Selling an apartment building in Westlake.
Shaya Lowenstein is a multifamily broker who sells apartment buildings in Westlake, Los Angeles, and holds California DRE license 01942326. Westlake holds 739 multifamily buildings carrying 15,205 apartment units, of which 79% were built in or before 1978 and are therefore generally covered by the Los Angeles Rent Stabilization Ordinance. 30 apartment buildings recorded a sale here in 2024, at a median of $275,000 per unit.
Submarket figures from the Los Angeles County assessment roll, August 2026.
What decides price on these blocks
Westlake carries some of the densest and oldest apartment stock in Los Angeles, nearly all of it rent-stabilized, much of it with tenancies measured in decades. Price per unit here is low against the county and that number by itself tells a seller almost nothing, because the operating reality, the deferred maintenance position and the realistic pace of turnover are what decide value. Soft-story retrofit status is a live question on a lot of this stock and an unresolved retrofit order is a direct deduction from price, not a talking point.
Who buys in Westlake
Experienced local operators who already run buildings in the area and understand the management load, plus long-hold family money. This is not a market for a first multifamily purchase, and a buyer who treats it as one usually does not close.
How I run the sale
I price the building three ways before we talk about listing it: in-place income at today's cap rates, market-rent potential after honest turnover math, and land value if the lot is worth more than the building standing on it. You get the closed comps behind each number and the ones that argue against me. If the answer is that you should refinance or hold, I will say so, and that has happened often enough that I would rather tell you early than spend six months proving it.
Interview other brokers. Give us the same rent roll and the same questions, and check what each of us tells you against the county record before you sign anything.
Before you list
- How to choose a multifamily broker in Los Angeles, including how to verify any broker's sales claims against public records.
- Recorded apartment sales in Westlake, the comps themselves, with dates and prices.
- How brokers actually value an LA apartment building.
- Measure ULA, which applies to sales inside City of Los Angeles limits above the current threshold and is the seller's cost.