DTLA Condo Resales Continue to Climb

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DTLA Condo Resales Continue to Climb
Market Demand: Sellers’ market continues on condo resales downtown.

Condominium resale prices downtown keep rising as inventory remains tight, according to Mark Co., a San Francisco-based luxury real estate sales and marketing company.

There were 43 resale transactions reported in the downtown area in May, the most since September 2017. The average sale price for resale units was roughly $901,000 and the average price per square foot was $734, a year-over-year gain of 24 percent.

Active resale inventory rose to 123 units in May, the most since July 2017.

But there was 2.9 months of inventory in downtown’s existing condo market – less than half of the six-month mark that’s considered the dividing line between a buyer’s and seller’s market, the Mark Co. said.

“In terms of price, it doesn’t feel that the market is topping,” Selma Hepp, chief economist at Pacific Union International Inc., which acquired Mark Co. in 2015, told the Business Journal.

Industrious Move

A real estate portfolio company owned by Blackstone Group’s real estate funds, will partner with New York-based coworking company Industrious as part of a redevelopment plan for the Howard Hughes Center near Playa Vista.

The partnership will call for Industrious to manage and oversee up to 140,000 square feet of coworking office suites available on the campus.

Equity Office, which soon will rebrand itself as EQ, also said the new center will offer improved amenities such as an upgraded fitness center, conference center and outdoor common areas. It also will feature new food, beverage and retail locations, a pickle ball court and a central gathering area in the ground floor main plaza.

The Howard Hughes Center is comprised of six buildings and 1.4 million square feet of office and retail space in Westchester, adjacent to the 405 freeway. The mall was built in 2002.

The Equity Office-Industrious partnership is designed to “meet the growing needs of companies in Southern California, including startups and tech companies,” EQ said in a statement.

Plans call for the new center to house up to 150 companies and draw nearly 6,000 people to work and visit the campus on a daily basis, according to the EQ statement.

EQ also has hired Rios Clementi Hale Studios, the Leimert Park-based architecture firm behind Grand Park in downtown Los Angeles, to design the coworking spaces.

Howard Hughes Center’s owner, Century City-based Laurus Corp., bought the property in 2015 for $111 million and soon afterward announced plans for a $30 million makeover. The mall’s location near Playa Vista is close to the local offices of technology companies such as Alphabet Inc. (Google’s parent) and Facebook Inc.

Rivera to Walker & Dunlop

Walker & Dunlop Inc., a Bethesda, Md.-based lender, has hired Javier Rivera as a senior vice president in its West Los Angeles office to expand its apartment sales efforts on the West Coast.

Rivera joins Walker & Dunlop from Jones Lang LaSalle Inc., where he worked for 11 years as an executive vice president in that firm’s capital markets group. He was responsible for building the JLL’s multifamily sales and finance business in Southern California.

Rivera’s hiring comes at a time of growth for the Walker & Dunlop. The firm grew its apartment sales business by 18 percent to $3 billion in 2017.

“We are thrilled to have Javier joined our investment sales team as we open up our first investment sales office on the West Coast,” said Greg Engler, executive vice president of investment sales for Walker & Dunlop, in a statement.

Staff reporter Ciaran McEvoy can be reached at [email protected] or (323) 556-8337.

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