Hollister Ranch Analysis

By Ben Welsh

The Los Angeles Times conducted an analysis of agricultural property tax breaks issued by Santa Barbara County for Steve Lopez's Oct. 20, 2018, column "At Hollister Ranch, homeowners enjoy private beaches — and hefty tax breaks, too."

It found that Hollister Ranch owners — including celebrities and wealthy business moguls — had their property tax trimmed by roughly 50% this year, reducing the county's revenue by about $2 million.

Here's how we did it

Gather Hollister Ranch parcels

A map of all parcels in Santa Barbara County was filtered down to only those in Hollister Ranch using two publically available map files. They were then filtered again to include only parcels that received a property-tax break given to agricultural lands under California's Williamson Act. The names of parcel owners were acquired via a California Public Records Act request with the Santa Barbara County Assessor and merged with the maps.

This was done in consultation with Santa Barbara County officials as well as a lawyer for Hollister Ranch.

%run ./src/parcels.ipynb

Gather Santa Barbara County property tax records

The list of Hollister Ranch parcels was used to scrape property tax records published by the county assessor. They include the property tax each owner was billed in the most recent year. Also harvested was a "value notice" detailing each property's reduced assessment under the Williamson Act, as well as what it would have been assessed at without the break under Proposition 13, the state's reigning property tax law. Comparing these two values is the core of the analysis that follows. The data were gathered in consultation with Santa Barbara County officials.

Here is an example of a value notice with the two key values highlighted:

%run ./src/download.ipynb

%run ./src/parse.ipynb

Import Python tools

import pandas as pd
import altair as alt
from src import settings

A little configuration

pd.options.display.float_format = '${:,.0f}'.format

A few helpers

printmoney = lambda s: print(f'${s:,.0f}')

printpctchange = lambda new, old: print(f'{((new - old) / old)*100:0.2f}%')

Execute analysis

The scraped data is read in.

williamson_df = pd.read_csv(f"{settings.output_dir}/parsed.csv")

How many parcels in Hollister Ranch benefited from the Williamson Act?

len(williamson_df)

136

What is the total assessed value of all of the properties under the Williamson Act?

total_williamson_value = williamson_df.williamson_assessment.sum()

printmoney(total_williamson_value)

$182,204,442

What would be the total assessed value of those same properties without the benefit?

total_prop13_value = williamson_df.prop13_assessment.sum()

printmoney(total_prop13_value)

$371,160,842

What's the difference between those two numbers?

printmoney(total_prop13_value - total_williamson_value)

$188,956,400

What's that as a percentage?

printpctchange(total_williamson_value, total_prop13_value)

-50.91%

How much property tax was paid under the Williamson rules?

total_williamson_tax = williamson_df.williamson_tax.sum()

printmoney(total_williamson_tax)

$2,016,049

The typical home pays roughly 1.1% of its value in property taxes. How much would have been paid at Hollister under typical rules?

estimated_prop13_tax = total_prop13_value * 0.011

printmoney(estimated_prop13_tax)

$4,082,769

What's the difference between the two?

printmoney(estimated_prop13_tax - total_williamson_tax)

$2,066,720

What's that as a percentage?

printpctchange(total_williamson_tax, estimated_prop13_tax)

-50.62%

Who got the biggest assessment breaks?

williamson_df['assessment_break'] = williamson_df.williamson_assessment - williamson_df.prop13_assessment

alt.Chart(williamson_df).mark_bar().encode(
    alt.X("assessment_break:Q", bin=True),
    y='count()',
)

williamson_df.assessment_break.describe().reset_index()

	index	assessment_break
0	count	$136
1	mean	$-1,389,385
2	std	$1,668,667
3	min	$-15,048,700
4	25%	$-1,797,666
5	50%	$-924,590
6	75%	$-419,249
7	max	$-8,246

williamson_df.sort_values("assessment_break").head()[[
    'apn',
    'primary_owner',
    'williamson_assessment',
    'prop13_assessment',
    'assessment_break'
]]

	apn	primary_owner	williamson_assessment	prop13_assessment	assessment_break
107	83680025	HOLLISTER RANCH TRUST 1/5/16	$6,799,698	$21,848,398	$-15,048,700
85	83680005	HOLLISTER RANCH 54 GP CA	$1,823,680	$8,147,960	$-6,324,280
106	83680024	DASH HOLDINGS III, LLC	$4,401,121	$10,092,512	$-5,691,391
3	83700002	HAYDEN PROPERTIES, LLC	$2,315,560	$6,746,081	$-4,430,521
104	83680022	HOWARD RANCH LLC	$2,409,530	$6,788,460	$-4,378,930

Who got the biggest tax breaks?

williamson_df['prop13_tax_estimate'] = williamson_df.prop13_assessment * 0.011

williamson_df['tax_break_estimate'] = williamson_df.williamson_tax - williamson_df.prop13_tax_estimate

alt.Chart(williamson_df).mark_bar().encode(
    alt.X("tax_break_estimate:Q", bin=True),
    y='count()',
)

williamson_df['tax_break_estimate'].describe().reset_index()

	index	tax_break_estimate
0	count	$136
1	mean	$-15,196
2	std	$18,302
3	min	$-165,064
4	25%	$-19,551
5	50%	$-10,162
6	75%	$-4,610
7	max	$-83

williamson_df.sort_values("tax_break_estimate").head()[[
    'apn',
    'primary_owner',
    'williamson_tax',
    'prop13_tax_estimate',
    'tax_break_estimate'
]]

	apn	primary_owner	williamson_tax	prop13_tax_estimate	tax_break_estimate
107	83680025	HOLLISTER RANCH TRUST 1/5/16	$75,269	$240,332	$-165,064
85	83680005	HOLLISTER RANCH 54 GP CA	$20,187	$89,628	$-69,441
106	83680024	DASH HOLDINGS III, LLC	$48,718	$111,018	$-62,300
3	83700002	HAYDEN PROPERTIES, LLC	$25,632	$74,207	$-48,575
104	83680022	HOWARD RANCH LLC	$26,672	$74,673	$-48,001

Output the results

williamson_df.to_csv(f"{settings.output_dir}/analyzed.csv", index=False, encoding="utf-8")