Thanks for the info Surveyor. From my experience last year, I can confirm that living trusts don't trigger reassessments.
But to my understanding, Living Trusts are more for the benefit of avoiding inheritance taxes (or removing amounts off of what can be taxed). Living Trusts don't offer that much asset protection, which is also what I'm looking for. Unfortunately, living in CA, it's to my understanding that your primary home is not immune to being taken if you get sued, etc. Short of having good insurance, I was just curious if there was a way to avoid reassessment by passing on property to the next generation, escaping some of the inheritance taxes, AND also have some level of asset protection (hence putting things in a corp). I'll talk to a lawyer and an cpa and share what i find out.
I also talked to my parents about things. I believe also, that if you move between certain counties and have to sell your home in one and buy another one in the other, that in some cases you can avoid reassessment too. For example, if my parents were to sell their home in L.A. and move down to S.D., my parents were saying there were some rules that would allow them to preserve the same tax assessment basis they had in L.A. since 1980. I think it's only permitted for senior cits. I'm not sure what the details are, but one thing is that when you buy the new property, it has to be near equal in value or less to what you just sold, and there is a time window. I haven't read the details myself, since it doesn't apply to me. Something like Proposition 90 :
