Does Louisiana have a real estate transfer tax?
Not at the state level. Louisiana doesn’t tax deeds, acts of sale or conveyances of immovable property, and no parish outside Orleans levies one. A seller of a 50-unit building in Baton Rouge, Lafayette or Shreveport pays recording costs to the clerk of court and nothing based on the price.
New Orleans is the one exception. The city’s documentary transaction tax, often called the real estate transfer tax, is a flat charge per instrument rather than a percentage. For the sale of an apartment building it’s $325.
So a $5,000,000 sale in Metairie, in Jefferson Parish, carries no transfer tax at all. The same sale across the parish line in New Orleans carries $325. Either way, it’s a rounding error on a deal that size.
Louisiana’s constitutional ban on new transfer taxes
Louisiana voters made the current rule permanent in 2011. Article VII, Section 2.3 of the Louisiana Constitution prohibits the state, any political subdivision whose boundaries are coterminous with the state, and any other political subdivision from levying a new tax or fee on the sale or transfer of immovable property after November 30, 2011.
The section defines a documentary transaction as any instrument that transfers or conveys real property, so the ban reaches deed stamps, conveyance taxes and fees tied to the act of sale. It carves out fees for recording, filing or maintaining documents, impact fees on development, annual parcel fees and ad valorem property taxes, which are not treated as taxes on a sale or transfer.
New Orleans’ tax existed before the cutoff and survived. No other parish or city can add one, and the legislature can’t create a statewide version without another constitutional amendment. For a long-term apartment owner, that’s unusual certainty: in many states, transfer taxes have risen or new high-value tiers have appeared in the last few years.
How the New Orleans documentary transaction tax works
The tax is in Chapter 150, Article V of the New Orleans Code of Ordinances. Section 150-391 sets a flat $300 for the sale or mortgage of one single-family residence or residential double. All other transactions, which includes the sale of an apartment building, pay $325 per instrument for up to 25 pages.
Longer documents cost more. Each page beyond 25 adds $100, capped at $2,500 under the ordinance, though the Orleans Parish Civil District Court clerk’s current guidance gives the maximum as $2,525. An act of sale for a large apartment complex with long exhibits can cross the 25-page line, so ask your closing attorney or title company to check the page count.
The seller pays. Section 150-366 places the tax on the seller or transferor in a cash sale or other transfer, and the clerk’s office lists the seller as responsible. It’s due at recording; if billed instead, it must be paid within 30 days of the recording date, and late payment draws interest and a $500 penalty, according to the clerk.
| New Orleans transaction | Documentary transaction tax |
|---|---|
| Sale of one single-family home or residential double | $300 |
| Sale of an apartment building or other property, up to 25 pages | $325 |
| Each page over 25, other than a single-family or double | $100 more |
| Ordinance maximum | $2,500 |
Exemptions that matter in New Orleans
Section 150-369 lists more than 30 exempt documents. For investors, the useful ones are foreclosure-related: sheriff’s process verbals and sheriff’s deeds in foreclosures, documents recorded in foreclosure proceedings, and the dation en paiement, Louisiana’s version of a deed in lieu of foreclosure. Acts of correction, cancellations of mortgage inscriptions and tax sales are also exempt.
There’s no exemption in the list for a transfer into an LLC you own, so a New Orleans deed from you to your own entity can still cost $325. Outside New Orleans, the same restructuring carries no transfer tax at all.
Louisiana has no controlling-interest transfer tax. Selling the membership interests of an LLC that owns a building doesn’t trigger a state tax, and because the New Orleans tax is charged on recorded instruments, an entity sale with no act of sale recorded generally avoids it as well. Gifts and inheritances face no state transfer tax either.
What Louisiana sellers pay at closing instead
With no transfer tax, the government charges on a Louisiana closing are recording fees set by each parish clerk of court. They are flat or per-page charges, so they don’t scale with price. Your title company or closing attorney will quote them from the parish’s schedule.
The rest of the seller’s closing statement usually covers the items you’d see anywhere: broker commission if a broker is involved, loan payoff and any prepayment penalty, release of the existing mortgage, the seller’s share of title and closing fees, and the property tax proration. On a large building the proration can be a sizable credit either way, so it belongs in your net proceeds estimate from the start.
- State transfer tax: none, anywhere in Louisiana.
- New Orleans documentary transaction tax: $325 per act of sale up to 25 pages, paid by the seller.
- Parish recording fees: flat or per-page charges set by the clerk of court.
- Mortgage payoff and release: paid from the seller’s proceeds.
- Property tax proration: settled between buyer and seller on the closing statement.
Worked example: transfer tax on a Louisiana apartment sale
Take two sales. A 40-unit building in New Orleans sells for $2,000,000, and a 100-unit complex in Baton Rouge sells for $5,000,000. Both acts of sale are under 25 pages.
Louisiana state transfer tax on either sale: $0. The New Orleans sale carries the city’s $325 documentary transaction tax, paid by the seller, which is about 0.016% of the $2,000,000 price. The Baton Rouge sale has no local transfer tax, so its total is $0. If the New Orleans act ran 28 pages, three extra pages at $100 each would bring the tax to $625.
Compare a nearby state. Arkansas charges $3.30 per $1,000, so the same $2,000,000 sale would carry $6,600, and the $5,000,000 sale $16,500.
| Line item | New Orleans, $2,000,000 | Baton Rouge, $5,000,000 |
|---|---|---|
| Louisiana state transfer tax | $0 | $0 |
| Local documentary transaction tax | $325 | $0 |
| Total transfer tax | $325 | $0 |
| Share of price | About 0.016% | 0% |
| Who pays | Seller | Not applicable |
Louisiana compared with neighboring states
The Gulf South is a low-transfer-tax region. Texas and Mississippi don’t have a state transfer tax either, so a Louisiana owner exchanging into Houston or Jackson won’t pick one up there. Arkansas is the outlier among the neighbors.
| State | State transfer tax | On a $2,000,000 sale |
|---|---|---|
| Louisiana | None; New Orleans charges $325 flat | $0, or $325 in New Orleans |
| Texas | None | $0 |
| Mississippi | None | $0 |
| Arkansas | $3.30 per $1,000 (Ark. Code 26-60-105) | $6,600 |
Where the real tax cost of a Louisiana sale sits
Income tax is the big number. Louisiana moved to a flat 3% individual income tax for tax periods beginning on or after January 1, 2025, under Act 11 of the 2024 Third Extraordinary Session, according to the Louisiana Department of Revenue. The same act repealed the state’s net capital gain deduction under La. R.S. 47:293(9)(a)(xvii), so check how that applies to your sale before you count on it.
Federal tax is larger. Long-term capital gains are taxed at up to 20%, plus the 3.8% net investment income tax for many sellers, and depreciation you’ve taken is recaptured as unrecaptured Section 1250 gain at up to 25%. On a building held for 15 years, that federal bill can run to hundreds of thousands of dollars on a $2,000,000 sale.
A 1031 exchange defers both the federal and Louisiana tax if you meet the 45-day identification and 180-day closing deadlines. Seller financing through an installment sale spreads the gain across the years you collect principal. Both work in Louisiana with no transfer tax complication, apart from the $325 in New Orleans.
Selling your Louisiana apartment building to Skyline
Skyline buys apartment buildings with five or more units across Louisiana, including New Orleans, Metairie, Baton Rouge, Lafayette, Lake Charles and Shreveport. We buy directly, can offer seller-carry terms if you want to spread out the gain, and work within 1031 timelines when you’re exchanging.
Send the property address and unit count through the form on this page, or call (469) 660-2977. We typically respond within 48 hours, and we’ll lay out the closing cost split, including any New Orleans documentary tax, in our offer.
