The short answer
At today's Los Angeles prices and rents, owning does not overtake renting — never within 30 years.
That is not a close call and it is not a rounding artefact. It is the widest gap on this site between what it costs to own a house and what it costs to rent the same house: $7,192 a month to own against $4,498 to rent, on top of $227,388 in cash to get through the door.
| Input | Value | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Typical home value | $1,026,764 | Zillow Home Value Index (ZHVI), single-family homes only, smoothed & seasonally adjusted (Metro_zhvi_uc_sfr_tier_0.33_0.67_sm_sa_month.csv) (July 2026) |
| Typical single-family rent | $4,483 / month | Zillow Observed Rent Index (ZORI), single-family residences, smoothed (Metro_zori_uc_sfr_sm_month.csv) (July 2026) |
| Effective property-tax rate | 1.18% | Proposition 13 sets a property's assessed value to its purchase price on a change of ownership, then caps growth at 2% a year until it changes hands again — so a buyer's basis is exactly what they paid, with no estimation. The Los Angeles County Auditor-Controller publishes a typical tax rate per city; for the City of Los Angeles (tax rate area 00067) the FY 2025-26 rate is 1.187380% of assessed value — the 1% Article XIIIA maximum plus voter-approved debt service, mostly LAUSD and community-college bonds. California's homeowners' exemption removes $7,000 of assessed value for an owner-occupier. On a $1,026,764 purchase that is $12,108 a year — 1.1793%, rounded to 1.18% to match the precision we use elsewhere. Rates vary across the county: the Auditor-Controller's own city list runs from 1.0633% to 1.5891%, and a house inside a Mello-Roos community facilities district pays a further parcel charge that is not a percentage of value at all. Why not the Census ratio: Proposition 13 is the largest incumbent-versus-buyer wedge in the country. Assessed value is frozen at the purchase price and grows at most 2% a year, so a neighbour who bought in 1995 is taxed on a fraction of what the same house is worth today, while a buyer is reassessed to the full price on the day they close. The ACS median-over-median ratio (0.68%) is dominated by those long-tenured owners and describes almost nobody in the market. It is not a small gap: a buyer pays roughly 1.7 times the rate the survey reports. For the record, that ratio is 0.68% — $5,621 median taxes paid ÷ $825,300 median home value for CBSA 31080, per US Census Bureau, American Community Survey — tables B25103 (median real estate taxes paid) and B25077 (median home value), metro level (2023 5-year estimates).Los Angeles County Auditor-Controller, Typical TRA Listing for Cities FY 2025-2026 (CR12 tax rate, City of Los Angeles, TRA 00067); homeowners' exemption per California Revenue and Taxation Code section 218 (FY 2025-2026 tax rates) |
| Homeowner's insurance | $1,553 / year | Los Angeles and Orange Counties. California publishes no premium data below the state level, so this is the NAIC's 2023 California HO-3 average of $1,655 — written premium over written exposures — moved onto the metro by the Los Angeles CBSA's position in the quoted series: $1,516 against a $1,616 California average, a ratio of 0.938. Both sides of that ratio are priced at $300,000 of coverage, so it measures geography and nothing else. $1,655 x 0.938 = $1,553. This is the one page in our set where the written premium comes out above the quoted one, and the one where we are least confident the number describes 2026. Both series predate the repricing that followed the January 2025 Los Angeles fires: the NAIC figure is a 2023 data year, and California's rate-approval process means filed increases reach written premiums with a long lag. Treat $1,553 as a floor by a wider margin than anywhere else on this site, and if you are shopping a house in or near a very-high fire-hazard severity zone — or one the FAIR Plan is the only market for — substitute your own quote before trusting the break-even year below. This page previously published $1,516, a quoted premium from a rate-comparison sample at a fixed $300,000 of coverage. Quotes run above what insurers actually write, so we moved to the written figure.NAIC, Dwelling Fire, Homeowners Owner-Occupied, and Homeowners Tenant and Condominium/Cooperative Unit Owner's Insurance Report: Data for 2023 (published July 2026), Table 4 — average premium by policy form, HO-3, written premium divided by written exposures. Counties per US Census Bureau / OMB, Core Based Statistical Area delineation — central counties of each CBSA (July 2023); the quoted premium it replaced per Insurance.com (Quadrant Information Services) average annual homeowner's premium by ZIP code — $300,000 dwelling coverage, $300,000 liability, $1,000 deductible, 2% hurricane deductible in Florida; averaged over the CBSA's central counties and weighted by owner-occupied units (August 2026) (2023 data year) |
Why Los Angeles lands here
One number does most of the work. At $1,026,764 against $4,483 a month, Los Angeles has a price-to-rent ratio of 19.1 — the highest of any metro we cover, ahead of Seattle. The conventional reading of that ratio is "above 20 favours renting", and the conventional reading is right here, but it undersells the size of the effect.
A price-to-rent ratio of 19.1 means the house costs more than nineteen years of rent. Financing it at our 6.5% default costs about $5,200 a month in interest and principal before a dollar of tax, insurance or maintenance. The rent for the same house is $4,483. Nothing in the tax or insurance columns is large enough to close a gap that starts that wide — and in Los Angeles neither one is trying to.
The $205,353 down payment is the other half of it. That capital does not vanish when you rent: it earns our default 7% a year, and over thirty years a head start that size compounds into more than the equity a Los Angeles buyer accumulates. This is the page on the site where the opportunity cost of the down payment matters most, because it is the page where the down payment is largest.
Proposition 13 makes this the cleanest number on the site — and the widest gap
Every metro page here derives its property-tax rate on a new buyer's assessed basis rather than taking the Census ratio of taxes paid to home value. Usually that means reconstructing millage and exemptions and admitting some uncertainty. In California it means reading the price off the contract.
Proposition 13 sets a property's assessed value to its purchase price when it changes hands, then caps growth at 2% a year until it changes hands again. So a Los Angeles buyer's taxable basis is not an estimate: it is exactly what they paid. The Los Angeles County Auditor-Controller publishes a typical rate for each city, and for the City of Los Angeles that rate is 1.187380% of assessed value — the 1% constitutional maximum plus voter-approved debt service, most of it school and community-college bonds. California takes $7,000 of assessed value off for an owner-occupier. On $1,026,764 that is $12,116 a year, or 1.18%.
Now the part worth pausing on. The Census ratio for this metro is 0.68% — it would have charged $6,982, barely more than half. That is the largest gap between the published shortcut and a buyer's real bill anywhere in our set, wider than Miami's, and the reason is that Proposition 13 has been compounding since 1978. A neighbour who bought in 1995 is taxed on a basis that has grown at most 2% a year for thirty years while the house tripled. The survey measures that neighbour. It does not measure you.
Two honest qualifications, and they point in opposite directions. Rates vary across the county — the Auditor-Controller's own city list runs from 1.0633% to 1.5891% — and a house inside a Mello-Roos community facilities district carries a further parcel charge that is not a percentage of value at all, so it does not appear in any effective rate. Against that, 1.18% is genuinely what a City of Los Angeles buyer pays on day one, which is more than we can say for most metros on this site.
The insurance number is the weakest thing on this page
We publish written premiums — what insurers actually charged — rather than quotes, because quotes run far above them. California is the one state where we have found that rule inverting: the NAIC's 2023 California average of $1,655 sits above the $1,616 quoted state average, and moving it onto this metro gives $1,553 a year.
We are publishing it, and we want to be direct about why you should not lean on it. Both series predate the January 2025 Los Angeles fires. The NAIC figure is a 2023 data year, and California's prior-approval rate regulation means filed increases reach written premiums slowly by design. Whatever the right number for a Los Angeles house in 2026 is, it is higher than $1,553 — probably by a lot, and by much more than that in a very-high fire-hazard severity zone or on a house the FAIR Plan is the only market for.
The saving grace is that it does not change the answer. Insurance would have to rise by roughly $32,000 a year to close the monthly gap on this page. Treat $1,553 as a floor, substitute your own quote in the calculator, and watch the break-even year not move.
The assumption that decides it
At our default 7% assumed return on the renter's invested capital, owning never within 30 years. At a more conservative 5%, owning breaks even in year 22.
Run Los Angeles at a 5% return →
That is the biggest swing on the site — from "never" to a specific year — and it is still not an argument for buying. Year 30 is the end of our window and year 22 is most of the way to it, roughly triple the seven years a typical buyer holds a house. If you disagree with our 7% return assumption, the honest version of that disagreement in Los Angeles is "owning wins in twenty-two years", not "owning wins".
What we are not modelling
Documentary transfer tax. Los Angeles County charges $1.10 per $1,000 and the City of Los Angeles adds $4.50, customarily paid by the seller — so it does not hit a buyer's day-one cash and we do not charge it here. The City's Measure ULA "mansion tax" — 4% above roughly $5 million and 5.5% above roughly $10 million, both thresholds indexed annually — is also seller-side, and in any case sits far above this page's price. Both change what a seller nets, not what a buyer pays.
Proposition 19 portability. A buyer over 55, or one who is severely disabled or rebuilding after a wildfire, can carry their old assessed value to a replacement home anywhere in California. For those buyers the tax line on this page is wrong by a large margin in their favour. It does not close a $7,192-against-$4,498 gap, but it is a real exception to the "assessed at purchase price" rule this page rests on.
Earthquake cover is not in the insurance figure, because it is not in a standard HO-3 policy. A California Earthquake Authority policy is a separate purchase with its own deductible, typically 5-25% of the dwelling limit, and only a small minority of California homeowners carry one. If you would buy it, add it.
Condos and co-ops are not this page. We price a single-family house on both sides — Zillow's single-family value index against its single-family rent index — because the engine compares renting and owning the same home. A large share of what is actually for sale in Los Angeles at this price point is not a single-family house, and a condo carries HOA dues our default does not model.
One national appreciation rate, 3.5%, as on every metro page here. We do not forecast metro-level price growth, because doing so would silently drive the result while looking like a fact. Los Angeles has outrun the national average over long stretches; if you believe it will keep doing so, raise the appreciation input and re-run. It is the input most likely to change this answer, and it is also the one we can least honestly pick for you.
Check it yourself
Open this Los Angeles scenario in the calculator →
Related reading: the opportunity cost of a down payment, which is the whole argument on this page, and the rent-to-price ratio.