Looking for a Brentwood multifamily broker? Michael Sterman, Senior Managing Director Investments at Marcus & Millichap and founder of the Sterman Multifamily Group, has closed $1.41 billion across 254 Los Angeles apartment building transactions over 14 years — including 2 in Brentwood alone. If you own an apartment building in Brentwood and are weighing a sale, this is the team that prices it against Brentwood's real buyer pool and rules — not a generic LA average.
Brentwood's multifamily market has a specific structural feature that shapes almost every transaction here: a disproportionate share of buildings are held by single owners or single estates that acquired the asset decades ago and have passed it down or held it through a long life stage. The basis is often dramatically below market. The ownership story is often more complex than the title report suggests. And the reason the building is being sold is often not financial but generational. That sets the tone on most Brentwood conversations.
A Brentwood fourplex or eightplex purchased in 1978 or 1985 carries a Prop 13-protected tax basis that has compounded at 2% per year for four decades. The current market value is often six to ten times the assessed value. When the building sells — whether through a deliberate transaction or through estate distribution — the reassessment reset is substantial. For the seller, two practical consequences. First, the buyer's post-reassessment cash-flow model — not the seller's — sets the offer. Second, the specific timing of the sale relative to the owner's estate planning can materially change the tax picture: step-up in basis at death eliminates most of the embedded capital gains, while a sale during lifetime does not. This is not optional planning. On a long-held Brentwood building, the sale-versus-hold-until-death decision is often the single largest variable in the transaction.
UCLA-adjacent professional demand. Highly-rated schools. Proximity to the Westside employment corridor. The VA hospital as a specific local demand anchor. Low vacancy consistently. Walkable commercial spines along San Vicente and Barrington. The pricing floor is high. The pricing ceiling reflects coastal-adjacent Westside premiums. Buildings in Brentwood trade on inventory scarcity and demand durability, not on yield alone.
Value in Brentwood turns on vintage, rent-control status, your in-place rents versus market, and which buyer pool fits your building — not a single neighborhood average. Michael underwrites your specific Brentwood building the way a real buyer will, then tells you what it should bring and how to get there. No obligation.
Request a Free Brentwood Building Evaluation →Westside institutional and private equity buyers with Brentwood or adjacent portfolios. These are sophisticated, disciplined bidders who know the submarket well. High-net-worth individual buyers. Brentwood small multifamily (duplex, triplex, fourplex) attracts HNW individual buyers more than most LA submarkets — coastal-adjacent, school-district-access, and estate-level asset class pulls them in. This is a buyer pool that will sometimes pay above institutional underwriting for specific buildings.
1031 exchangers moving from more regulated core LA submarkets into the Westside. Family offices with Brentwood concentration, typically multi-generational, patient.
A sample of Brentwood apartment buildings Michael Sterman has closed. Each links to the full deal record.
Michael Sterman has spent 14 years specializing exclusively in Los Angeles multifamily, closing 254 transactions worth $1.41 billion. He knows how Brentwood buildings are valued, who buys them, and what it takes to get a clean deal closed here. CA DRE License #01911703.
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