Los Angeles’s Westside housing market was picking up pace in the months just before wildfires turned swaths of the city to ash.
Home sales soared in the final quarter of 2024 compared to the previous year, and the median price climbed for the third straight year to just shy of $2 million, even as a new wave of homes hit the market, according to a report from Douglas Elliman released Thursday.
Home sales in the city’s Westside and Downtown areas were up 28.6% in the fourth quarter compared to a year ago. Sales of both single-family homes and condos had a median price of $1.95 million, up 2.8% from the previous year, and 5.4% from the previous quarter, the data showed.
The data does not reflect the recent and ongoing wildfires that began on Jan. 7 and have decimated parts of Los Angeles, particularly in the Pacific Palisades area.
In the final quarter of last year, Pacific Palisades was the third most expensive neighborhood in L.A.’s Westside, with a median sale price of $3.97 million for single-family homes. Sales volume was up by 24.1% for single-family homes but down 15.1% for condos.
The data provides a benchmark for where the Los Angeles housing market was prior to the disastrous fires, which have killed at least 27 people and destroyed more than 12,000 structures. The fires are expected to impact the housing market far beyond the affected neighborhoods, as thousands of displaced Angelenos will need to find new housing for the short and long term in a strained and unaffordable market.
Prior to the fires, some of the sales uptick was concentrated in the upper tranches of the single-family market, with Beverly Hills and Bel-Air leading in both sales volume and price increases.
In Beverly Hills, the median sales price of a single-family home was up 21.1% to $8.4 million, and sales were up 70% to 46. In the combined Bel-Air and Holmby Hills area, the median sale price was up 33% to $5 million and sales jumped 65% to 21.
The rebound in luxury sales could be due to depressed sales in the previous year, following the implementation of Los Angeles’s “mansion tax” in April 2023. The measure, which applies a progressively higher transfer tax to real estate trades above $5 million, may have initially but temporarily dissuaded affluent home buyers from making a purchase in the city.
Overall, the luxury market—defined as the top 10% of sales—saw prices increase 5.1% for single-family homes to a median of $12 million, while condo prices rose 17.7% to $3.2 million. Sales of luxury single-family homes, which had a threshold of $8.5 million, rose 34% and condo sales rose 20%. New development condos, however, saw both price and sales volume decrease, though that may be due to the type and amount of inventory coming to market.
A popular neighborhood in 2024 was Venice, where sales more than doubled but the price of single-family homes fell by 13.6% relative to the previous year. Other submarkets where prices fell include Santa Monica, Brentwood, West Hollywood and Downtown condos.
