Your Friendly Neighborhood Assessor: Phong La on Prop 13, Reductions and Prop 19

Phong La made it through the morning traffic. On October 1, Alameda County's Assessor gave the Tri-Cities Marketing Council a tour of the office that sets the value on every home we sell: why Tesla is not leaving Fremont, who really decides what is on a tax bill, the reductions his office handed out without being asked, and the Prop 19 questions our clients bring us. He grew up in Union City, lived in Fremont for years, practiced real estate law and was a Bay East member for 15 years before he was elected the county's 23rd Assessor in 2018. The county still makes him open with a disclaimer: he is a lawyer, but he is not your lawyer, and none of this is legal advice.

Why Tesla stays in Fremont

Tesla is the largest property taxpayer in Alameda County, Phong said. Its factory land and buildings carry Fremont's largest real property assessment, about $551 million, and that value still traces back to the depressed 2009 prices Tesla paid. The rest of Fremont's top five: The Asher on Walnut Avenue (about $355 million), the Seagate campus on Kato Road ($276 million), the Pacific Commons shopping center ($230 million) and Embark Apartments on Old Warm Springs Boulevard ($224 million).

So would taxing Tesla drive the factory out of state? No, he said, and Prop 13 is why: California's assessor can raise an assessed value by no more than 2% a year, and the base tax is 1% of that value. In Texas, he said, the assessor can raise a factory's value as far as the market goes, and the rate is closer to 3%. What companies do move is their headquarters, and the reason is income tax: up to about 13% in California's top brackets, nothing in Texas.

That is his advice for any client weighing a move: ask which taxes they mean. A young family building equity has watched California home values climb about 10% a year for the past decade, he said, far more than Florida or Austin. A retiree living on investment income may come out ahead somewhere else. Either way, send them to an accountant about income taxes, not just property taxes.

Who sets your tax bill

Phong's one joke of the morning: Alameda County's property tax mafia. He is the godfather. He sets your assessed value, the number on the letter every owner got from him a month ago. Auditor-Controller Melissa Wilk is the family's accountant, who applies the tax rate. And the rate is different from one part of the county to the next because voters set it, one bond measure and special tax at a time. Berkeley has the highest average rate. The lowest is in the unincorporated areas, such as Castro Valley, Fairview, San Lorenzo and Sunol, which pay for no city government. Castro Valley has voted three times not to become a city, he said, and it shows in the sidewalks.

Where each dollar of the 1% goes, countywide: schools 41 cents, cities 18, the county 15, successor agencies (the former redevelopment agencies) 14 and special districts, such as the water district, 12.

Everything else on the bill is what voters approved. His 1% is one line. He told the story of an Oakland small business owner with a $200,000 assessment, whose 1% came to $2,000 and whose total bill came to $12,000, every extra dollar a measure someone voted for. Ballots for the November 3 election go out the following week, and he asked everyone to read up on every measure, vote, and get their neighbors to vote too.

The biggest homes, and the equipment inside the buildings

Fremont's highest assessed home is assessed at about $13 million. The biggest is about 18,000 square feet of main house, roughly a quarter of the Walmart on Albrae Street.

Owners of a business also pay on their equipment: the office computer, the chair, the bookshelves. Tesla's largest property tax is not its land and buildings but the robotics inside, over $3 billion of them. Before he was Assessor, Phong spent his career representing companies against assessors, and the opening ask, whatever the company, is always the same: cut it in half. The biggest appeals open in the county include Tesla, Meta Platforms, Western Digital, Lam Research and Pacific Commons, and some take years to settle. A reduction is usually warranted, he said, but rarely 50%, and because schools get the largest share of the tax, schools return the largest share of any refund. His job, as he put it, is that everyone pays their fair share, nothing more and nothing less.

Reductions nobody had to ask for

When the market falls, Prop 8 lets the assessor lower a value below its Prop 13 level. Last year his staff, working Saturdays and Sundays, reviewed 50,000 parcels countywide that might have qualified, and 25,000 owners got a reduction without asking for one. None of California's other 57 assessors does that much, he said, and he gave the credit to his team.

In Fremont the slide showed 1,940 reductions on preliminary 2026 figures: 1,610 homes, 316 mobile homes and 14 commercial properties. Most of the homes were condos bought in the last five to eight years. Some Fremont condos took 20 to 30% hits, he said, and in Oakland and Emeryville some are 50 to 60% below their 2021 and 2022 peak. A $2 million condo with a $1,000 monthly HOA is a hard sell, and insurance went up, he said, because it could.

If a client still thinks the value is too high:

• Ask informally first. Send the Assessor's Office three comparable sales from earlier this year, in the same city. A Hayward sale for a Fremont home, or a sale from ten years ago, will not be taken seriously.
• Then appeal. The filing period with the county's Assessment Appeals Board runs from July 2 to September 15 every year. Miss it, and it waits a year. The date is in state law and nobody can extend it.
• A reduction is reviewed again every year, automatically, and it can come back faster than 2%. Cut a value 20% this year and next year it can rise 22%, back up to the Prop 13 value, because the reduction lowered the taxable value but never the base. California voters, he reminded the room, approved the law that lets him do that.

What to tell buyers and owners

• The supplemental bill is coming. After a sale the county reassesses at the new price and sends a bill for the difference, months later, and escrow does not save for it. The county's Supplemental Tax Estimator gives a rough figure from the current assessed value and the purchase price, so buyers can put the money aside. Miss it and there are penalties.
• Additions found late are back-taxed. Every city must report every permit to the Assessor, but permits arrive late (one city, his hometown, is very late). He called these escapes: the added value is assessed back to when the work was done, as far back as eight years in some cases, he said, especially for unpermitted work.
• Remodels depend on the work. Replacing like for like (a roof, a kitchen, a bathroom, new paint) does not reassess the home. Adding something new assesses just the addition: a $200,000 assessment plus a $50,000 bathroom becomes $250,000. A remodel that changes the house, moving walls and bedrooms, is a new assessment. And no, keeping one stud does not save you from it.

Prop 19 in two minutes

The clock ran out before his Prop 19 slides, so he gave the short version. If parents pass the family home to a child, the low assessment carries over only if it was the parents' primary home and the child makes it their primary home within a year. Otherwise it is reassessed. (Prop 19 also sets a limit: if the home is worth more than its assessed value plus about $1 million, adjusted every two years, the amount over that is added to the assessment.) Siblings who inherit together and then buy each other out can trigger a reassessment, too. And whether to take the house now or inherit it later is an income tax question as much as a property tax one: inherited property gets a step-up in basis, so the timing can mean a large capital gains bill. That is one for the family's accountant and lawyer.

Prop 19 is also why so many families end up selling the family home after their parents pass, which makes probate work, as he put it, a huge market. His wife, a judge, has just moved from divorce cases to probate. And a young agent he mentors built her business on it: 12 sales in her first year and about 24 last year, all from cold calls to families who had just lost a parent.

He gives this talk about 20 times a year and has for four years, he said, so new slides are on the way.

Watch it

The recording is on the council's Facebook page. Phong's talk starts about 37 minutes in, where Anthony welcomes him.

Guest speaker · October 1, 2026What the assessor really does0:0032:41TeslaWhere it goesReductionsYour billProp 19 32:41On FacebookThe council streamed the meeting on Facebook Live, where the recording lives. Phong's talk starts about 37 minutes in and runs to 1:10. Press play to watch it on Facebook.

The rest of the morning

The council was live on Facebook with more viewers than ever, Vice Chair Tom Bigley behind the camera. Scott Capen was out again, so Harv Balu filled in with a big lens, until Scott chimed in from the livestream that his was bigger. Bill Cantrell led the Pledge of Allegiance. Steve Medeiros, who chairs C.A.R.'s Region 6 for the Bay East and Bridge directors, was off to Long Beach the next week, where C.A.R. plans to cut its roughly 800 directors about in half, and to the NAR meeting in New Orleans in November. Anthony, a Bay East Foundation trustee, said Cheers to the Future hit its goal. And Shufrah Alam, Marlyn Sylva and Betty Leyva came early to set out breakfast.

First-timers included Smriti, "Smee" for short, a former accountant from England who got her license on September 3 and joined Keller Williams; Mo, who works with Phong at the Assessor's Office and teaches martial arts; and Theresa Rogoff of Compass in Marin, whose birthday is Christmas Day. The broker-owner of Poppy Realty, 26 years in the business, was back for the first time in a while. Bring a first-timer next week and you get in free: ask Jim Lopez for a Golden Ticket on the way out.

Sponsors. Anthony thanked the council's Emerald sponsors, Bill Cantrell, Louis Heystek and Harv Balu, and Kristy Heyne joined them the next day. The tiers are all on the sponsorship page.

No homes were on the Super Tour, but five agents brought listings: a four-bedroom at 225 Preston Court in Rosewood with a basketball court out back; a two-bedroom condo at 45258 Tom Blalock Street in Metro Crossing, which Dianna Novela presented for a friend at Redfin (she once sold Metro Crossing for its builder, Toll Brothers); a four-bedroom on Chapman Court from Theresa, coming to the MLS the next day; and a two-bedroom condo at 951 Cherry Glen Circle in central Fremont. Michael of Prosper Real Estate added an out-of-area listing, five bedrooms on a big lot in Patterson. The drawing paid out the Super Tour pot from the week before.

Announcements. Dianna Novela, the 2027 president-elect of the Women's Council of REALTORS® Alameda County, invited everyone to Wine, Chocolate and Friends at 3 Steves Winery in Livermore on Wednesday, October 14, from 5:00 to 8:30 PM, and to the council's 2027 installation on Friday, November 13. Bill Cantrell spoke for Prop 43, the Taxpayer Protection Act, and Steve Medeiros for Prop 37, the homebuyer down payment measure, both on the November 3 ballot. Steve also invited everyone to RAW, Bay East's REALTOR® and Affiliate Wellness group, which meets at noon on the last Tuesday of every month at Bay East. And happy birthday to Bay East's David Stark.

The drawings sent home a Wente Chardonnay, Tony's Chocolonely chocolates, a Bay East water bottle and a copy of The Compound Effect. Anthony's send-off: it is October, there are three months left in the year, homes are on tour, people need selling and buying. Go do it.

Thank you

Thank you to Phong La for a straight-talking hour on the office that touches every transaction we work on, and for leaving his information at the front for anyone with a question. We meet Thursday mornings from 8:45 in Fremont, guests are welcome, and the speaker calendar has who is coming next.

Photographs and words by Harv Balu. The meeting was streamed on Facebook Live by Tom Bigley, who runs the camera every week.