Real Estate Industry Los Angeles County

Despite the cooling national economy, Pasadena real estate developers and commercial property owners are betting the city's diverse business base will support what is one of the hottest building booms underway in Southern California. The historic city seems well-positioned to absorb the completion of new office buildings and a major new retail and entertainment project, the $200-million Paseo Colorado.

The downtown Los Angeles and Westside office markets switched their long-running roles during the fourth quarter, with the downtown market improving and the Westside market turning in an uncharacteristically poor performance attributed to the "dot-com" shakeout. The downtown market filled nearly 365,000 square feet more office space than it emptied during the quarter, while the Westside emptied almost 472,000 square feet more space than it filled, Cushman Realty Corp. reported.

A decade after the long recession first hit the Southland, the annual median home price in Los Angeles County last year blasted past its pre-recession high to a record $199,000, according to a survey released Tuesday. Throughout last year, the nation's largest housing market pushed up prices--three times--to record monthly levels and ended up with a 6% gain over the previous year, according to DataQuick Information Systems Inc., a La Jolla research firm.

The question of whether plush corporate housing is an apartment complex or a hotel in disguise will be decided in Santa Monica as the developer readies another property he calls "a Ritz-Carlton you live in."

The market for industrial real estate in the San Fernando and Santa Clarita valleys remains strong, according to the 8th Annual Market Review and Forecast by the American Industrial Real Estate Assn. Last year, more than 6.5 million square feet of industrial space was leased or sold in the region. In the Santa Clarita area, lease rates and sales prices rose over 7% due to a 3% vacancy rate.

The highly acclaimed work of Los Angeles architect Scott Johnson and his colleagues ranges from mansions in Malibu to bank branches in Beijing. But the 50-year-old Johnson is best known in the skyscraper business, and his most recent creation is about to start construction: the 35-story MGM Tower. When completed in 2003, it will be Johnson's third Century City skyscraper and the first major new high-rise to be completed in the city of Los Angeles in more than a decade.

Commercial real estate service firms and developers are sharpening their focus on the Los Angeles South Bay, where two companies have opened commercial brokerage offices in recent weeks, a real estate investment trust has announced one of the region's most extensive office renovation projects and some of L.A. County's largest industrial building projects are underway.

The region's housing market paused last month as home sales in Los Angeles and Orange counties declined from year-earlier levels, according to a report Wednesday. But prices of all kinds of homes grew robustly in February, and analysts generally viewed the drop-off in sales--7% in Los Angeles County and 21% in Orange County--as a one-month blip partly attributed to low inventories.

The owners of Santa Monica's Arboretum Gateway, one of the city's newest office buildings, on Thursday announced the sale of the six-story structure to an affiliate of the investment firm Lazard Freres. Company officials declined to reveal a purchase price, but people familiar with the deal say it was about $80 million. The buyer, Commonwealth Atlantic Properties Inc. of Washington, paid about $400 a square foot--one of the largest amounts ever for a major Los Angeles area office building.

Surging Southern California home prices last month set a new high in Los Angeles County and matched a record in Orange County, surprising analysts who expected the softening economy to slow the rising cost of housing. The median price for a Los Angeles County home shot up 13.5% to $218,000 in March over the same month last year, according to a report released Tuesday by DataQuick Information Systems Inc., a La Jolla research firm. It was the largest year-to-year monthly increase since 1989.