Updated August 17, 2026
138 units. $14,500,000. May 2013. $105,072 per unit.
This is the largest single closing by unit count in my record, and its per-unit price is close to the bottom of it. Both facts belong in the same sentence, because the relationship between them is the most useful thing a Valley owner can understand about how large buildings actually trade.
In the same archive, a 21-unit building on Ocean Avenue in Santa Monica cleared $1,083,619 a unit. This one, with more than six times the units, cleared $105,072.
That is a spread of roughly ten to one, inside one county, in the same asset class. It is the single clearest illustration available that "price per unit" as a citywide figure is close to meaningless — and that anyone quoting you an LA average is telling you nothing about your building.
At this scale the analysis changes character. It stops being a real estate purchase and becomes an operating business.
Income, verified, at scale. With 138 units the law of large numbers takes over. Individual tenancies stop mattering; collection rates, vacancy patterns and expense ratios become statistically reliable. A buyer can underwrite this building with far more confidence than a twelve-unit building, and confidence is worth money.
Operating efficiency. On-site management is required and economic at this size. Vendor contracts price better. Fixed costs spread across 138 units instead of twelve. The expense ratio on a building this size is structurally better.
Financing. This is agency territory — Fannie and Freddie multifamily debt, priced better than a small-balance loan, with more lenders competing. Cheaper debt supports a higher price for the same income.
A different buyer pool entirely. Regional private capital, small institutions, and syndicators. These buyers do not look at ten-unit buildings, and the ten-unit buyers cannot finance this one.
Reseda in 2013 was a workforce-housing submarket coming out of the trough, and it still is a workforce-housing submarket. The rents support what the rents support.
But the per-unit figure is also low because the building is large. Big buildings in secondary submarkets trade on yield, and yield-driven buyers pay for income rather than for scarcity. Ocean Avenue is priced on irreplaceability; Reseda Boulevard is priced on cash flow. Those are two different valuation logics, and the per-unit output of each is not comparable to the other.
An owner who benchmarks a 138-unit Valley building against a Westside per-unit figure is comparing a bond to a piece of art.
May 2013. That is at the bottom of the post-financial-crisis recovery, before the run that carried through to 2021. A buyer at $105,072 a unit in 2013 caught the beginning of an eight-year expansion.
Which is worth saying plainly: part of this number is when it closed. Any per-unit figure carries its date, and a 2013 comparable tells a 2026 seller about the market of 2013. The Transaction Index exists precisely so per-unit figures can be read against their submarket and their period rather than in isolation.
Scale changes your buyer pool, and the pool sets your price. If you own something in this range, the marketing has to reach regional capital and small institutions, not only local private buyers. That is a process decision, and it is worth more than a price adjustment.
Verified income is the whole argument at this size. Not upside, not potential — clean, itemised, reconciled operating statements and a rent roll that matches the bank deposits. Large-building buyers underwrite the statements. A thin file costs more here than anywhere.
Do not compare across submarkets on a per-unit basis. Ten to one is the actual spread. A number without its submarket and its date attached is not information.
A comparable transaction today would face a materially different regime. The RSO rewrite caps LA City increases at 4%, against the 8% ceiling in force in 2013. Insurance has repriced hard across the county since the January 2025 fires, and on a 138-unit building that expense line is substantial. And Measure ULA would apply to a $14.5 million sale inside the City at 5.5% of gross price — roughly $797,500 that did not exist in 2013.
None of those existed when this closed. All three would sit in the net sheet now.
The biggest building in my record traded at close to the lowest per-unit price in it, and neither fact reflects on the asset. Large buildings in workforce submarkets are priced on yield and operating efficiency; small buildings in irreplaceable locations are priced on scarcity. Both are rational. What is not rational is applying one submarket's per-unit figure to another building — the honest spread across Los Angeles is about ten to one, and a citywide average conceals all of it.
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