Hey, Ben here.
There are five hand-painted billboards standing in the pine grove at Barnsdall right now with poems on them. Nobody asked for that, and I am glad it happened anyway.
That is roughly the shape of the month. A few things you can walk up to and look at, and one piece of news about Vermont Avenue that has been ten years coming and is about to turn into orange cones.
Here's what’s inside.
- Neighborhood Happenings: The park gets busy after the 18th
- What’s Going Up: Vermont just got $150 million
- How’s The Market?: How long it takes to sell what is standing
- On the Table: Anchovy toast… Don’t knock it ‘til you try it
- Ben’s Picks: Four houses, four different arguments
What the Park and the Gallery Are Doing
September on this side of town is mostly one park putting in overtime. Two of the three below sit inside Griffith Park and the third is ten minutes down Hollywood Boulevard. All three run on a schedule rather than for one night only, which for once makes them easy to plan around.
Susan Silton: Diving into the Wreck
The Municipal Art Gallery at Barnsdall opened the first major survey of Susan Silton's work, over 150 pieces of installation, photography, video, audio and text pulled from four decades. Free, Thursday through Sunday, 11:00 AM to 4:00 PM. The part you can see without going inside is out front: Silton commissioned a group of Los Angeles poets and had their new work painted onto five billboards standing among the pine trees on the lawn. Barnsdall has used billboards to say things since Aline Barnsdall owned the hill, so this is the park doing what it has always done.
- Location: Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery, 4800 Hollywood Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90027
- Date: On view now, Thursday to Sunday, 11:00 AM to 4:00 PM
- Details: Free · Exhibition details
Love Letters to L.A., the Autry Block Party
The Autry's one big outdoor day of the year lands on Saturday the 26th, 10:00 AM to 5:00 PM, with programming spread across the museum grounds at the top of the park. It is the day that building turns itself inside out, and it is close enough to Los Feliz and Atwater that you can do three hours and be home before anybody needs a nap. Admission and the full schedule are on the event page.
- Location: Autry Museum, 4700 Western Heritage Way, Los Angeles, CA 90027
- Date: Saturday, September 26th, 10:00 AM to 5:00 PM
- Details: Programme and admission
It is a full evening rather than a walk-through, so budget accordingly. The other thing worth knowing if you live on this side of the park: Crystal Springs Drive carries a lot more traffic on event nights than it does the rest of the year. That is the sort of detail you learn in your first autumn of owning nearby and forget to mention to anyone after that.
- Location: Old Zoo, Griffith Park, 4730 Crystal Springs Drive, Los Angeles, CA 90027
- Date: Select nights, September 18th through November 1st
- Details: Dates and tickets
Worth a Follow
I cannot fit everything happening across the city into this, and there is a team that does that job really well. Camber puts out a weekly rundown of what is going on in LA, and the current one ranges wide:
- Pancakes from a Hamptons bakery, touring four LA restaurants over four days
- Weekly line dancing, newly started on the Westside
- Two seafood kitchens collaborating on Japanese inspired pizza
- Comedy in the backyard at Spoke Bicycle Cafe in Frogtown
- One bar turning itself into a ten seat omakase counter for a single night
Dates move and the good ones sell out, so take it as a starting point rather than a schedule.
The Busiest Bus Line in the City Finally Gets Its Lanes
Metro just landed $150 million in federal funding for the Vermont Avenue bus rapid transit line, announced this week by Senators Padilla and Schiff. It is the maximum the Federal Transit Administration's small starts programme allows. Local money has been sitting there since 2016, when county voters passed Measure M.
The project runs 12.4 miles of Vermont from Hollywood Boulevard in Los Feliz down to 120th Street, with dedicated side-running bus lanes and 26 stops. Metro said in May that work would start over the summer, and heavy roadway work is expected in late 2026, which is now. That stretch of Vermont already carries roughly 36,000 transit trips a day and is the busiest bus route in the entire Metro network. The projection after the lanes go in is 66,000 daily riders and a trip that drops from 70 minutes to 53. Rail on the same corridor is still on the table and still unfunded until 2067, so nobody reading this will make a purchase decision on it.
Why it matters here: the northern terminus is our end of Vermont. If you own between Hollywood and Sunset, expect construction on the boulevard through next year, and expect the lane count for cars to change permanently once it is done. Longer term, a station within walking distance is the kind of thing that shows up in the price of a two-bedroom well before it shows up in anyone's daily routine. If you are holding a small building near Vermont, this is the single most useful thing that has happened to your address in a decade.
The Whole Board Tightened
Fresh pull, September 20th, covering the prior thirty days. Same number as last month: months of inventory, because it moved and it moved in one direction.
Houses tightened everywhere. Los Feliz clears in about 3.7 months, 90039 in 3.8, 90026 in 3.9. Four weeks ago, those three sat between 4.7 and 5.3. Sales counts went up in all three ZIPs while active inventory barely moved, which is the combination that does this.
One number worth not misreading. The 90026 average sale price jumped from $1.52M to $2.05M, which looks like a thirty-five percent move until you notice price per foot came in at $970 for the second month running, to the dollar. Buyers there bought more houses, not more expensive houses. Average sale price tells you what sold. Price per foot tells you what it cost.
Small buildings are still the slow lane, though less so than they were. 90026 sits near 9.2 months on 2- to 4-unit product and 90039 around 6.3, both improved from a month ago.
If you are starting to run the numbers on multifamily, I built a cap rate calculator to make that part easier.
Los Feliz is the exception, and it is now a pattern rather than a month. Eleven small buildings are standing, and not one has closed, which makes two consecutive thirty-day windows with nothing trading at all. Activity went up over the same stretch. Buyers and sellers: there are not many closings.
Condos are uneven. Los Feliz closed six at $781 a foot, under four months of supply. 90039 closed three. 90026 closed one, which is not a reading.
90027 · Los Feliz · last 30 days
- Single-family: $2,829,059 avg · $1,045/sq ft · 15 sold · 55 active
- Condos: $745,625 avg · $781/sq ft · 6 sold · 22 active
- 2 to 4 units: no closed sales · 11 active · no absorption
90026 · Silver Lake & Echo Park · last 30 days
- Single-family: $2,048,417 avg · $970/sq ft · 12 sold · 47 active
- Condos: $475,000 avg · $469/sq ft · 1 sold · 9 active
- 2 to 4 units: $1,021,400 avg · $443/sq ft · 5 sold · 46 active
90039 · Silver Lake & Atwater · last 30 days
- Single-family: $1,725,800 avg · $1,065/sq ft · 10 sold · 38 active
- Condos: $1,458,333 avg · $751/sq ft · 3 sold · 13 active
- 2 to 4 units: $1,072,000 avg · $693/sq ft · 3 sold · 19 active
None of these averages know anything about your block, your condition, or your floor plan. Tell me the nearest corner and I will put together a free Comparative Market Analysis priced to where the market actually sits this month.
A Room on Hillhurst That Knows Exactly What It Is
Vandell is small, which on Hillhurst is the whole trick. It comes from the Park Hospitality group behind Donna's in Echo Park, with Vay Su and Shawn Lickliter running the bar, and it is open daily from 5:00 PM to 1:00 AM.
The cocktail list is organised by what you are in the mood for rather than by base spirit, which I appreciated more than I expected to. The Smoked Tomato is the one people talk about, mezcal with smoked tomato, basil, ginger and a lime leaf salt. There is a proper zero proof section too, including a pandan milk punch, so the person driving is not stuck with soda water.
Food is bar food that took itself seriously. Anchovy toast on country sourdough, hamachi crudo with a carrot leche de tigre, an Australian wagyu burger, steak frites with chimichurri. Go on a weeknight before nine if you want to sit at the bar and actually talk.
- Location: 1966 Hillhurst Ave, Los Angeles, CA 90027
- Time: Daily, 5:00 PM to 1:00 AM
- Link: Menu and hours
What You Are Actually Paying the Premium For
Four houses came on in the last two weeks, and every one of them is asking for more than its ZIP averages per foot. For redone houses, that is normal, and it is not the interesting part. What matters is where each premium is attached, because that decides how long it holds.
Location: 1847 Fanning Street, Los Angeles 90026
4 Bed | 5 Bath | 3,561 Sq Ft | Built 1964
Perella Architecture reworked this one above the Reservoir, and the water is in view from the main level and the primary suite. Vaulted ceilings, pocket doors that open the living space onto the deck, four en suite bedrooms. Read the square footage twice: 3,561 is the permitted total including the garage, and living space is 3,230. That gap changes the per-foot math more than most people expect.
Location: 1545 N Benton Way, Los Angeles 90026
4 Bed | 5 Bath | 2,678 Sq Ft | Built 1932
Spanish, 1932, reworked without stripping out the reason anyone wanted it. Arched openings, a fireplace in the living room, Thermador kitchen with Taj Mahal quartzite, a bath for every bedroom. The real money is outside: pool, built-in barbecue, mature avocado tree, detached ADU, all on a lot nearly double the land under anything else on this page. That lot is the whole argument, and it is the most expensive per foot here.
Location: 1000 Myra Avenue, Los Angeles 90029
3 Bed | 3 Bath | 1,513 Sq Ft | Built 1908
Architect Susan Nwankpa expanded a 1908 house in the Silver Lake hills, cedar-clad outside and vaulted inside. La Cornue range, custom millwork, a loft tucked upstairs, a primary window looking straight into the garden. Outside there is a private deck with an outdoor shower and terraced gardens threaded with hillside paths. Note the ZIP: 90029 sits outside the three I track above, so nothing in my table prices it.
Location: 4016 Cumberland Avenue, Los Angeles 90027
3 Bed | 2 Bath | 1,575 Sq Ft | Built 1922
Franklin Hills, the pocket where Los Feliz and Silver Lake stop arguing about where the line is. Two bedrooms and a bath in the main house, plus a separate guesthouse with its own bedroom and a Tadelakt bath. New Marvin windows down the west wall frame the Observatory and the Hollywood Sign, with a deck off the back set up for the same view. Smallest premium of the four, and the guesthouse is most of it.
Any of these worth a closer look? Send me the address, and I will tell you what I would check first.
A Date Worth Putting in the Calendar
If your fire coverage runs through the California FAIR Plan, the state approved an average rate increase of 29.1 percent effective October 15. It applies to any policy renewing or written on or after that date, and it reaches more than 675,000 policyholders. The plan had originally filed for 35.8 percent.
Average is doing a lot of work in that sentence. Individual policies land above and below it, so the number on your renewal will not be the number in the headline.
Los Feliz, Silver Lake and Echo Park all contain hillside areas inside the City's Very High Fire Hazard Severity Zone. Worth confirming where your own address falls before renewal comes around, and worth shopping the voluntary market again first. If you are buying this fall, get a quote before your contingencies come off.
Thanks for making space for this each month.
The billboards come down when the show does. The bus lanes will still be half built a year from now. Almost everything that changes around here moves at one of those two speeds, and knowing which one you are looking at is most of the job before you make a decision on it.
Something on your block finally moving, or still not moving? Send it over.
Talk soon,
Ben
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