Updated September 28, 2026
Written September 2026. A market view carries a date because it stops being true.
Van Nuys is inside the City of Los Angeles, and it is also the broadest multifamily submarket in the Valley — every vintage, every unit size, every buyer profile trades here at some point. That breadth is exactly why "sell now or hold" doesn't have a single Van Nuys answer. A 4-unit 1970s building and a 68-unit 2012-vintage-financed building are both "Van Nuys," and they answer this question differently.
The RSO rewrite. From July 1, 2026, the LA City formula runs at 90% of CPI, 1% floor, 4% ceiling — down from a looser pre-2026 formula. If your Van Nuys building is pre-1978 and your return depends on the annual increase, this reaches you directly.
Insurance. Renewals across Southern California multifamily have run substantially higher over the past two years, with shorter perils lists and, for some owners, non-renewal. It hits net operating income directly, and it doesn't care which Valley submarket you're in.
The cost of debt. Also jurisdiction-indifferent, and the main reason per-door figures moved across every submarket in this record between 2022 and 2024.
The retrofit position. Much of the mid-range Van Nuys stock is the postwar walk-up over open ground-floor parking the LA soft-story ordinance targets. Complete it and you pay the construction cost; leave it undone and the buyer's discount for it reliably exceeds the work.
Measure ULA — a per-building question, not a submarket assumption. Van Nuys per-door figures run among the lower half of this desk's submarkets, so a small or mid-sized building here frequently sits below the $5,400,000 gross-price threshold, while the largest buildings in this record clear it comfortably. Because Van Nuys holds the broadest size range in the Valley, you genuinely have to model your own building rather than borrow an assumption from a neighbor's sale.
Preservation review — the item unique to Van Nuys. Van Nuys is one of only three designated Historic Preservation Overlay Zones in the entire San Fernando Valley. If your parcel sits inside it, exterior work goes through additional review, which narrows your buyer pool by removing the redevelopment buyer outright and complicating a value-add buyer's plan. It costs nothing to check and most owners never do. See Van Nuys is an HPOZ and what it costs to sell a Van Nuys apartment building.
This desk has closed 12 Van Nuys buildings across ten years — 380 units, $62.0 million in aggregate, spanning building sizes from a 4-unit property to a 68-unit property. That range by itself tells you Van Nuys isn't one product.
Two closings on the same corridor illustrate the point. 14024 Oxnard St, a 44-unit building, closed at $7,500,000 in December 2015. Two years later, 13907 Oxnard St, a 50-unit building on the same street, closed at $10,875,000. Adjusted for the extra six units, the per-unit pricing moved meaningfully in that window — consistent with the broader run-up most LA multifamily submarkets saw between 2015 and 2017, and a reminder that even a submarket as broad as Van Nuys had a genuine up-cycle inside this record before the market it's in today.
Van Nuys also carries a civic anchor most Valley submarkets don't: the Van Nuys Courthouse, the Van Nuys Airport, and a concentration of government and administrative employment that gives the submarket a more diverse, more recession-resilient tenant base than a purely residential Valley pocket. That's not a number you can put in a pro forma, but it's part of why the buyer pool here treats Van Nuys as a foundational Valley holding rather than a speculative one.
The honest observation, and the one worth naming directly: nothing in this record has closed since January 2022. The most recent Van Nuys closing was a 5-unit building at $1,110,000. Four straight years without a transaction in a submarket this broad is not proof the market stopped — Van Nuys has always been the "working Valley" submarket where activity happens at every price point across cycles, and a quiet stretch here is different from the same gap in a thin, already-quiet submarket. But it is worth naming honestly rather than assuming the pattern that held from 2012 through 2018 is still the current pattern in 2026. Whether that gap reflects owners waiting out the rate environment, waiting out the RSO rewrite, or simply a coincidence of a broad but thinly-transacting base, an owner deciding whether to sell right now should know they'd be testing a buyer pool that hasn't shown up on this desk's Van Nuys record in a while.
Given the breadth of this submarket, the Van Nuys question isn't "is 2026 good for Van Nuys" — it's genuinely building-specific:
Is your parcel inside the HPOZ? Check it before anything else. It's free, and it changes who you're marketing to.
Where does your building sit on the ULA threshold, given Van Nuys' comparatively lower per-door pricing? A number that would trigger ULA in Sherman Oaks may not trigger it here, and vice versa depending on unit count.
Is the retrofit done? On mid-range stock, this is usually the largest lever an owner controls directly.
Hold if you're outside the HPOZ, your retrofit is handled, and you're comfortable running a rent-stabilized Valley building through a stretch where comparable sales have been scarce. The broadest buyer pool in the Valley doesn't disappear because the last four years have been quiet — it means the next real transaction here doesn't have a lot of recent local comps to lean on, which cuts both ways for a seller.
Sell if the operating burden has outgrown your appetite, or if you're carrying a retrofit you don't intend to complete. At this scale, a building that has stopped being properly managed shows up in the numbers fast, and any buyer who does step forward in this submarket will read those numbers carefully, given how little recent comparable activity they have to go on.
If the numbers point to selling, how to sell an apartment building in Los Angeles walks through pricing, rent law, Measure ULA and the timeline from listing to close.
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Is my Van Nuys building inside the Historic Preservation Overlay Zone?
Confirm it against the city's map before pricing anything — it's one of only three HPOZs in the Valley, most owners never check, and it materially changes your buyer pool if you're inside it.
Why hasn't a Van Nuys building closed in this record since January 2022?
It's an honest gap worth naming rather than explaining away. It may reflect broader rate-environment hesitation, RSO-rewrite uncertainty, or simply the timing of a broad but thin submarket — an owner selling into it now should expect fewer very recent local comps to anchor pricing.
Does Measure ULA apply to most Van Nuys buildings?
Not automatically. Van Nuys per-door pricing runs toward the lower half of this desk's submarkets, so many small and mid-sized buildings sit below the threshold. Larger buildings clear it. Model your specific gross price rather than assuming either outcome.
What makes Van Nuys different from other Valley submarkets?
Breadth. It has the widest range of building vintage, size, and buyer profile of any Valley submarket in this record, which means submarket-wide generalizations are less useful here than almost anywhere else in the Valley.
Michael Sterman is Senior Managing Director Investments at Marcus & Millichap, specializing in Los Angeles multifamily transactions across the San Fernando Valley.
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