Own a building here? Toluca Lake multifamily broker — Michael Sterman’s closing record, comparables and process →
Toluca Lake is a small LA-region neighborhood straddling LA City and Burbank, known for residential character and historic entertainment-industry residents. Most of the Toluca Lake postal area falls within LA City.
This is the one submarket in this record where the boundary question is not academic: Toluca Lake is a Los Angeles neighborhood, but portions of it extend into the City of Burbank. Burbank is a separate municipality with its own rules, and Los Angeles rent stabilization does not reach across that line. Two buildings a few streets apart, both correctly advertised as Toluca Lake, can therefore sit under entirely different rent regimes. Before anything else about an address here — before comps, before underwriting — establish which city it is in. The neighborhood covers 1.22 square miles, about twelve miles northwest of downtown, bounded by Universal City to the south, Studio City to the west, North Hollywood to the north and Burbank to the east. This is not the only neighborhood in this record whose name spans a city line: which city actually governs your building.
Small and affluent. The 2000 census counted 7,782 residents, an estimate for 2008 put it at 8,563, with a median household income of $73,111 and 48.4% of adults holding four-year degrees. That is a different renter from the East Valley submarkets in this record, and the per-door figures on the closings page reflect it — though with only a handful of closings here, and a spread between the highest and lowest of nearly three to one, this is a submarket where the sample is too small to average and each sale has to be read on its own terms.
Affluent professional-class demographic with significant entertainment-industry residency (the neighborhood has been a longtime entertainment-industry residential pocket since Bob Hope established residence here in 1937).
A thin, uneven market. The buildings that trade here run from a handful of units into the forties, and the per-unit figures on the closings page vary more than a small sample can explain. That is worth saying plainly rather than smoothing over: with this few closings, spanning a decade, in a neighborhood split across two municipalities and two very different building types, an average per-door number for Toluca Lake would be a statistic without a meaning. The size bands and the individual sales are the honest way to read it.
For what that looks like in practice: the 4 Toluca Lake apartment buildings in our own closed record run from 5 to 40 units, with a median of 19. See every one of them →
The neighborhood was laid out in the 1920s around a private lake and a golf course, and the single-family fabric reflects that origin. The apartment stock came later and sits on the edges, particularly toward Ventura Boulevard and the North Hollywood side: postwar walk-ups and mid-century blocks, with newer infill where lots have been assembled. Because the LA City portion follows the ordinary rent-stabilization rule, a certificate of occupancy dated before 1 October 1978 governs the rent roll — but only for the buildings on the Los Angeles side of the boundary.
| Building | Year | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| Toluca Lake | 1923 | A six-acre private body of water with an asphalt concrete bottom four inches thick, originally fed by artesian springs and now maintained by community wells. Owned by the surrounding homeowners and managed since 1934 by the Toluca Lake Property Owners Association. It is completely inaccessible to and hidden from the public, which is exactly why the name carries the cachet it does. |
| Lakeside Golf Club | 1924 | Course designed by Max Behr. Along with the lake, it is the reason the neighborhood's street pattern and lot sizes are what they are. |
No Historic Preservation Overlay Zone covers the neighborhood. The lake itself is the closest thing to a preservation regime here, and it is private rather than public: it is owned by the homeowners whose properties surround it and managed by their association, not by the city. Individual buildings can still carry their own designation, so confirm any address against the relevant city's records — remembering that for part of this neighborhood the relevant city is Burbank, not Los Angeles.
Adjacent to Burbank's entertainment-industry core. Riverside Drive commercial corridor. Residential-dominated.
Bus service along Riverside Drive. Primary freeway access via the 134 and 101.
No rail station lies inside the neighborhood. Its position is its transport advantage: it sits among the studios — Universal City immediately south, Warner Bros. and Disney in Burbank to the east — which is why it has drawn entertainment-industry residents since the 1930s and why its tenant base is tied to studio employment rather than to a commute downtown.
LAUSD (LA-side) and Burbank Unified (Burbank-side).
Toluca Lake Elementary School is at 4840 Cahuenga Boulevard. Toluca Crossroads School, which is private, is next door at 4814 Cahuenga Boulevard.
Toluca Lake (private residential lake), Lakeside Golf Club, Toluca Lake Village commercial strip.
Griffith Park (adjacent), the LA River (adjacent), Lakeside Golf Club (private), Toluca Lake itself (private residential lake).
| Park | What is there |
|---|---|
| Lakeside Golf Club | Private, but the open space shapes the density and the light across the neighborhood's core. |
Riverside Drive hosts Toluca Lake's boutique restaurants, the Toluca Lake Village commercial strip, and neighborhood-serving retail.
| Institution | Since | Detail |
|---|---|---|
| Toluca Lake Property Owners Association | 1934 | The nonprofit that has managed the lake since 1934. An unusual arrangement worth understanding: the neighborhood's defining amenity is privately held and privately maintained, which means it cannot be opened up, built on, or taken away by a change in city policy. |
Toluca Lake Chamber of Commerce community events, holiday tree-lighting events on Riverside Drive.
Bob Hope lived in Toluca Lake from 1937 until his death in 2003. The neighborhood has been associated with entertainment-industry residency across multiple generations — a result of proximity to Burbank, Universal, and Disney production facilities.
Represented by the Greater Toluca Lake Neighborhood Council on the Los Angeles side. The portion that lies within Burbank is governed by the City of Burbank instead, which is a further practical reason to establish which side of the line an address falls on.
Developed in the 1920s around the private Toluca Lake. Strong entertainment-industry residency pattern since Bob Hope made his home here in 1937.
| Year | What happened |
|---|---|
| 1893 | The Toluca post office is established and the Southern Pacific Railroad opens a station. |
| 1923 | Investors develop the land as Toluca Lake Park, later shortened to Toluca Lake. |
| 1924 | Max Behr designs the Lakeside golf course. |
| 1934 | The Toluca Lake Property Owners Association, a nonprofit, takes over management of the lake — the arrangement still in place today. |
| 1938 | The Los Angeles River is paved, cutting off the natural water sources that had fed the lake. |
Every figure below is computed from the Sterman Multifamily Group’s own closed record in Toluca Lake — not from a market report. Price per door falls as buildings get bigger, which is why this is banded by size rather than given as one number: comparing a six-unit building to a forty-unit building on price per unit compares two different products. Across all 4 closings the median is $337,625 per unit.
| Building size | Closings | Median per unit | Range per unit |
|---|---|---|---|
| 4–10 units | 1 | $264,000 (one sale, not a median) | — |
| 11–25 units | 2 | $470,456 | $239,722 – $701,190 |
| 26–50 units | 1 | $411,250 (one sale, not a median) | — |
The largest closing in the Toluca Lake record is 10656 Moorpark St at $16,450,000 (40 units); the smallest is 4428 Moorpark Way at $1,320,000 (5 units). The record here runs from 2013 to 2023, and the busiest single year was 2023 with 1 closings.
How these figures are calculated, and what we do not claim →
These are the 26 Los Angeles submarkets where the group has closed the most buildings, on our own record rather than a published index. The spread is the reason a citywide per-unit figure is close to useless for pricing a specific building.
| Submarket | Buildings | Units | Median per unit | Size range |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hollywood | 24 | 562 | $282,589 | 3–75 |
| Koreatown | 21 | 465 | $158,958 | 4–96 |
| West Hollywood | 21 | 206 | $354,286 | 2–22 |
| Sherman Oaks | 17 | 349 | $237,708 | 6–47 |
| Palms | 13 | 337 | $296,875 | 7–118 |
| Glendale | 12 | 224 | $258,854 | 5–92 |
| Van Nuys | 12 | 380 | $171,801 | 4–68 |
| North Hollywood | 11 | 191 | $271,429 | 5–46 |
| Santa Monica | 8 | 100 | $616,667 | 3–27 |
| Reseda | 8 | 506 | $156,639 | 10–138 |
| West Los Angeles | 6 | 62 | $575,000 | 7–16 |
| Hancock Park | 6 | 129 | $230,519 | 7–35 |
| Los Feliz | 5 | 123 | $225,000 | 6–48 |
| Panorama City | 5 | 178 | $135,849 | 22–53 |
| Fairfax | 5 | 31 | $425,000 | 3–13 |
| Burbank | 4 | 47 | $298,917 | 10–15 |
| Toluca Lake | 4 | 84 | $337,625 | 5–40 |
| Mid-City | 4 | 26 | $256,458 | 6–8 |
| Valley Village | 4 | 81 | $263,472 | 9–34 |
| Pacoima | 4 | 282 | $153,691 | 52–100 |
| Silverlake | 3 | 38 | $243,333 | 10–16 |
| Venice | 3 | 30 | $425,000 | 3–17 |
| Mar Vista | 3 | 21 | $354,167 | 5–10 |
| Studio City | 3 | 51 | $322,857 | 5–39 |
| Tarzana | 3 | 266 | $229,661 | 30–118 |
| Winnetka | 3 | 90 | $250,000 | 12–52 |
The place facts on this page — founding dates, acreages, opening years, boundaries — were checked against these sources on 2026-09-09. The closing figures are computed from the group’s own transaction archive. Where two sources disagreed on a number, the claim is stated only to the level both support.
This is the one submarket in this record where the boundary question is not academic: Toluca Lake is a Los Angeles neighborhood, but portions of it extend into the City of Burbank. Burbank is a separate municipality with its own rules, and Los Angeles rent stabilization does not reach across that line. Two buildings a few streets apart, both correctly advertised as Toluca Lake, can therefore sit under entirely different rent regimes.
Small and affluent. The 2000 census counted 7,782 residents, an estimate for 2008 put it at 8,563, with a median household income of $73,111 and 48.4% of adults holding four-year degrees.
The neighborhood was laid out in the 1920s around a private lake and a golf course, and the single-family fabric reflects that origin. The apartment stock came later and sits on the edges, particularly toward Ventura Boulevard and the North Hollywood side: postwar walk-ups and mid-century blocks, with newer infill where lots have been assembled. Because the LA City portion follows the ordinary rent-stabilization rule, a certificate of occupancy dated before 1 October 1978 governs the rent roll — but only for the buildings on the Los Angeles side of the boundary.
No Historic Preservation Overlay Zone covers the neighborhood. The lake itself is the closest thing to a preservation regime here, and it is private rather than public: it is owned by the homeowners whose properties surround it and managed by their association, not by the city.
Across the 4 Toluca Lake buildings in the Sterman Multifamily Group’s own closed record, the median is $337,625 per unit, on buildings ranging from 5 to 40 units. Price per door falls as buildings get larger, so the figure for a specific building depends on its size, vintage and in-place rents.
Toluca Lake is a small-scale residential submarket with limited multifamily inventory. The buildings that do exist trade at premium pricing relative to neighboring Valley submarkets because of the neighborhood's residential character and entertainment-industry demand.
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