LA’s never been a vertical town, but branded high-rise living is trying to change the game
The client broke out a magnifying glass to check the penthouse’s doorknobs and got on all fours to inspect the outlets.
Sotheby’s International Realty’s Ernie Carswell was shocked. “I’ve never seen it before,” he said.
But his client’s decision to go forward with the property was notable, too. The client paid $13.3 million for a penthouse unit at a building that was slow to hit it off with the market: Mandarin Oriental Residences Beverly Hills.
High-rise condo living has historically been a difficult sell in Los Angeles, a city better known for mega mansions and single-family sprawl. Two years earlier, the Mandarin’s units went up for bulk sale after an investor group led by Michael Shvo struggled to woo buyers and defaulted on a $200 million loan.
That was then, and this is now.
“The landscape is changing for the condo market in Los Angeles,” said Sotheby’s International Realty’s Spencer Daley, who also represented the Mandarin’s penthouse buyer. Condos are rising in neighborhoods like West Hollywood, Beverly Hills and Century City, stealing the spotlight from the Westside’s Wilshire Corridor.
Agents and developers credit repositioned offerings and price adjustments with jumpstarting deal flow and wooing some buyers away from single-family homes.
Driving the momentum this year was the sale of a three-bedroom condo at 9255 Doheny Road in West Hollywood’s Sierra Towers. The unit sold for $36 million, or $4,890 per square foot, setting a record for the highest per-square-foot condo deal in Los Angeles County history. With Aman Beverly Hills, a source close to the project confirmed Aman has locked in $1 billion in residential sales under contract or reserved, including a $200 million penthouse reservation rumored to be by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos.
Even still, sales data paint a more nuanced picture. The biggest takeaway? More units may be trading this year, but not for their original asking prices.
In the first nine months of the year, the median sale price of on-market condos in the $5 million or more price range within Los Angeles County fell about 21 percent from the comparable period a year ago to $5.4 million, according to a Multiple Listing Service report generated by Westside Estate Agency.
A disconnect between what sales teams priced units at versus what a buyer was willing to pay is apparent this year. While the medians between listing and closing prices remained unchanged in the first nine months of 2024 and 2025, a decline of about 7 percent occurred in the first nine months of this year, suggesting the segment hasn’t fully arrived.
Making Changes
The market had to work through the pain of misfires among some of the most recent crop of high-end residences to even get where it is today.
The Century Plaza Tower Residences is now the Park Elm at Century Plaza, after the Reuben Brothers took over the property through a $1 billion foreclosure from original developer Michael Rosenfeld. The former Pendry Residences were recast this year as the Sun Rose Residences when Monarch Alternative Capital took a stake in the limited liability company controlling the project. (Previous owners AECOM Capital and Combined Properties had struggled to pay off the debt tied to the property.) Sales at the Sun Rose were paused in mid-2025 for the rebranding and relaunched in February.
While name changes and new marketing can be cute, that’s all just branding at the end of the day, said The Agency’s Media Moussavy.
For Moussavy, the real difference-maker is repositioning. “You can rebrand all you want, but unless you change the product itself, [rebrand’s] not necessarily going to move the needle,” Moussavy said.
In a market where condos compete with the spacious layouts of single-family homes, some developers and owners are expanding unit sizes.
At the Rosewood Residences in Beverly Hills, each home has double islands within large kitchens and a foyer at the entry. The property was originally set to have 28 units, but dropped to 17 to create larger spaces.
“The building was designed [with units] as real estate alternatives and not as pied-à-terres,” Beverly Hills Estates’ Tomer Fridman pointed out. “We made them that much larger, and we were luring clients from huge estates.”
In some cases, prices also had to be adjusted. At the Mandarin Oriental, prices were reduced by about 20 percent once units relaunched under current owner Centurion Real Estate Partners.
“If you build it, they will come”
In 2010, Related Companies’ The Century at 1 West Century Drive became the market’s first taste of luxury condo living. The project weathered the 2008 financial crisis that knocked out other competitors and earned big-name buyers in the process, from Candy Spelling to Rihanna.
For Beverly Hills Estates’ Amir Ensani, The Century provides a roadmap for today’s condos. “Those people trusted in the Related brand and purchased into that,” Ensani said. “Brand recognition’s important.”
Projects like Rosewood Residences Beverly Hills, Aman Beverly Hills and Fairmont Residences Century Plaza are hoping that trusted luxury brands will attract buyers.
Compass’ Sally Forster Jones, who also represents the Rosewood Residences, said the majority of her clients are local residents who want to downsize and maintain an easier lifestyle. At a condo, there’s no garden to manage or pool to clean.
“The key thing for most luxury buyers right now in the condo space is security, privacy and amenities — someone to take care of all their needs so they can leave and do whatever they want to do,” Forster Jones said. For example, security concerns born out of the pandemic have driven some single-family homeowners to condo fortresses they can lock and leave.
At certain hospitality-branded residences, offerings similar to high-tier hotel memberships can make home feel like resort living. That could include housekeeping and turndown service, valet parking and a concierge to book restaurant reservations.
“Now we’re seeing everybody — and I say this because it’s my business — everybody who you know who has been living in a home in California, their kids have gone off to college and they’ve had the idea of moving into a condo building on their back burner,” Ensari said. “If you build it, they will come.”
A House and a Pool
Even with all the condo buzz, there’s still a heavyweight contender some say high-rise living can never eclipse: the single-family home.
That picture-perfect view of a residence with a backyard and pool defines the Southern California housing market, and it’s why some temper the excitement over high-rise condos.
“If you’re looking at the broader housing market, we have a little more diverse offerings here [than other markets],” Moussavy said. “Do I think L.A. could ever catch up? I do. But it’s going to take some time.”
Westside Estate Agency co-founder Stephen Shapiro buckled down on what makes Los Angeles housing different from Manhattan or Miami: “They’re vertical towns; we’re a horizontal town.”
“Condos are a strange bird,” Shapiro said. “Let’s say you have a building that’s 30 units and the end result is there are 10 good units, 10 or 15 mediocre units and then five or 10 bad units, so it’s hard to sell out a building. It takes a while.”
But Shapiro, at least, is going all-in on condos: When he and his wife’s youngest child graduated from college, they packed up their house in Bel-Air and moved into a nearly 5,000-square-foot condo at the Cliff May-designed Century Woods in Century City. The size rivals many single-family homes. There’s an on-site manager, a guard gate and multiple gardeners.
“I had never lived in anything other than a house,” Shapiro said. “It took me one day to get comfortable.”
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