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Tell us your income and savings instead, and we'll work out the max home price and a qualification signal for California.
How much house can I afford in California? →California Housing Finance Agency down payment/closing cost assistance loan, paired with a CalHFA Dream For All Conventional first mortgage, providing up to 20% of the purchase price (capped at $150,000) with no monthly payments; repaid at sale/refinance/payoff as the original amount plus a share of the home's appreciation. Distributed via a registration period and randomized voucher drawing when demand exceeds funding, not first-come-first-served.
Deferred-payment, 0%-interest (simple interest) junior loan for down payment and/or closing costs — up to 3.5% of the purchase price when paired with an FHA/government first mortgage, or up to 3% with a conventional CalHFA first mortgage; repaid only upon sale, refinance, or payoff of the first mortgage.
Fewer listings, fewer buyers, and sellers who have a reason to be on the market in December. Here is what a winter discount is actually worth on a $400,000 house — in monthly payment, in lifetime interest, and in the seller concessions a quiet market makes possible — and the three ways a winter purchase goes wrong.
California's base transfer tax is only 0.11%, or $995 on a $904,640 median home, but city add-ons and a huge price base push closing costs to $18,093 and up.
The operational guide to buying property with a partner, friend, sibling, or parent — credit and DTI mechanics, title vesting, a clause-by-clause co-ownership agreement, and how the exit actually works.
A month-by-month plan for the year before you buy: what to do in each phase, what never to touch, how to document every dollar, and how to survive closing day.
California guide
California's transfer tax is $0.55 per $500 of sale price. On the statewide median of $904,640, that comes to $995. Under a thousand dollars in transfer tax on a nearly million-dollar house.
It's true, and it isn't the whole picture. That 0.55-per-500 figure, 0.11% as a percentage, is the county base rate. Many California cities layer their own documentary transfer tax on top, and those rates are not small — San Francisco's escalates to as much as 6% on very high-value sales, and Los Angeles' Measure ULA adds 4% to 5.5% above $5 million and $10 million. Two houses at the same price, one inside a city line and one outside, can carry wildly different tax bills.
The other California-specific thing is arithmetic, not law. Buyer closing costs here average roughly 2.1% of sale price, below the 3.3% national average. But a small percentage of a very large number is still a large number: at $904,640, 2.1% is $18,997. California is a cheap state to close in and an expensive one at the same time.
Here's where the money goes. For how each fee works, see our full line-by-line breakdown of closing costs.
A note before you start: this is general education, not financial, legal, or tax advice. Every figure below is a statewide number from CalculatorByState's sourced dataset, and your county, city, lender, escrow company, and contract will all move the total. California city transfer taxes are set city by city and aren't modeled here, so the only rate that matters is the one for the address you're buying. Your Loan Estimate and Closing Disclosure are authoritative — use this to sanity-check them, not to replace them.
A 2-5% range against California's $904,640 median gives you roughly $18,093 to $45,232, midpoint near $31,662. The spread alone is $27,139 on the same house.
Read the full California guide →9 min read · Updated 2026-08-24