Global buyers are driving up prices as 10-figure listings move into neighborhoods no one would expect (“Who the hell would want to live in funkytown?”), privacy is at a premium, and even relatively puny properties (no pool!) prosper.
Five years ago, back in that idyllic era before the stratospheric explosion of the top of the Los Angeles real estate market, $20 million could afford a buyer a legitimate spread in any number of the city’s highest-end ‘hoods. These days? Not so much.
“With homes going for $50 million behind The Beverly Hills Hotel or $70 million on Hillcrest, what is $20 million anymore?” asks Josh Flagg, real estate agent at Rodeo Realty and star of Bravo’s Million Dollar Listing. “The bottom line is you can’t buy a true estate in Los Angeles for $20 million — by that I mean a home located on an acre of flat land, with the tennis court and all that. Up until the tail end of 2014, you might have been able to. As of now, those days are over.”
Eric Lavey, a former talent agent with William Morris Endeavor and UTA who now is director of estates division at The Agency, seconds the notion: “A few years ago, $25 million or $30 million would have been a huge number, even somewhere like Beverly Park. Now it’s something we’re seeing in a variety of areas — and it doesn’t necessarily guarantee the kind of sprawling compound you’d think of when you consider that number.”
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