The usual skirt around a lot of real-estate law. Also a common way people (and companies) avoid triggering a revaluation for California Prop-13 purposes when selling property: the property is owned by a holding company, and people buy and sell stakes in the holding company, being careful to never buy/sell a >50% stake in any individual transaction. (The latter part is because California does make an effort to close this loophole: sales of a majority stake in an LLC imply the property it owns has changed hands. But then people just never do that, sometimes aoviding it in fairly brazen ways, e.g. Michael Dell bought a holding company without buying more than 50% of it by splitting the purchase between himself, his wife, and one of his business partners: http://www.santamonicadispatch.com/2013/05/prop-13-gives-edg...).