Legal Question in Real Estate Law in California

In MY humble opinion, your taxes should go down.....normally, a lot plus a lot with a house is worth more than a large lot with a house. Your combined market value is likely, I would think, to be less after you combine the properties. This is certainly not always true, but I'd say generally.....that's why people spend money splitting their property. If the value declines as a result of merging the parcels, the taxes (combined) should also be lower. This would be especially true if your tax load includes taxes or assesments on a per parcel rather than an ad valorem basis. If you are concerned about reassessment based on a change of ownership, I'd admit that this is a concern, and I don't know the answer.....but it seems logical to me that a consolidation of lots owned by, before and after, the same person, should not trigger any reappraisal or reassessment. There is no change of ownership in your scenario. Nevertheless, out of an abundance of caution, I'd suggest you discuss this possibility with the assessor in your county.

I can't imagine why you would want to do that. As Mr. Whipple points out, the merged single lot and house would be worth substantially less than the two separate parcels. Mr. Whipple hedges his bets, but I am 98% certain it would also trigger a reassessment. His reasoning that it is not a change of ownership is flawed, since if you were doing a minor subdivision of one lot into two, you would still own both lots just as you would own the merged lot in your scenario, and you can bet there would be a reassessment on the split lots. So if the merged lots would be worth less than you paid for the two, your taxes would go down, but if the values have increased enough, you could still wind up with more value than you originally paid, even after the reduced value of merging the lots. In that case your taxes would go up.