After You Buy: Taxes, Insurance, Refinancing and Renting in SF

Ownership in San Francisco starts with a surprise, a filing and a long-term advantage. The surprise is the supplemental property tax bill that arrives months after closing and that your impound account will not pay. The filing is the homeowner exemption, small and permanent, due February 15. The advantage is Prop 13, which fixes your assessed value at your purchase price and lets it grow no more than 2% a year while the city reprices around you.

What good looks like

The supplemental bill is already in a savings account because you estimated it before closing, and the exemption claim went back to the Assessor the week it arrived. The first insurance renewal was re-quoted through a broker and a direct carrier 60 days out. The drains were cleared in September, the sewer video from escrow is filed, and the contractor you hired had a current license and pulled a permit. Each January you check closed sales around your parcel against your assessed value and add the year's receipts to the folder that will one day be your cost basis. If you might ever rent out a unit or a room, you know what just cause means before a tenant moves in.

The biggest mistakes

• Spending the money set aside for the supplemental bill, then meeting a second one because you closed in the spring.
• Tossing the plain envelope from the Assessor that holds the exemption claim form.
• Letting the homeowners policy auto-renew unchecked, or ignoring a non-renewal notice until the week it takes effect.
• Paying a contingency firm a large share of the saving on an appeal the Assessor's free informal review would have granted.
• Renting out a unit without learning that nearly every residential unit in the city has just-cause protection, whatever the building's age.

In this stage

Start with the SF supplemental property tax bill: how it is prorated and why you may get two. Homeowner exemption, Prop 13 and Prop 19 covers the filing that saves money every year and what Prop 19 changed for moving and inheriting. Appealing your SF property assessment explains the free informal review, the September 15 formal appeal and the comps that win. Annual insurance review and SF-specific maintenance gives you the calendar, the renewal routine and what to do with a non-renewal notice. When to refinance your SF mortgage sets the break-even rule and shows how to shop a jumbo refinance. TIC to condo conversion, ADUs and adding value lays out the realistic paths to convert, legalize or add a unit. Renting under SF rent control and planning your eventual sale covers allowable increases, just cause, the capital gains exclusion, what selling costs here and how to time it with the comps tool. If you own a condo, living with your SF HOA explains what the board can raise without a vote, your Davis-Stirling rights, how to run a 2-6 unit self-managed building, and what a master-policy non-renewal or an SB 326 repair does to your dues and your resale. If an inspection or insurer flagged an unbolted foundation, cripple walls or a soft ground floor, paying for a seismic retrofit in SF matches the fix to the building, walks through the Brace + Bolt and CEA soft-story grants, the city's Seismic Safety Loan Program, HELOCs and renovation loans, why a PACE assessment complicates a future sale or refinance, and the tax exclusion and insurance discount you claim afterward. Living trusts, vesting and probate shows what probate would cost on an SF-priced home, how to fix the vesting you chose in thirty seconds at escrow, and how to move the house into a revocable trust without triggering reassessment, transfer tax, your loan's due-on-sale clause or a title insurance gap, plus what Prop 19 leaves for your heirs. If you later buy again with one of this site's agents, the buyer-side commission is how the site is paid.