The One-Year Rule for Inheriting a California House: What Heirs Need to Know

If you have inherited a California home and want to keep the low property tax base, you have one year from the date of death to move in and file for the homeowners’ exemption. This page is the procedure: what to do, in what order, with what forms, and by when. It assumes you already know the rule applies to you and just need to execute it correctly.

Two deadlines run at the same time, and most families only know about one of them.

Step 1: Establish Your Date of Transfer

Everything counts from this date, so get it right before anything else.

For an inherited property, the change-in-ownership date is generally the date the previous owner died. It is not the date probate was completed, not the date the deed was recorded, and not the date the estate was distributed to heirs.

For property held in a trust, the transfer date is often the date the trust became irrevocable, which in most family trusts is also the date of death.

Write this date down. Add one year to it, and add three years to it. Those are your two deadlines.

Step 2: Confirm the Property Actually Qualifies

Before investing effort, confirm the exclusion is available at all.

The home must have been the deceased’s principal residence. A house they owned but rented out does not qualify as a family home, regardless of who inherits it.

You must be an eligible transferee. A child for BOE-19-P, or a grandchild for BOE-19-G. Grandchildren have an additional condition: the middle generation, your parents who were children of those grandparents, must all be deceased as of the transfer date.

The property type matters. Rentals, second homes, vacation homes, and commercial property get no exclusion at all. Family farms qualify with no occupancy requirement.

If the property does not qualify, the one-year clock is irrelevant and you should turn to the keep-or-sell decision instead.

Step 3: Move In Within 12 Months

This is the step families lose the benefit on.

You must occupy the home as your principal residence, the home you actually live in as your main home. Not a second home, not a rental, not a property you are holding while you decide.

Do this well inside the year rather than near the edge of it. Probate frequently runs longer than twelve months in California, and waiting for the estate to settle before moving in has cost many families the entire benefit. You do not need to wait for probate to conclude to move in.

Step 4: File the Homeowners’ Exemption (BOE-266)

Moving in is not sufficient on its own. The filing is what proves occupancy to the assessor.

File BOE-266, the Claim for Homeowners’ Property Tax Exemption, with the county assessor where the property sits. If you are a qualifying disabled veteran, BOE-261-G serves the same purpose.

This must be filed within the same one-year window. If it is filed after one year, the exclusion does not reach back, it begins only in the year you finally file, and the benefit for the intervening period is lost.

A county-specific warning: some California counties do not post this form online and instead mail a pre-filled version to new owners. If you wait for it to arrive, it can consume a meaningful portion of your twelve months. If the form is not on your county’s site, call the assessor and request it immediately.

Step 5: File the Exclusion Claim (BOE-19-P or BOE-19-G)

This is the separate second filing, and it is the one people conflate with Step 4.

File BOE-19-P for a parent-to-child transfer, or BOE-19-G for a grandparent-to-grandchild transfer, with the county assessor where the property sits.

The deadline is three years from the date of transfer, or before the home is sold to someone outside the family, whichever comes first.

Do not lean on the three-year outer limit. File this soon after Step 4 while your documentation is assembled and the details are fresh. Two filings, close together, is the clean pattern.

Step 6: Confirm Receipt and Watch for Notices

Filing is not the same as being on record.

Confirm the assessor received both filings. Claims get lost. Discovering that months later, past a deadline, is a preventable disaster.

Read every notice the county sends. After a transfer, the county often issues a supplemental assessment and a supplemental tax bill to true up the account mid-year. If it later discovers a change it missed, it may issue an escape assessment. Either can arrive months after the transfer.

These notices carry a deadline inside them: a claim counts as timely if filed within six months of receiving one. So an unopened envelope can be the difference between keeping and losing the benefit. Check whether the notice reflects the exclusion you claimed, and if it does not, follow up inside that six-month window.

Who Can File

The property owner, or an authorized representative such as an attorney or accountant holding power of attorney, must sign and submit the claim.

A real estate agent can help you assemble documents and understand what the assessor expects, but cannot file on your behalf. Neither can escrow. This is your filing to make.

Counties Do Not Work the Same Way

Proposition 19 is state law, but 58 separate county assessors administer it, and their processes differ meaningfully.

Expect variation in which forms are posted online, how much documentation is required, how long processing takes, and whether a fee applies to a late filing. If you are dealing with an unfamiliar county, call early rather than assuming their process matches one you have seen before.

And do not wait for a prompt. Assessors generally do not send reminders, and a missed deadline is the heir’s loss.

The Timeline at a Glance

• Date of death. Both clocks start.
• Immediately. Confirm the property qualifies, and request forms if they are not online.
• As early as possible. Move into the home as your principal residence.
• Within 12 months. File BOE-266, the homeowners’ exemption.
• Soon after. File BOE-19-P or BOE-19-G, the exclusion claim.
• Within 3 years. Outer limit for the exclusion claim.
• Within 6 months of any assessment notice. Alternative timeliness window.

Summary

• The one-year clock starts at the date of death, not the close of probate.
• You must both move in as your principal residence and file BOE-266 within that year.
• Missing the one-year deadline forfeits the benefit for the period before you finally file, permanently.
• The exclusion claim, BOE-19-P or BOE-19-G, has its own three-year deadline and is a separate filing.
• Do not wait for probate to conclude before moving in.
• Confirm the assessor received both filings, and never ignore a supplemental or escape assessment notice.
• Only the owner or an authorized representative can file; agents and escrow cannot.

Get the Full Picture

Read the book. Prop 19 Hero covers the filing process county by county, including what documentation assessors commonly request and how to follow up when a claim stalls. Find it on Amazon.

Talk to Bart. If you are working through an inherited property in the Sacramento area and want to be certain the filings are right, Bart Hubbard can tell you what your county expects. Reach out at Prop19Hero.com.