Million Dollar Listing star Josh Altman says new LA tax will hurt real estate market

Josh Altman, star of the reality tv series Million Dollar Listing Los Angeles and Altman Brothers Real Estate co-founder, takes issue with the new law.

Altman recently told Yahoo Finance that it's great because it helps homeless and affordable housing. But they didn't think about the other side of the measure, where it's going to chase people out of LA that are going to take their thousands and thousands of jobs and employees that they employ with them. Measure ULA will be in place on April 1 and impose a 4% tax on properties from $5 million to $10 million and a 5.5% tax on those selling over $10 million. The tax will be a top half percent of the Los Angeles residents currently pay on their homes.

The issue is that these people that bought houses two years ago and want to sell their house now, not only are they going to be down because the market is down, but now they have to cut that 4% and 5.5% check out of their pocket, off of their loss, according to Altman. Altman said his firm has experienced a significant uptick in deals as the Los Angeles elite looked to sell their homes before the tax was implemented. He said he had even been offered a million dollar bonus on top of a commission he could close on a particular deal.

I have seen more deals done this month in the month of March than I have seen in my entire 20 years of being involved in real estate - it is just out of control right now. Altman said something. Everyone is trying to close. Altman said that the new tax would hurt the Los Angeles real estate market, and that it would be detrimental to the collective rather than just those wealthy individuals looking to sell their homes.

It's going to trickle down all the way to the bottom. Altman said something. If people think they are not going to be affected because they don't have homes worth more than 5 million, I promise you that they are going to be affected because their houses are going to go down in price. Altman said he supports alternative forms of help for the homeless.

Altman said that they're all about affordable housing for the homeless. There's a better way to do it, and it's not just on houses. It is also on commercial properties, investment properties, and more. He said some of his peers in other parts of California were anticipating similar tax laws, noting that employees in his Newport Beach office were afraid that a law might come to their city and the effects it could have on the real estate industry going forward.

I just did have the biggest month of our career, not because I wanted it to be, but because it was a race to the finish line. Altman said something. We closed over $200 million in real estate this month. We're going to have to save that money for a long time.