Small lots. Remember those?
At one time in the not-too-distant past, the City of Los Angeles placed priority on mechanisms that would encourage the production of “attainable” (relative term) for sale/ownership form typologies of housing. Though it’s not that the small lot “SLO” ordinance doesn’t technically exist anymore, it’s just that in practice its viable use cases have dramatically diminished due to general site scarcity and added layers of governance which have eviscerated the economic viably of this form of housing production at any reasonable consistency or scale. For instance, if you want to demolish a duplex to build five SLO homes you will most likely be shouldered with at least one low income SLO (SB8). This, alone, eliminates most mid/small market SLO projects from remote consideration in favor of mechanisms enabling greater density extractions which have led solely to rental housing entitlement and production. We won’t belabor philosophy on the benefits of having more LA residents of younger generations becoming owners of their own home IN ADDITION to creating more rental housing.
The subject project was one Evanisko had originally listed in 2022 (after Evanisko sold the site to the Seller circa 2019). After slight price drops to stimulate interest, we lost the listing to Marcus & Millichap for a 6+ month stint.
A contractor with whom we had formed a relationship with wanting to break into development for themselves maintained communication with us on this project and we were able to represent both sides at the appropriate time. Still, the deal required substantial adjustments to terms along the way to allow for an alignment of timing between capital willingness and capital availability. A special thanks to Beachrock Capital who arranged construction financing as well as the Sellers and Buyer for maintaining a focus that enabled the bumps in the road to be traversed over the long escrow.
As the considerations required to traverse local planning and permitting actions continue to convolute, Evanisko is the urban land broker best poised to facilitate the transaction of urban land in Los Angeles though a unique concurrency of marketing acumen, land use expertise, and multiple cycles of successful transactional experience closing deals.
