Now that Silver Lake's transformation into a hip, upperclass neighborhood is complete, homebuyers are apparently headed east, snatching up properties in the transforming-before-our-very-eyes neighborhood of Echo Park, according to Redfin's December 2015 housing report. Median prices for housing in Echo Park continued to rise last month, and were up 25.3 percent over the year before, to $813,000. That's also an increase of $77,100 since only September 2015, and is more than $282,000 more than Echo Park's median price in 2014. The overall number of sales in the neighborhood is up 40 percent too. For the love of pete, if you want a hip, happenin' home in Echo Park, better do it now, or five years ago.
Other eastish neighborhoods like Eagle Rock, East LA, and Mount Washington, are all in high demand too—all three of those neighborhoods are seeing housing selling above asking price. Over in Glassell Park, housing sales jumped more than 130 percent in the past year, with homes staying on the market for an average of just seven days.
And fresh off its hard-fought victory over Pacoima in the 2015 Curbed Cup for LA's Neighborhood of the Year, West Adams is also making a lot of noise in the housing market. The neighborhood has seen its median housing price jump 27 percent since last year, coming in now at $525,000. That's still "affordable" in LA terms, though it might not stay that way for long. Buyers in West Adams are paying, on average, 2 percent above the asking price of homes in the neighborhood. 2015 Curbed Cup runner up, Pacoima, can take some of the sting away from it's loss with the information that its median housing price is up as well, 14.1 percent to $365,000, and houses are selling on average just a shade over market price. You'll get your day, Pacoima!
Prices in some of the really ritzy parts of town, meanwhile, are plummeting. Brentwood prices are down 17.9 percent since last year, coming in at a median of $1.43 million. Over in Holmby Hills, prices have dropped 33 percent to $1.24 million. If these trends continue, houses in these neighborhoods could actually be affordable someday after Los Angeles has sunk into the sea (they have a long way to plummet, which means they probably didn't have a lot of room to grow in December).
As a whole, Los Angeles housing prices are up 9.6 percent to a median of $559,000. The housing market rallied at the end of 2015 with overall sales in December up 3.6 percent, an unusual occurrence as buying typically slows down during the holiday months. The actual amount of homes for sale in Los Angeles remains depressingly low, though—total inventory is still down 20 percent from last year.