The typical homeowner stays in their house for 11.8 years, but homeowners in California—where Proposition 13 can lock owners into low property-tax rates—are staying put much longer, according to a new report from Redfin.
In Los Angeles, where homeowners hold onto their houses longer than any other metro, the median tenure in 2024 was 19.4 years —the longest span on record for the area. It’s followed by San Jose, with a median tenure of 18.3 years. Homeowners in San Francisco, San Diego and Riverside also stay put longer than the average American.
California is also home to three of the five metros with the biggest increases in homeowner tenure over the last decade. Providence, R.I. had the biggest uptick, hitting a median tenure of 16.8 years in 2024, up from 10.9 years in 2014. It’s followed by Los Angeles, San Jose, New Orleans and San Francisco.
California homeowners tend to hold onto their houses for a long time because a state tax law incentivizes them to do so, according to Redfin. Proposition 13, adopted in 1978, mandates that homeowners pay property taxes on 1 percent of their home’s assessed value, and strictly limits tax increases.
For a lot of California homeowners, especially in expensive coastal areas like Los Angeles and San Francisco, it doesn’t make financial sense to more than double their property-tax rate to buy a similar home in the same area, Redfin reported.
Prop 13 is also a factor in homeowner tenure increasing significantly over the last decade. But it’s exacerbated by the rapid rise in mortgage rates during the last three years.
Many California homeowners are locked in not just by low property taxes, but by low mortgage rates. Mortgage rates hovered between 3 percent and 5 percent from 2010 to the start of 2022, dropping to a record low of under 3 percent at the height of the pandemic moving frenzy. Since early 2022, mortgage rates have been sitting in the 6 percent to 8 percent range. Selling a home where you pay a 3 percent mortgage rate to move and take on a 7 percent rate would significantly increase a homeowner’s monthly payment—and in California, your property tax bill would also jump.
“Long-term homeowners tend to have low monthly payments. If they were to move—even using their equity as a down payment—they would have a much higher monthly payment because home prices and interest rates have soared over the last several years,” Los Angeles Redfin Premier agent Gregory Eubanks said. “Many older homeowners are adding on and creating a multigenerational home, with their kids and grandkids moving onto the property. And even many people who do move hang onto their house and rent it out because low property taxes and low monthly payments make them view it as a financial asset.”
Redfin Senior Economist Sheharyar Bokhari noted that it’s understandable that many Californians hang onto their homes, as they’re financially motivated to do so. “But it’s a problem for young people trying to break into the state’s notoriously expensive housing market,” Bokhari said. “Tight inventory only pushes home prices up more, and adds to the generational homeownership divide.”
California’s Proposition 19, which was designed to allow older homeowners to keep relatively low tax rates when they move, went into effect in 2020. It’s unclear how effective Prop 19 has been at freeing up housing inventory.
The only major metro with a bigger increase in homeowner tenure than Los Angeles is Providence, R.I., where one of the main factors is an aging population. The average Providence homeowner is 54, older than nearly every other major metro. Older people have typically owned their home longer than younger people, and they’re less likely to move.
Tenure is shortest in Louisville, Ky., where the typical homeowner stays put for eight years, followed by Las Vegas (8.4) and Charlotte, N.C. (8.7). One reason for short tenure in those places is that the relative affordability of buying a house encourages moving. The typical home in each of those three metros sells for under $440,000, compared to roughly $900,000 in Los Angeles and $1.5 million in San Jose.