Can I sell my apartment building myself without a broker?
Yes, and for some sellers it is the right call: if you already have a buyer, if you are selling to a family member or a sitting partner, or if the building is small and the price is not in dispute, a real estate attorney and an escrow company can do everything that actually has to happen. What you are buying with a commission is not paperwork. It is the buyer pool, the pricing judgment, and somebody whose job is to hold the price together when the inspection report arrives. On a building where value is genuinely contested, which in Los Angeles means almost any rent-stabilized property, that is usually worth more than it costs.
Answered by Shaya Lowenstein, a Los Angeles multifamily broker at Lyon Stahl Investment Real Estate, CA DRE 01942326, with 15 years in apartment buildings and land across Los Angeles County. His closed sales are published with addresses and recording dates, so anything claimed here can be checked against the county record.
Start typing the address. The answer comes from the county roll and the city ordinance, on this page, free, with no email required.
When selling it yourself is straightforward.
There is a real category here and brokers are not honest about it often enough. If the buyer already exists, if the price is already agreed, or if this is a transfer between partners, family members or related entities, then the transaction is a legal and escrow exercise rather than a marketing one, and paying a percentage of the price for marketing you do not need makes no sense. A transactional attorney and a good escrow officer will handle the purchase agreement, the disclosures, the title work and the closing. Some brokers will also do this on a flat fee, which is worth asking about before you assume the choice is all or nothing.
What actually goes wrong when owners sell alone.
Two things, and neither is paperwork. The first is pricing. An LA apartment building has an in-place value, a market-rent value and sometimes a land value, and an owner who has held the building for twenty years generally anchors on what the units earn today, which is the lowest of the three. Underpricing does not look like a mistake, because the building sells quickly and everyone is pleased. The second is the renegotiation. Every buyer comes back after due diligence, and an owner sitting across from a professional buyer with no comparable offer in hand and no one else at the table has very little to say. The money is not lost in the commission. It is lost in the last two weeks of escrow.
The buyer pool is the thing you cannot recreate.
Most LA apartment buildings do not sell to whoever saw the sign. They sell to a relatively small group of people who buy in that submarket repeatedly, and reaching them is the actual service. An owner listing alone can reach the buyers who are already looking. What they cannot easily do is reach the 1031 buyer three weeks from a deadline who will pay a premium for certainty, or the owner two blocks over who has wanted that building for a decade and did not know it was available. Those two account for a disproportionate share of the sales that close above expectation.
EDUCATIONAL ONLY, NOT LEGAL OR TAX ADVICE. RATES, THRESHOLDS AND ORDINANCES CHANGE, AND SEVERAL OF THE FIGURES HERE DEPEND ON FACTS SPECIFIC TO YOU. CONFIRM ANYTHING YOU PLAN TO ACT ON WITH YOUR OWN ATTORNEY OR CPA, OR WITH THE AGENCY THAT SETS IT.
How much do I actually save by selling without a broker?
Less than the commission, because a buyer who knows you are unrepresented will usually expect part of that saving to come to them, and because most unrepresented sellers still end up paying the buyer's agent. The honest comparison is not the commission against zero. It is your net after commission with a competitive process against your net without one, and the second number is the one nobody measures because there is nothing to compare it to.
Can I just use an attorney instead?
For the legal work, yes, and you should have one either way. An attorney drafts and reviews, protects you on disclosure and handles the structure. What an attorney does not do is price the building, run a marketing process, or maintain competitive tension between buyers. Those are different jobs and hiring one does not cover the other.
What disclosures do I have to make selling an LA apartment building?
More than most owners expect, and the rent-regulated ones are where sellers get caught: the rent roll and its accuracy, RSO registration status and the registered rents, any outstanding LAHD or SCEP orders, soft-story retrofit status, pending buyout or eviction proceedings, and any Ellis Act history, which constrains what the buyer can do for years. Get this wrong and the exposure survives the closing. Whether or not you use a broker, have an attorney review the disclosure package.
SHAYA LOWENSTEIN · LYON STAHL INVESTMENT REAL ESTATE · DRE #01942326 · (323) 944-2221