My mother died and my brother and I inherited the house — will the property taxes go up?

That is why the shape of the distribution matters as much as the fact of the inheritance. If one of you intends to keep the house and the other wants to be cashed out, how that is structured makes a real difference: a distribution of the whole property to one beneficiary out of the trust is treated differently from a buyout paid with outside funds after both of you have already taken title. Work that out before anyone signs a deed or moves money, and read the question on whether a sibling buyout causes reassessment first, because the order of those steps is what decides the tax. Where an exclusion is claimed at all, remember that it is a claim with its own deadlines and that the relief is capped, both of which are covered in the questions on how much value is excluded and where to file, so on a valuable Santa Clara County home some increase is likely even when everything is done correctly. And if neither of you is going to live in the house, the useful question is no longer how to protect the low base. It is whether to keep the property, because the reassessed bill becomes a permanent carrying cost that somebody has to pay out of income every year, on a house that may be producing none.