is that the smart way to sell real estate in California is to simply not sell it, and rather to sell control of the company that owns the real estate.

There are non-tax benefits, such as bypassing probate, but as the value of a property increases the 1% property tax becomes increasingly worrying. I suspect this is part of the reason why it's more common with commercial real estate.

The goal is to avoid tax reassessment when a property is sold, which is a big deal since the average price of a house in CA in 1940 was $36,700 and is now $211,500 (and much, much higher in places like Los Angeles and San Francisco). Even at the average house price, it's the difference between a $367/yr bill versus a $2,115/yr bill. Presumably commercial real estate has seen an equivalent rise over time.

http://www.boe.ca.gov/proptaxes/leopexclusions.htm

I have no need to become an expert on California property law, but the exclusions at your link are very narrow. This related page discusses the transfer of ownership interest in a legal entity that owns California real property. triggering a reassessment.

http://www.boe.ca.gov/proptaxes/leopcio.htm

I wonder if it frequently just isn't worth unwinding the corporation.

Retain ownership in a trust or more perpetual vehicle

If the originator of the trust maintains a controlling ownership in the trust, no sale has taken place. If they transfer control of the trust, the page I linked says that triggers a reassessment.

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