The new villain on the seventh season of the hit reality real estate show Selling Sunset wasn’t a sassy new luxury broker not there to make friends. It was a real estate tax.
“Makes me nauseous even thinking about it,” real estate agent Mary Bonnet said of the so-called mansion tax in the season’s first episode, as she surveyed the living room of a $26 million eight-bedroom home in Brentwood.
The tax, known as Measure ULA, was pitched in 2022 as a fix to Los Angeles’ dire housing crisis. Passed by ballot measure with 58% of voters in favor, the measure created a new land transfer fee on real estate transactions over $5 million, and directed the proceeds to affordable housing projects, tenant protections and homelessness prevention efforts.