Condo Price Rising High on Wilshire

Showing confidence in the power of scarcity to support high condominium prices, building owners are aggressively boosting prices of residential units within the canyon of towers on Wilshire Boulevard in Westwood.

In contrast to the weak market for Wilshire condominiums during much of the 1990s, prices increased 10% in the last year for units selling for less than $1 million, according to Lynn Borland, co-owner of Wilshire Realtors, a Los Angeles brokerage. Prices rose 7% on units selling for $1 million or more.

“When you limit the supply and the demand remains constant, prices rise, and that’s what we have here,” said Borland, who has acted as sales agent for several Wilshire Boulevard condominium buildings.

“For the market that we are appealing to, which is the highest end of residential real estate,” he added, “that’s not necessarily a bad effect.”

Buyers have grown more cautious in the days since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and are moving more slowly, Borland said, but prices are holding. Interest rate cuts have kept buyers interested in making deals.

Construction activity on the so-called Golden Mile of Wilshire, where no new mid-rise or high-rise condominiums had been built since the recessionary gloom of 1991, is a sign developers believe in the once-moribund market. Two buildings were completed in the last year, the Venezia and the Grand. Prices at the six-story Venezia, developed by WFS Malcolm Wilshire Partners Ltd., range from $620,000 to $850,000 for the first five floors and as much as $2.2 million for a penthouse. Units at the Grand, a 20-story condo-conversion of the former L’Elysee apartments, are priced from $599,000 to $939,000.

The newest and possibly last residential high-rise on Wilshire Boulevard is the Remington, a 23-story, $100-million building touted by its developer, Miami-based Crescent Heights of America, as the fanciest and most expensive condo complex. Prices in the 93-unit building range from $600,000 for a two-bedroom, two-bath unit to $13 million for a 5,000-square-foot penthouse with three bedrooms and five baths.

The most active developer on the boulevard is Crescent Heights managing principal Bruce Mennin, whose company also created the Grand. He described Los Angeles as an “ideal” city for condo development.

“There is no more land here left to build,” he said. The Remington and the Regatta, a high-rise project that Crescent Heights built last year in Marina del Rey, were “the last two fully entitled high-rise residential sites in the city,” Mennin said.

The Wilshire-Westwood Scenic Corridor Specific Plan, enacted in 1981, restricts the height of future buildings on Wilshire Boulevard to 75 feet, or about six stories, except in cases in which developers obtain special permission. Two sites on Wilshire are exempt from the height limit, according to the Los Angeles Planning Department, and the owner of a third property has obtained permission to build a 14-story condominium complex.

The Wilshire condominium market has experienced a series of pronounced ups and downs. In the early 1990s, a sudden wave of construction came to an abrupt halt, and many projects went into foreclosure after failing to find buyers.

In the last five years, sales have increased steadily. The strong demand for condominiums indicates a growing acceptance of a form of housing that has long been popular in the East but has been slow to gain acceptance in sprawling low-rise Los Angeles. Attitudes have begun to change here.

“When [the condominium tower] was first introduced in L.A., it was a strange product,” Borland said. Friends of people who bought Wilshire condos “would shake their heads and say, ‘You live in one of those?’ ” he recalled.

Today, the high-rise condominium “has arrived,” he said. “You no longer have to explain why you live like you do. Your friends will look up to you for having a Wilshire Boulevard address.”

Wilshire condominiums have four typical types of buyers. The first, Borland said, is “a bicoastal buyer who has a place on the East Coast.” Another is the affluent empty-nester who is trading in a large house for a smaller, comparatively low-maintenance unit. A third is a corporate executive who needs a convenient place to meet and entertain clients in Los Angeles.

Celebrities, who are “very, very security conscious,” are the fourth group, according to Borland, who said some entertainment figures desire buildings manned by 24-hour guards and electronic surveillance.

Developer Mennin is investing heavily in amenities for people accustomed to living well. The Remington will have a library with leather-bound books, a 40-foot indoor-outdoor lap pool and a large reception room with a full catering kitchen for special events. Each condo owner gets space for 30 bottles of wine in a wooden wine cooler on the second level. The building employs around-the-clock guards, valets and porters.

“This is the Bentley of the city,” Mennin said. “It’s not a Mercedes, like the rest of the buildings on Wilshire--good, but not the very best.”

The Remington’s patrician tone extends to the blue-blooded names of its model suites: The penthouses are named the Getty, the Vanderbilt, the Morgan and the Astor; lower-floor layouts include the East Hampton, West Hampton, Cambridge, Windsor, Essex and Ascot.

Amenities have their price, of course. Residents in luxury condo complexes typically pay association dues ranging from $1,800 to $2,500 per month.