Updated August 27, 2026
8 buildings, 100 units, $62.5M. The smallest sample in this record and the highest values in it.
| Year | Closings | Median per unit |
|---|---|---|
| 2016 | 2 | $876,233 |
| 2017 | 1 | $600,000 (one sale) |
| 2022 | 2 | $662,626 |
| 2024 | 1 | $300,000 (one sale) |
| 2025 | 1 | $633,333 (one sale) |
| 2026 | 1 | $351,852 (one sale) |
Most of these years hold a single closing, and each is labeled as one sale rather than presented as a yearly median. With a sample this size, the year-by-year table is a list of transactions, not a price series, and it should be read that way.
That is an honest limit rather than a hedge. Eight buildings cannot describe a market's direction, and a broker who told you otherwise would be selling you a number.
| Building size | Closings | Median per unit | Range |
|---|---|---|---|
| 4–10 units | 4 | $616,667 | $300,000 – $788,889 |
| 11–25 units | 3 | $668,846 | $536,364 – $1,083,619 |
| 26–50 units | 1 | $351,852 (one sale, not a median) | — |
Here the sample supports slightly more. The bands hold four, three and one closing respectively — and the single-sale band is labeled as such and excluded from the machine-readable data attached to this page, because one transaction is not a median.
What the two real bands show is that Santa Monica does not display the strong small-building premium seen in West Hollywood. The eleven-to-twenty-five band prices comparably to the four-to-ten band. In a market where the location commands most of the value, unit count matters less to price per door than it does in submarkets where the building is doing more of the work.
8.42 square miles that cannot grow, hemmed by Los Angeles on three sides and the Pacific on the fourth.
Rent control since 1979 under an elected board, with a registered Maximum Allowable Rent for every unit. That constrains income growth severely — and the values above exist net of that constraint, not in ignorance of it.
No Measure ULA, because Santa Monica is not the City of Los Angeles. At these price levels that is a substantial cost that buyers here do not carry into their exit.
And a buyer pool that includes people buying a location rather than a yield. At over a million dollars a unit on Ocean Avenue, the purchaser is not solving for cap rate.
Do not price your building from this page. Eight closings across a decade, in a city where a block's difference in position changes the answer, cannot produce a comparable for a specific property.
Do price from the Maximum Allowable Rent record. In Santa Monica the registered MAR per unit is the authoritative document and it is more reliable than the rent roll. Where the two disagree, the rent roll is the problem. That reconciliation is the single highest-value preparation available here.
The full record is at the Santa Monica closing record in full.
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