L.A. Tops Western Rental Market
Metropolitan Los Angeles remained the West’s tightest and most expensive apartment market during the fourth quarter while also posting the second-biggest rent increase, analysts said Wednesday. During the year’s final quarter it cost an average $1,450 a month to rent an apartment in the Los Angeles/Long Beach area, the Pasadena Star-News reported. The occupancy rate was 96 percent, the highest of 29 western markets tracked by Novato-based RealFacts. At $1,359, the San Francisco Bay Area has the second-highest rents. The report is based on 11,450 investment-grade, market-rate rental communities of 100 units or larger.
L.A. County Office Vacancies Down, Rents Up
L.A. County’s office market tightened further during last year’s fourth quarter as business expansions pushed vacancy rates down and rents up, according to data released Wednesday. The average vacancy rate fell to 12.3 percent from 14.8 percent a year earlier, while monthly asking rents ticked up 5 cents to $2.11 a square foot, real estate brokerage Cushman & Wakefield said. Westside vacancy dropped to 9.2 percent from 13.3 percent a year earlier, and average rents climbed 10 cents to $2.73, the Los Angeles Times reported. In downtown, vacancy was 14.3 percent in the fourth quarter, down from almost 17 percent a year earlier. Asking rents were up 8 cents to $2.15.
Accord Increases Airport Plan Cost
A settlement agreement that ended the lawsuits over former Mayor James Hahn’s defunct plan for LAX will require the airport agency to spend $7.8 million more than if it had not been sued, officials said Wednesday. The vast majority of environmental initiatives promised in the $328 million LAX settlement reached with El Segundo, Culver City, Inglewood, L.A. County and a community group would have been carried out even if their lawsuits had not been filed, albeit much more slowly, Copley News Service reported. More than 97 percent of the settlement’s measures had been planned by the airport agency, and some will now be accelerated so that communities can use the money more quickly.
Mega-Ships Push Port to Cargo Record
Cargo surged into and out of the Port of Long Beach in record numbers in 2005, buoyed by the increasing use by China and other Asian traders of giant ships with the capacity to carry 8,000 or more import-stuffed containers each. The mega-ships visited Long Beach more than 200 times last year, and helped drive a 16 percent increase in the number of containers processed at the port during 2005, compared with the year prior. Last year was a record-breaker also, with the equivalent of 6.7 million 20-foot cargo containers processed, the Long Beach Press-Telegram reported. Asian ports account for 85 to 90 percent of the imports to the Long Beach facility, with about 50 percent originating from China.
UC Regents Act to Tighten Oversight of Managers’ Pay
University of California regents, stung by recent criticism from legislators for extravagance in the university’s executive compensation practices, took steps Wednesday to increase their oversight and begin to standardize salary levels for top UC managers. The regents gave preliminary approval to a plan that would allow them to keep a closer eye on severance agreements given to departing executives. The new policy would require all such packages worth $100,000 or more to be approved by the regents, the Los Angeles Times reported. The Board of Regents is also considering a plan to revise the salary structure for about 300 top UC employees. Under the current system, regents must approve salaries for those earning more than $168,000 a year. UC officials say that procedure is inefficient.
Writers on Low-Budget Films to Get Guild Pay
The Writers Guild of America said it was extending union pay and benefits for the first time to writers of low-budget feature documentaries. The contract is aimed at writers of films with budgets of less than $1.2 million. Affecting about 100 writers, the agreement allows producers to partially defer compensation to the documentary writers who are not also employed as directors or producers. Documentaries have been increasing in popularity, with more than 130 documentaries released in 2005, up 90 percent from 2002, the Los Angeles Times reported.
