A 1929 Spanish in Westlake Just Traded: What 2335 Miramar Street Says About Central LA Multifamily
Some buildings get sold. Other buildings get inherited by the right operator. 2335 Miramar Street, an eight unit Spanish style property built in 1929 in the Westlake neighborhood of Los Angeles, is the kind of asset that quietly falls into the second category. The closing just happened. The price tells one story. The building itself tells a much longer one.
Miramar is not a mid century walk up or a stucco box from the postwar building boom. It is a nearly century old Spanish Colonial Revival with a clay tile roof, a covered balcony across the front elevation, original hardwood floors, and the kind of interior bones that no one builds anymore. Six singles and two one bedrooms, eight units total, on a 6,751 square foot lot just a short walk from MacArthur Park. The building has presence. That alone makes it a different conversation than most of the inventory trading in this submarket.
The financial story is just as specific. In place rents were a mix. One single was rented at $389, another at $717, and a third at $780. One of the one bedroom units was at $890, while another sat closer to market at $1,539. Two singles were already vacant at sale. That kind of rent roll, with a vacancy runway already opened up and a long tail of below market tenancy, is exactly what a value add operator looks for when they want to control the renovation pace from day one. The structural gap to stabilized pro forma was roughly 52%, and the new ownership now holds the entire path from here.
Westlake is one of the more historically layered neighborhoods in central Los Angeles. Originally developed in the early 1900s as an upscale residential district built around what was then called Westlake Park, now MacArthur Park, the area transitioned over decades into one of the densest multifamily corridors in the city. The mansions gave way to apartments. The streetcars gave way to the Metro B and D lines. What stayed constant was the central position. Miramar Street sits at the intersection of Koreatown, Echo Park, Silver Lake, and Downtown LA. Walk score of 92. Transit score of 75. A genuinely car optional location in a city that mostly is not.
The closing price puts the rest of the story in context. 2335 Miramar traded at $1,065,200, which works out to $133,150 per door and $240.78 per square foot, with a current cap rate just under 6% and a GRM right at 9.80. The most recent comp average for the block sat at $180,475 per unit, so this closing came in well inside the line. For a building of this vintage, this character, and this location, that basis gives the new ownership real room to operate. Renovation costs are real. Vacancy turn costs are real. But the entry point makes the math work, and the math is what gets these deals done in today's environment.
What a smart owner should take away from this is not just the per unit number. It is the type of building that traded. Pre war Spanish multifamily in central LA is finite. They are not building any more of them. Every time one of these assets changes hands at a disciplined price, it removes another piece of the supply from the open market and consolidates it under operators who know how to steward it. The ones who hold these buildings long term tend to do very well. The ones who try to flip them tend to learn quickly why patient capital wins this asset class.
If you own a vintage multifamily building in Westlake, Koreatown, Echo Park, or anywhere across the central LA corridor, the closing at 2335 Miramar is a real time data point worth knowing. The market is still moving. It is just moving with a sharper pencil than it used to. Buildings with character, location, and honest pricing are getting done. The conversations are happening quietly, but they are happening.