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Tag: property

  • Historic Sportsmen’s Lodge hotel may be demolished for 520-unit apartment complex

    Historic Sportsmen’s Lodge hotel may be demolished for 520-unit apartment complex

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    The historic Sportsmen’s Lodge in Studio City could be demolished to make way for a 520-unit residential complex and mixed-used development if the Los Angeles City Council approves the project Wednesday.

    Proponents of the development say it would bring much-needed affordable housing that would enable workers to live closer to their jobs.

    Opponents say the developers have not sufficiently weighed the project’s effects and that it would erase an important piece of history.

    The Sportsmen’s Lodge hotel permanently closed when the COVID-19 pandemic began. Now, the only active part of the property is the neighboring Shops at Sportsmen’s Lodge, which opened in 2021 with retailers including grocery chain Erewhon and the sustainable clothing and shoe store Allbirds. The lodge’s event center was demolished to make room for the shops.

    Developers have long had designs on the nearly nine-acre property at Ventura Boulevard and Coldwater Canyon Avenue. Best Buy eyed it for a superstore in the ’90s. Richard Weintraub, who owned the land at the time, had plans to revamp the lodge in 2009 and reopen it as “Sportsmen’s Landing,” with a boutique shopping center and modern restaurants. Legal issues with the hotel lease prevented that project from coming to fruition.

    In addition to the 520 apartment units, 78 of which would be set aside for low-income tenants, the project would include 46,000 square feet of commercial space. The design would also include a bike and pedestrian path along the L.A. River.

    Erewhon, the Studio City Residents Assn. and Unite Here Local 11, which represents hotel workers, filed appeals with the City Council’s Planning and Land Use Management Committee to stop the project, which had been approved by the city Planning Commission in July.

    At a meeting earlier this month, the committee denied the appeals, sending the proposal to the full City Council for Wednesday’s vote.

    “This will bring one of the most important and catalytic developments to this part of the San Fernando Valley,” Dave Rand, a lawyer representing the developer, Midwood Investment & Development, said at the meeting. “For years, Ventura Boulevard has been a largely ignored, yet hugely important corridor in the Valley. With this city’s unbelievably ambitious housing goals and obligations, the corner of Coldwater and Ventura Boulevard at this site is the perfect location to bring housing, mixed use and river-appropriate fronted development.”

    The property, which became popular for its trout fishing and bait-and-tackle shop in the 1930s, was first owned by actors Noah and Wallace Beery.

    Dancers Peta Siddall and Josie Neglia demonstrate salsa moves before a crowd in the Sportsmen’s Lodge in 2001.

    (Lawrence K. Ho / Los Angeles Times)

    In 1946, the event center and restaurant opened, followed by the 190-room hotel in 1962. In its heyday, Sportsmen’s Lodge was a movie studio hangout, and many local residents knew it as a popular venue for weddings, bar mitzvahs, New Year’s parties and more.

    In recent years, most hotel guests were tourists visiting nearby Universal Studios, but that dried up in the pandemic, and the hotel has been shuttered since then. In 2020, the hotel was a Project Roomkey site, housing people experiencing homelessness to reduce the spread of the virus.

    In 1964, the lodge became the first hotel to unionize in the San Fernando Valley and was one of the first union hotels in Los Angeles. The organizing drive was led by Bill Robertson, a leader in the Los Angeles labor movement.

    “We continue to believe that … the historic hotel is an important remaining link to that history, and therefore should be preserved,” Unite Here Local 11 co-President Kurt Petersen said in a written statement.

    An Erewhon representative did not respond to a request for comment.

    Midwood Investment & Development, which bought the property in 2017, sued Erewhon in 2022, accusing it of failing to pay rent and overusing the retail center’s parking lot for its employees.

    Erewhon countersued, alleging that Midwood wrongly prohibited Erewhon employees from using the parking lot and that Midwood “induced” Erewhon to lease a space in the proposed shopping center.

    Amy Minteer, an attorney for the Studio City Residents Assn., said the association doesn’t want to kill the Sportsmen’s Lodge project but to reduce its height and lessen the construction effects.

    Across the L.A. River, Harvard-Westlake school is building an athletic campus on a former golf course.

    The cumulative effects of both projects are a big concern, Minteer said — not only air quality and construction noise but also the loss of mature trees.

    “The Residents Association doesn’t want there to not be a project,” Minteer said. “They just want this project revised, to mitigate the impacts to the community and to come into closer alignment with existing standards for the neighborhood.”

    The residential building will be 97 feet tall, while the tallest building in the area is 56 feet.

    “It’s just way out of proportion with everything else in the area,” Minteer said.

    Rand, the attorney for the developer, said the project received a density bonus to raise the height beyond the usual 30 feet, which can only be denied if there is a “quantifiable and identifiable health and human safety risk.”

    Crispin Carrasco, who lives near the proposed project and is a member of the Western States Regional Council of Carpenters, said the council supports the development because Midwood has said it will work with contractors who will hire local carpenters.

    Stella Stahl, communications director for Councilmember Nithya Raman’s office, said Raman has not yet taken an official position on the project.

    At the committee meeting, Mashel Majid, Raman’s deputy chief of staff, said that the development will not significantly affect the area and that Raman’s office is “committed to supporting housing projects.” But Majid expressed disappointment that the historic hotel would be demolished.

    “Because this project is on private property and dictated by state laws that protect the ability for this site to build housing, the city, unfortunately, cannot require that the hotel remain,” she said.

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    Jenna Peterson

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  • California is building fewer homes. The state could get even more expensive

    California is building fewer homes. The state could get even more expensive

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    Ken Kahan makes a living building homes.

    A specialty? Luxury apartment complexes in Los Angeles neighborhoods such as Palms and Silver Lake filled with mostly market rate units, but with a handful of income-restricted affordable ones as well.

    It can be a good business, but lately less so.

    “We have pulled back,” said Kahan, the president of California Landmark Group. “The metrics don’t work.”

    Across California and the nation, developers moved to start fewer homes in 2023, a decline some experts say could eventually send home prices and rents even higher as supply shortages worsen.

    Developers cite several reasons for delaying new projects. There’s high labor and material costs, as well as new local regulations that together make it harder to turn a profit.

    Perhaps the biggest factor — and one hitting across the country — is the high cost of borrowing. Rising interest rates not only make it more expensive for Americans to buy a home, but they add additional costs for developers who must shell out more money to build and manage their projects.

    As a result, fewer projects make financial sense to build and fewer homes are built.

    “More than anything it is debt costs,” said Ryan Patap, an analyst for real estate research firm CoStar.

    In all, preliminary data from the US. Census Bureau show building permits for new homes nationwide fell 12% in 2023 from the prior year and 7% in California. Drops were recorded in both single-family homes — most of which tend to be for sale — as well as multifamily homes — which are chiefly rentals.

    Dan Dunmoyer, president of the California Building Industry Assn., said one major reason for the decline is that many for-sale home builders foresaw “a massive downturn” and stopped buying lots to develop when mortgage rates soared in 2022.

    Then a funny thing happened. Demand for their product didn’t crater as much as expected, in large part because existing homeowners didn’t want to sell and rid themselves of ultra-low mortgage rates.

    “Builders kind of woke up and realized ‘Oh, it’s just us [selling homes],‘” Dunmoyer said. “But we don’t turn on a dime.”

    As for-sale builders restart their engines to take advantage of a shortage of listings, there are signs of improvement. During the first two months of this year, builders in California pulled 35% more permits for single-family homes than during the same period a year earlier, according to census data.

    Permits for multifamily continued to decline — dropping 33%.

    The diverging paths are probably due to several factors, said Rick Palacios Jr., director of research for John Burns Research and Consulting.

    On a whole, single-family home builders have access to a wider source of debt that isn’t as vulnerable to rising interest rates. In the single-family market, the supply shortage has also worsened and home prices are climbing.

    Meanwhile, rents in many places — including Los Angeles — have dropped slightly as vacancies have risen, in part because apartment construction has been relatively robust in recent years.

    “Single-family solid, multifamily weak is a pretty consistent theme across most of the country,” Palacios said. “You’re hard pressed to find a market where developers and investors are gung ho on apartments.”

    In the city of Los Angeles, developers must contend with another factor — Measure ULA.

    The citywide property transfer tax took effect last year to fund affordable housing and has drawn the ire of the real estate industry.

    Though it’s known as the “mansion tax,” except for rare exceptions it applies to all properties sold for more than $5 million, no matter if they are gas stations, strip malls, apartment buildings or actual mansions. Under the measure, a seller is charged 4% of the sales price for properties sold above $5 million and below $10 million.

    At $10 million and above, the tax is 5.5%.

    Apartment developers and real estate brokers said additional costs from ULA make it even harder to earn a reasonable profit in what can be a risky business.

    That’s because when building apartments, developers often sell their finished product, which would probably trigger the ULA tax for any building over 15 units, according to Greg Harris, a real estate broker with Marcus and Millichap. Even developers who hold onto their properties typically need to take out a mortgage on the finished building — and Harris said lenders are willing to give less because they too would need to pay the tax if they foreclose and sell the property.

    “ULA is like the last nail in the coffin,” said Robert Green, a Los Angeles developer. “It couldn’t have come at a worse time.”

    Many apartment projects got their start under different economic circumstances and have opened in recent years or will soon. That supply should help keep rents down for a while, but not forever, said Richard Green, executive director of the USC Lusk Center for Real Estate.

    In two or three years, as fewer apartments are finished “we will see rent start to go up again,” he said.

    That would be a hit for Californians struggling to find housing in an expensive state where thousands sleep on the streets.

    Economic cycles, of course, ebb and flow and construction may rebound.

    The Federal Reserve plans to cut interest rates later this year, which may help more projects make sense financially, as could rising rents.

    Land sellers could also drop their asking prices to adjust for rising developer costs, including ULA in Los Angeles.

    Normally, real estate analyst Patap said he’d expect apartment construction to rebound as land costs adjust downward. But he noted developers say they are also cautious about building in L.A. because of a broader political shift in the city that’s more supportive of restrictions on landlords and more supportive of protections for tenants.

    In the city of Los Angeles, multifamily permits dropped 24% in 2023 compared with 19% in Los Angeles County, census data show. (Data from the Construction Industry Research Board show even larger drops: 49% in the city and 39% in the county.)

    Laurie Lustig-Bower, a commercial real estate broker with CBRE, said some L.A. landowners have reduced their prices to sell, but “if they don’t have a gun to their head” they are waiting until developers can pay more.

    In recent years, state lawmakers have taken action to make it easier to build housing, in part by eroding local control over land use decisions.

    Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass has also fast-tracked 100% affordable buildings under her Executive Directive 1, while the city recently exempted smaller projects from some storm water capture requirements.

    Mott Smith, chairman of the Council of Infill Builders, said more must be done to increase the number of new homes in Los Angeles and cited the storm water decision as the kind of steps government should take.

    “The city has no influence over interest rates … [but] what it controls is the process to get a project approved,” Smith said. “There are so many opportunities.”

    For now, developers say it’s tough to find opportunities.

    Kahan said his company runs the numbers on potential land purchases constantly and at least once a week finds it doesn’t make sense to buy and build.

    He expects to purchase some land in Southern California by year’s end, though mostly outside of the city of Los Angeles where Kahan said he’s increasingly looking because of costs from ULA, which unlike current interest rates aren’t expected to change.

    So far, Kahan said he’s yet to find a deal that will work — within or outside city borders.

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    Andrew Khouri

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  • California legislators push law change after ruling against family in Nazi looted art case

    California legislators push law change after ruling against family in Nazi looted art case

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    California legislators plan to introduce a bill Thursday that would bolster efforts by Holocaust survivors, their heirs and other victims to recover artwork and other property stolen from them as a result of political persecution.

    Assemblyman Jesse Gabriel (D-Encino), co-chair of the California Legislative Jewish Caucus and lead sponsor of the bill, said the measure was inspired by a recent ruling by the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals that found that current California law required an Impressionist masterpiece looted from a Jewish woman by the Nazis in 1939 to remain with a Madrid museum rather than be returned to the woman’s family in the U.S.

    “It immediately made sense to me that this was a unique opportunity to correct a historical injustice and make sure that something like this doesn’t happen again,” Gabriel said. “Respectfully, we think that the 9th Circuit got it wrong, and this law is going to make that crystal clear.”

    Gabriel said the bill hopefully will ensure better legal outcomes for other Californian families who have suffered politically motivated thefts — whether past, present or in the future.

    “Our hope is that it’s going to help others, other Holocaust victims and other victims of genocide and political persecution,” Gabriel said. “It’s specifically crafted to be applied more broadly.”

    The legislative effort — which Gabriel said already has bipartisan support — is the latest twist in a more than two-decade legal battle over the Camille Pissarro masterpiece “Rue Saint-Honoré in the Afternoon. Effect of Rain.” It is also not the first time the California Legislature has bucked the powerful 9th Circuit on issues related to Nazi-looted art.

    David Cassirer, whose great-grandmother Lilly Cassirer Neubauer had the painting stolen from her at the dawn of World War II, is appealing the 9th Circuit ruling against his family and welcomed the legislative effort as a potential leg up in that fight.

    “It’s very important that our laws support and enable Holocaust victims and their heirs to be able to recover this artwork that was stolen so long ago,” he said. “I’m grateful.”

    Thaddeus Stauber, an attorney for the Thyssen-Bornemisza National Museum in Madrid, which obtained the painting as part of a massive collection of masterpieces in 1993 and rejects the family’s claim to it, did not respond to a request for comment.

    Neubauer relinquished the painting to a local Munich art dealer acting as a Nazi art appraiser in 1939, in exchange for a visa to flee Germany. It was a decision made under clear duress, as part of a vast Nazi program to steal Jewish wealth, and both parties to the ongoing case have agreed the incident constituted a theft.

    Despite that, however, the Thyssen-Bornemisza, which is owned by the Spanish government, argues it has since obtained proper title to the painting under Spanish law. It says it purchased the painting in good faith, without knowing it was stolen, in 1993, from billionaire Baron Hans Heinrich von Thyssen-Bornemisza.

    The baron, one of the world’s most prolific art collectors before his death in 2002, was the scion of a German industrialist family that made a fortune in steel — and helped finance Adolf Hitler’s rise to power along the way.

    Neubauer’s family believed the painting was missing — perhaps lost for good in the war — until Neubauer’s grandson Claude Cassirer, who escaped the Holocaust before moving to Cleveland and then retiring in San Diego, discovered around 2000 that it was in the Thyssen-Bornemisza museum.

    He asked for the museum to voluntarily return the painting, then sued in 2005 when it refused to do so. David Cassirer, his son, took over as lead plaintiff in the family’s case after his father’s death in 2010.

    The case has bounced around U.S. courts ever since, and has repeatedly caught the attention of the 9th Circuit. Around the same time as Cassirer’s death, the appellate court tossed a California rule expanding the window under which looting victims or their heirs could file claims for Nazi-looted artwork, saying it infringed federal authority in such matters.

    The state Legislature responded by passing a measure making the window for all sorts of stolen property — not just in international cases with a federal nexus — six years from the time a victim gains “actual knowledge” of the lost property’s whereabouts, which was a window large enough to justify the Cassirer family’s claim. Congress later established a similar window for looted art claims under federal law.

    Still, the battle over the Pissarro — which is estimated to be worth tens of millions of dollars — raged on.

    In 2022, the U.S. Supreme Court handed the Cassirer family another win when it ruled that California law — not Spanish law — should be used to determine the legitimacy of the family’s claim to the painting. However, in January, the 9th Circuit once again ruled against the family.

    A three-judge panel found that California law required it to consider the interests of Spain and of California in enforcing their respective and contradictory laws around stolen property, and to apply the law of the government whose interests would be “more impaired” were its law ignored.

    Under that analysis, it had to apply Spain’s law, it found, and therefore the painting had to remain with the museum. One of the judge’s wrote that she agreed with the analysis as a matter of law, but it went against her “moral compass.”

    It also went against “California values,” Gabriel said, which is why he decided to introduce the new measure.

    “The purpose of the bill is to ensure an outcome based on morality and justice, and not legal technicalities,” he said.

    If the new bill passes, it would make clear that, in scenarios involving property looted or stolen by the Nazis or as a result of political persecution, California law dictates that the property be returned, Gabriel said.

    The law would apply in any legal case considering such issues in which the ultimate decision is not yet final, up to and including those on appeal before the Supreme Court.

    If passed and signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom, the bill probably would take effect Jan. 1, Gabriel said. It also could be expedited, but that hasn’t been considered yet.

    The timeline for the Cassirer case is unclear. It currently remains before the 9th Circuit, where Cassirer has asked for the January decision to be reconsidered by a larger, 11-judge en banc panel. After a decision is made there, the parties could potentially appeal to the Supreme Court, as well.

    Sam Dubbin, a longtime attorney for the Cassirer family, praised Gabriel’s effort to update California’s law.

    “The clarity of Assemblyman Gabriel’s legislation is necessary to change the current dynamic in which governments, museums, and collectors are incentivized to resist restitution and employ tactics and arguments that trivialize the Holocaust,” Dubbin said. “It is essential for truth, history, and justice in the Cassirer case, and for future cases as well.”

    Gabriel said he already has co-sponsors from both ends of the political spectrum — including assemblymembers Isaac Bryan (D-Los Angeles) and Vince Fong (R-Bakersfield) — and is optimistic that the bill will have widespread support.

    Also backing the measure are Assemblymember Rebecca Bauer-Kahan (D-Orinda), who is the granddaughter of Holocaust survivors, and Lt. Gov. Eleni Kounalakis, also a Democrat, who cited her time as U.S. ambassador to Hungary — where hundreds of thousands of Jews were killed — as strongly informing her support.

    “The decades-long effort to return confiscated property to Jewish families is morally courageous,” Kounalakis said in a statement to The Times.

    Gabriel said it was “appalling” to him that Spain’s government won’t voluntarily return the painting to Cassirer.

    “This isn’t about money,” he said. “It’s about morality and justice.”

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    Kevin Rector

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  • Realtor rules just changed dramatically. Here’s what buyers and sellers can expect

    Realtor rules just changed dramatically. Here’s what buyers and sellers can expect

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    So long, 6% commission.

    For decades, real estate commissions have been somewhat standardized, with most home sellers paying 5% to 6% commission to cover both the listing agent and the buyer’s agent.

    On Friday, everything changed.

    A landmark agreement from the National Assn. of Realtors paved the way for a new set of rules that will likely shake up the entire industry, affecting sellers, buyers and the agents tasked with pushing deals across the finish line.

    The most pivotal rule change pertains to how buyers’ agents are paid. Traditionally, home sellers have paid for the commission of both their agent and the buyer’s agent, which critics argue stifled competition and drove up home prices.

    The new rule prohibits most listings from saying how much buyers’ agents are paid, removing the assumption that sellers are on the hook for paying both agents.

    The other new rule requires buyers’ agents to enter into written agreements with their clients, known as buyer brokerage agreements. These agreements outline exactly what services will be provided — and for how much.

    The changes will take effect this July, pending court approval, and will have major implications on how real estate deals are done. Here’s how buyers, sellers and brokers will likely be affected.

    Lower fees for sellers

    The most obvious takeaway is that if buyers end up paying for their real estate agents instead of sellers, sellers are set to save a lot of money.

    In February, the average Southern California home sold for $842,997. Under the old system, where sellers pay both agents 3% commission, they’d shell out $50,580. But if they only have to pay one agent 3%, they’d save $25,290.

    Buyers, then, would be the ones footing the bill for their agent. The added expense might seem pricy, but Michael Copeland, a real estate agent in Palm Springs, said the final numbers might ultimately shake out the same under the new rules.

    “Buyers were often told by their agents that they didn’t have to pay anything and that services were free,” Copeland said. “But that’s not necessarily true.”

    Copeland said when sellers pay 6% commission to split between both agents, they pad that number into the purchase price, so buyers actually end up paying more for the home, and thus, pay for their own agent.

    So under the new system, buyers may end up paying their broker 3% commission, but the price of the home might be cheaper since the seller is only paying for their own agent.

    More flexibility for buyers

    One of the biggest complaints about the previous system was that it left buyers out of the negotiation process. Sellers paid each agent’s brokerage 3% or so, and that was that.

    Lawsuits filed against the National Assn. of Realtors alleged that the practice kept commissions artificially high and incentivized buyers’ agents to “steer” them toward properties that offered them higher commission rates.

    But under the new system, more buyers will be negotiating directly with their own agents — not just how much they’ll pay them, but what services they want the agent to provide. And those expectations will be specifically outlined in the buyer brokerage agreements, which are now required.

    “Some buyers may just hire an attorney and pay a fee to handle the transaction,” Copeland said. “Or they’ll want to hire an agent as a consultant. Someone they can ask questions.”

    In the age of the internet, access to real estate information is at an all-time high. Buyers can know virtually anything about a home on the market: not just bedrooms, bathrooms and square footage, but how much the home previously sold for, and how much similar homes in the area are selling for.

    Buyers can also receive alerts to know exactly when a house in their price range hits the market, so some savvy shoppers might opt for an agent who leaves the touring process to them, but can help them look over an inspection report and file the right paperwork in the closing stages of the deal.

    If a buyer wants a robust, hands-on agent that’s available 24/7, they can offer 3% or even more. If they want an agent who can just handle the more technical elements of the deal, they could offer 1% or 2%.

    Some buyers might try to handle the process themselves and not pay an agent at all.

    “Good agents will be able to show their value,” said Compass agent Michael Khorshidi. “Agents who aren’t able to show their value won’t benefit from this.”

    New dynamics — and roles — for agents

    For many agents, representing buyers can be rewarding since they get to help someone find their dream home, but the process is often more time-intensive. Agents might spend weeks or months setting up tours for clients, and there’s no guarantee that they’ll even buy a property in the end.

    For that reason, many veteran agents prefer to represent sellers. The work is often more efficient — especially in a hot market, where deals can close in days.

    So if the new rules leave less guaranteed money on the table for buyers’ agents, those agents might try to switch sides and only represent sellers. Or if they’re not able to make enough money representing buyers, they might exit the industry altogether — a trend that’s already taking place in Southern California’s cold post-pandemic real estate market.

    Brent Chang, a luxury agent active in San Marino and Pasadena, said the new rules could lead to agents who specialize in specific types of sales.

    “Just as there are agents like me who specialize in selling landmark properties, a new group of agents will emerge who specialize in helping buyers with highly competitive properties,” Chang said.

    He said agents who have a proven track record of winning properties for their clients will be able to demand higher commissions.

    Or their deals can be performance based. For example, an agent could represent you for 3%, and if they get the property for you, it’s another 3%.

    “Ultimately, if the ruling leads to buyers receiving better service from their agents, then it has merit,” he said. “But I suspect it’ll be a while until we understand the consequences of these changes.”

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    Jack Flemming

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  • She sold his Encino home out from under him for $1.5 million. Then he killed himself

    She sold his Encino home out from under him for $1.5 million. Then he killed himself

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    Miracle Williams detailed to a federal judge the dire situation that led to her partner’s suicide. She talked about the woman she holds responsible for his death.

    Robert Tascon had been embroiled in a legal dispute since 2021, Williams said through tears, over a house he owned in a beautiful, exclusive area in Encino. That September, investigators say, a woman named Caroline Herrling fraudulently sold his house out from under him for $1.5 million.

    Herrling, 44, pleaded guilty last year to conspiracy to commit wire fraud and was sentenced Friday by Judge Maame Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong to 20 years in federal prison.

    “He was trying to sell the house so we could start our lives over,” Williams told the judge during Herrling’s sentencing hearing, her voice cracking with emotion. “The situation made him feel helpless.”

    Tascon came from a wealthy family that set up two trusts for him in California, according to a U.S. Postal Inspection Service report. They provided enough money for him to spend freely, Travis Hartgraves, a lawyer and case manager for Tascon, told investigators last year.

    But Tascon developed an alcohol problem, Hartgraves told investigators. Williams persuaded him to move with her to Abilene, Texas, in 2018 to get away from negative influences.

    Tascon’s Encino home was his last asset, although he still had monthly payments from the trusts, Hartgraves told Lyndon Versoza, a postal inspector working the fraud case.

    Tascon wanted to sell the home, according to the postal inspectors’ report, which was filed as part of the case against Herrling. But he couldn’t because it had become occupied by squatters. It is still unclear how Herrling found the property.

    She sold Tascon’s home by using a co-conspirator with fake identity documents to pose as the homeowner, according to the U.S. Justice Department. Herrling had represented herself to the buyer as a licensed California attorney representing property owners in distressed situations needing to sell, according to an affidavit from Mark O’Donnell, a homicide detective supervisor with the LAPD.

    In a plea agreement, Herrling admitted to setting up bank and E-Trade accounts to receive the proceeds of the sale, which Tascon did not authorize and which was accomplished through identity theft.

    Hartgraves told Versoza that the house was sold for half its value.

    Herrling used money from the sale to help pay for a home in West Hills, according to the affidavit.

    After the house was sold out from under him, Tascon filed a lawsuit in an attempt to get it back.

    “I am never going to get my house back,” Hartgraves recalled Tascon telling him.

    “The fraudulent sale just about crashed him,” Hartgraves told Versoza.

    The fraudulent sale was the final straw; it consumed Tascon, Hartgraves said, according to court filings.

    Tascon killed himself on Sept. 11, 2022. He was 53. The police report noted that he had a history of mental illness and was involved in fraud litigation.

    Robert Tascon in an undated photo.

    (Los Angeles Police Department)

    When investigators interviewed Herrling in January 2023, she denied having anything to do with the sale of Tascon’s property. She claimed her only involvement was driving Tascon to a notary to facilitate the sale of the house — and that she was only paid around $150 to do so.

    When Versoza asked Herrling to describe Tascon, she couldn’t, saying that he had worn a hat and a mask. Later, when confronted, Herrling didn’t deny profiting off the sale, saying instead that she did not leave Tascon destitute, according to the affidavit.

    During sentencing, Herrling’s attorney, Alex Kessel, said he didn’t think there was “any evidence to suggest that my client directly caused the death” of Tascon.

    “He had a mental illness that developed long before the house in California was fraudulently sold,” Kessel said, citing a previous suicide attempt by Tascon in 2021. “We never know why somebody kills themselves … I haven’t been given in evidence any suicide note where he laid out his state of mind and mental state at the time.”

    Asst. U.S. Atty. Andrew Brown stressed that Tascon “had one property and he lost it.”

    Frimpong agreed with the prosecutor. During the sentencing hearing, she said there was evidence “enough to find the death was a suicide and it was caused in part by the loss of [Tascon’s] property.”

    Tascon bequeathed his assets to Williams, his common-law wife, investigators said. However, with the fraudulent sale of the Encino home, he had nothing left to give her.

    When Williams spoke in court, she acknowledged that Tascon was “mentally fragile,” but she said the sale of his home had only worsened matters.

    Williams held a framed photo of Tascon when she first spoke. She described him as her “best friend.” After his death, Williams told the judge, she’d also tried to kill herself.

    “This lady is a big manipulator and a con artist and she’s gotten away with using the dead,” Williams told the judge, referring to Herrling. “Hold her accountable and don’t let her do this to anyone else. Because this has ruined my life.”

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    Brittny Mejia

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  • A sign of the times: Tearing down an emptying O.C. office complex to build a warehouse

    A sign of the times: Tearing down an emptying O.C. office complex to build a warehouse

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    In the hierarchy of commercial real estate, office space has long been king.

    Developers and landlords lived by the conventional wisdom that there was no better use for your square footage than business offices because they commanded higher rents than industrial spaces.

    Simple math, the thinking went.

    Well, not so simple anymore. At least in Santa Ana, where a perfectly good office complex is being demolished in a dramatic demonstration of how weak the office rental market has become and how deep the demand for Amazon-style distribution centers runs in Southern California.

    The owners of the shiny glass building on Harbor Boulevard close to John Wayne Airport made the counterintuitive calculation that they will be better off owning warehouses than trying to wrangle tenants willing to pony up for conference rooms and corner offices.

    “We had to make a strategic shift,” said Dan Broder, who is in charge of the redevelopment by Kearny Real Estate Co., owner of the property formerly known as Elevate @Harbor.

    Lagging post-pandemic occupancy rates prompted owners of the office complex formerly known as Elevate @Harbor in Santa Ana to tear it down and build a warehouse.

    (Lawrence M. Pierce)

    The shift was prompted in large part by the COVID-19 pandemic, which contributed nationwide to shrinking office populations and rising demand for home delivery of all manner of goods. Four years on, overall demand for offices remains well below pre-pandemic levels, raising questions about how many buildings built for white-collar labor still have a viable economic future.

    “There are a lot of office owners looking at their properties and wondering if those properties still make sense as offices,” said Michael Soto, Southern California research director for real estate brokerage Savills.

    Some have decided they don’t, and the result has been a shrinking inventory of offices over the last year in several U.S. markets, including Orange County, Savills said in a recent report.

    Although those in urban centers making the decision to get out of the office game increasingly have looked to convert unloved offices to apartments, in some areas warehouses are hard to come by and, consequently, bring a premium, Soto said.

    Orange County is prime territory for such switches, he said, because although it is still suburban in nature, it is densely developed with few empty sites available to build distribution centers.

    “There’s real pressure to redevelop older office buildings,” Soto said.

    The incentive to redevelop Kearny’s property was enhanced by its location in an industrial district, which spared the company from having to go through the time-consuming and challenging process of getting it rezoned for industrial use.

    An office building in Santa Ana is being demolished to make way for a distribution center.

    Demolition is underway of an office complex on Harbor Boulevard in Santa Ana that will be replaced by a distribution center.

    (Dania Maxwell/Los Angeles Times)

    It was a different world for office landlords in 2018, when Kearny bought the office campus for nearly $35 million. The landlord took over a property that was almost fully leased, Broder said. And even though a large tenant was set to move out, Kearny was unconcerned because there was every reason to expect the vacancy would be an opportunity to sign new tenants at higher rents.

    Kearny announced that it would spend about $15 million to upgrade the property into a campus-like setting with landscaped grounds, a fitness center and 24-hour access meant to appeal to tenants in creative fields such as technology. Marketing materials boasted that South Coast Plaza shopping center was nearby.

    Then came the pandemic, and by early 2022, with occupancy rates hovering at about 60% and the office rental market losing ground, Kearny started to discuss converting the property to another use, Broder said. He declined to disclose further financial aspects of the project.

    Kearny negotiated lease terminations with its tenants and set about to knock down the building that dates to 1982 and replace it with Harbor Logistics Center, a far less sleek 163,000-square-foot warehouse and distribution complex designed by SKH Architect set to be complete by the end of the year.

    It’s intended to be a “last-mile” facility, Broder said, for goods arriving from elsewhere to be distributed to the surrounding community.

    Last-mile facilities have “dramatically” increased in value in recent years and provide “solid rent growth” for their owners, the commercial real estate trade group NAIOP said, as e-commerce businesses such as Amazon compete to deliver within one day of a customer order or even on the same day it is placed.

    Frequently ordered goods can be delivered more quickly from a compact nearby warehouse than from a farther-away sprawling fulfillment center such as those found in the Inland Empire.

    Meanwhile, office rentals and on-site attendance by tenants have continued to lag in Southern California in 2023 as companies have tried to balance hybrid work policies with their desire for more employee engagement, real estate services company CBRE said in a recent report.

    The value of office buildings has been falling nationwide, with average property values down by at least 25% from a year earlier, according to a February report by real estate data provider CommercialEdge.

    Rendering of the warehouse-distribution center.

    Rendering of the less sleek 163,000-square-foot warehouse and distribution complex that will replace the office complex.

    (SKH Architect)

    “The downward trend in office valuation is more pronounced in older and less ideally located buildings,” the report said, perhaps such as the aging campus Kearny is knocking down.

    “This is not a one-off,” Soto said of the landlord’s switch from office to industrial use of its property. “Especially in dense suburban markets like Orange County where land is expensive, we are going to see more of this.”

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    Roger Vincent

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  • Investors bought a historic Echo Park home. Sisters who have lived there since childhood are fighting to stay

    Investors bought a historic Echo Park home. Sisters who have lived there since childhood are fighting to stay

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    Lupe Breard remembers coming to live in the Queen Anne Victorian house in Echo Park with her mother and siblings when she was a child. The memory is still vivid decades later, she says, because she didn’t want to move there — until she saw the chimney and told herself Santa Claus could bring presents down it at Christmas. She’d never had a fireplace before.

    She has stayed ever since, raising her three children in the historic home and watching as the neighborhood changed from a quiet, under-the-radar community to one where homes routinely sell for well over $1 million.

    Breard stayed even after her mother died in 2018, leaving the house in her will to three of Breard’s older siblings. She stayed after the family estate tried, unsuccessfully, to evict her. And she has continued fighting to stay after the house was sold in 2022 to an investor who wants her and her sister, Sarah Padilla, 73, out.

    Inside Lupe Breard’s Echo Park home, various rooms are filled with decades of belongings that she sought to sell in case she had to leave.

    (Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)

    Over the years, Breard, 64, has come to see herself as the guardian of a historic house with an important history. “The Queen of Elysian Heights,” as it is now known, is one of the earliest homes built in Echo Park. In the 1960s it was owned by members of the Arechiga family, who moved there after they drew national attention as the final holdouts resisting eviction from their home in Chavez Ravine to make way for Dodger Stadium.

    “I know that once I’m gone it’ll be impossible to defend it,” Breard says. “I love that house. I love the walls. I love the staircase. I love walking out on the balcony at night when you can see the stars. I love the brick underneath the house where I used to hide when I was little.”

    The history of the Queen of Elysian Heights is not entirely clear, but it is believed to have been built in 1895, around the time when the community was first subdivided.

    Many locals see the triplex as the cornerstone of a historic neighborhood whose connection to the Arechiga family serves as an important reminder of a dark moment in the city’s past. Though it was once stadiums, freeways and city redevelopment that regularly displaced people in Black and Latino neighborhoods, today it is more likely to be gentrification and residential real estate investors.

    “The house is very special,” said Paul Bowers, a resident of the neighborhood who helped petition the city for historic status. “It’s the first house in this entire area. And there’s something magical about it.”

    A sign that says "Protect Echo Park Elders" hangs on a fence.

    A sign hangs in support of Lupe Breard, 64, who faced eviction in Echo Park.

    (Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)

    Breard’s mother was a waitress at a restaurant near Placita Olvera who stretched her tips to make ends meet. She rented the house for a few years, then bought it in 1975 for $18,500, according to public records. The neighborhood was quiet.

    “You really had to tell people where Echo Park was,” Breard says.

    Breard continued living in the home as an adult and raised her children there alongside her mother. Breard and her older sister, Sarah Padilla, lived in separate units in the triplex at the time of their mother’s death in 2018.

    Soon after, Breard says, she learned that she and another sister had been excluded from their mother’s will. The home had been left to Padilla and two other siblings. Their older brother was named executor of the estate. Family representatives of the estate did not respond to phone calls and emails requesting comment.

    Soon, plans were in motion to sell the house, which over the years had grown to be valued at more than $1 million.

    Breard says she feared that she would be evicted and the house would be torn down to make room for apartments or condos. She saw it as history repeating itself. She, like the Arechigas, would soon be ripped from her home.

    “It’s not just an apartment you rent. I grew up there. It took part in raising me,” she said.

    Members of the LA Tenants Union were on hand during a recent yard sale to support Lupe Breard

    Members of the LA Tenants Union were on hand during a recent yard sale to support Lupe Breard, who was facing eviction.

    (Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)

    She began organizing with the LA Tenants Union and along with other supporters worked to file an application to have the property designated a historic-cultural monument with the city planning department, hoping that it would deter a developer from buying the property and tearing it down.

    The estate framed the moves as stalling tactics meant to keep the house from being sold, according to court records.

    Breard’s supporters circulated a petition calling for a show of community support so that the sisters could remain in the house and for “the rejection of tearing it down for future development projects.”

    When the home went up for auction in the spring of 2022 there were multiple bidders. It sold for a little more than $1.2 million to NELA Development. Padilla, who according to court records refused to cooperate with the sale, received about $290,000 when the estate was settled.

    “Buyer to be aware that the property will be delivered with its current occupants who are not paying rent,” read a notification issued with the sale.

    Padilla did not respond to requests for an interview. Representatives for NELA also did not return emails and phone calls requesting comment. The company bills itself on its website as a “family-run real estate and investment company dedicated to preserving and enhancing the many precious neighborhoods that make Los Angeles a special place to live, work and play.”

    Charles Fisher, a historian who prepared the application for the home’s historic designation, said the company has been a good caretaker for historic homes in the past.

    It “has got a fairly good track record in dealing with historic properties,” he said. “They’ve bought houses and fixed them up properly.”

    He noted that the company had received an award from the Highland Park Heritage Trust for its work fixing and preserving two local homes.

    In June 2022, shortly after the company purchased the home, Breard was given a three-day notice to “perform or quit.” It said that she had “failed and refused to permit an appraiser or other workmen to enter the property” and gave her three days to do so or face eviction.

    One month later, the property management company filed an eviction case against her in court, saying she had not complied with the notice.

    Breard says she was never given the opportunity to comply. In November 2022, with the eviction pending, the home won the historic designation from the city over the new owner’s objection.

    In January, a jury ruled against Breard in the eviction case, setting the stage for sheriff’s deputies to soon arrive and lock her out of the house.

    Not long after, Breard saw a video posted to Facebook by the new owners, with the hashtag #realestateinvesting.

    “Super excited to announce our first project for 2024,” a man says, standing in front of the house, its pastel facade looking worn but stately.

    “This house here in Echo Park is absolutely amazing. It’s a Queen Anne Victorian … Let us know if you have any questions or if you’d like the private viewing of this property.”

    Breard began preparing for the possibility that she would have to leave the home, though she wasn’t sure where she would go. She is disabled and cannot work, she said.

    This month, Breard hosted a yard sale to get rid of many of the possessions that filled the house over the decades.

    A couple of days later, she got some good news. A new attorney representing her had asked the judge to set aside the jury’s decision, arguing, among other issues, that the notice to quit had been defective as it never gave Breard specific instructions on how to fix the alleged lease violation.

    The judge ruled in her favor, putting an end to the eviction proceeding.

    After the ruling, Breard said, she went to the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels and gave thanks at the tomb of St. Vibiana, the city’s patron saint. From her perspective, the win was a victory for a city where people without money are constantly being pushed out.

    “I love Los Angeles, it’s my home,” she said. But “this is happening to so many people. You see people on the street and nobody even looks at them.”

    Despite the win, the home’s future is still unclear. Breard’s sister still has a pending eviction case.

    A pale green Victorian home seen from a distance.

    “The Queen of Elysian Heights” is one of the oldest homes in Echo Park.

    (Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)

    Lupita Limón Corrales, an organizer with the LA Tenants Union, said a lawyer for the owner reached out to them and raised the possibility of selling the property to a community land trust, which would create a nonprofit that would be responsible for the home. The lawyer did not respond to a request for comment.

    Corrales said the group is working with the sisters to come up with a proposal that it will present to the company.

    If it were to happen, it could take a long time, she said. For now, their main focus is helping Padilla win her pending eviction case.

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    Paloma Esquivel

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  • Dramatic drone footage shows luxury homes on edge of California cliff

    Dramatic drone footage shows luxury homes on edge of California cliff

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    The three multimillion-dollar estates perched high on the edge of a Dana Point bluff boast some of the most magnificent views in Orange County: unobstructed panoramas of the crystal blue Pacific, boats moored in the harbor and, on a clear day, Santa Catalina.

    But back-to-back rainstorms have prompted fresh concerns about the homes on the aptly named Scenic Drive. The same steep cliff that falls away under the properties — giving them the illusion of being on the edge of the Earth — has withered under the atmospheric river precipitation that pounded Southern California last week. A portion of the cliff leading up to the blufftop homes washed away in the torrent.

    But though their perch appears precarious, none of the homes have been evacuated or deemed too dangerous to occupy — even with more rain in the forecast, officials said.

    Dr. Lewis Bruggeman, who owns the home just above the slide area, told KCAL-TV Channel 9 that his house is “not threatened and it will not be red-tagged.”

    “The city agrees that there’s no major structural issue with the house right now,” he told the station. Bruggeman did not respond to a request for comment from The Times on Tuesday.

    The slide erased the greenery that just recently backed up to Bruggeman’s home, a 9,700-square-foot compound estimated to be worth nearly $16 million, leaving only sandy soil behind. On Tuesday, piles of rocks and dirt sat on the shoreline below.

    An aerial view of three large homes in Dana Point after a cliffside gave way following recent heavy rains. A satellite image from Google Earth shows the cliffside before the landslide. (Photo by Allen J. Schaben; photo animation by Lorena Elebee / Los Angeles Times)

    The city’s geotechnical engineer and a building inspector have visited the home to assess the slope failure, according to Dana Point officials.

    “Engineers who already surveyed the home said there was no damage and there is no imminent threat to the structure, which is really good news,” said Mayor Jamey Federico. “So quite frankly, it looks a lot scarier than it really is.”

    The entire property, including all the way down the cliff to the high tide line, is privately owned, he added.

    Many cities in south and coastal Orange County have a long history of landslides, particularly during wet weather.

    In Laguna Beach, a 1978 landslide destroyed more than 20 homes in Bluebird Canyon. The same area slid again in 2005, destroying 17 homes.

    After a winter of heavy rains in 1998, several homes slid down a hillside below Via Estoril in the Niguel Summit neighborhood of Laguna Niguel. Homeowners said their properties had shown signs of moving for months before they toppled down the hill.

    More recent slides in San Clemente have damaged the historic Casa Romantica and periodically interrupted train service between Orange and San Diego counties.

    Last week’s storm dumped 7.5 inches of rain in Dana Point. The city has received about 9.5 inches since Jan. 1, said Casey Oswant, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in San Diego.

    Strong downpours triggered more than 500 mudslides in the city of Los Angeles alone and damaged more than 45 homes and buildings.

    And more wet weather is on the horizon.

    Based on current models, Orange County is likely to see more rain from the system moving into the region this weekend than other areas such as San Diego, though forecasters say it’s too early to say exactly how potent the storm will be.

    “There’s potential for this to be another prolonged rain event,” Oswant said.

    Steve Viani, a civil engineer who has experience with landslides, said tarps should be placed over the bare soil on the Dana Point property and pipes should be installed on gutters and downspouts to carry water away from the building foundation ahead of this weekend’s storm.

    Prolonged rain on the bare soil could further damage the slope, he said, adding that it could “give way at any time.”

    Visitors hiked along the adjacent Dana Point Headlands nature preserve on Tuesday morning, many completely unaware of the damage to the cliff, which is only visible from the ocean.

    Billy Prescott, 56, who spent 25 years living in Dana Point before relocating to Idaho, said he’d come to expect landslides and ground movement along the coast — particularly during El Niño years.

    “It’s just Mother Nature,” he said. “You don’t always win going up against her.”

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    Hannah Fry

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  • Home buyers thought mortgage rates were finally going to go down. Why hasn’t it happened yet?

    Home buyers thought mortgage rates were finally going to go down. Why hasn’t it happened yet?

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    Why are mortgage rates still so high?

    After a year of mortgage rates near 8%, home buyers are eager for good news. Some forecasters have buoyed their hopes, estimating that the rate on the 30-year mortgage will drop to 6% or lower this year. 

    But rates have not fallen by much thus far. The 30-year rate is currently averaging 6.64%, according to Freddie Mac. That’s despite the fact that the U.S. Federal Reserve hasn’t raised its benchmark interest rate since July 2023 and signaled in December that it would cut that rate in 2024. Meanwhile, economists in the real-estate sector have been anticipating a drop in mortgage rates since last fall.

    “Homebuyers may be feeling like the lower mortgage rates they’ve been promised in 2024 are not materializing,” Lisa Sturtevant, chief economist at Bright MLS, said in a statement. In a recent survey of Americans’ feelings about the housing market, 36% of respondents said they expect mortgage rates to fall in the next 12 months.

    While the Fed doesn’t set mortgage rates, it can influence them, just as it influences the overall U.S. economy through monetary policy. But even though the central bank has hit the brakes on tightening monetary policy, with the economy giving off mixed signals of strength and weakness, the timing of anticipated cuts to the benchmark rate remains unclear.

    That in turn creates uncertainty about when mortgage rates will drop enough to “unfreeze” the housing market. Home buyers are probably going to have to wait until the Fed acts definitively before they see those lower rates.

    The effect of a strong economy

    The strength of the U.S. economy is one reason mortgage rates have not yet fallen much, economists say. The job market is still hot, and inflation remains higher than the Fed’s goal, which is why the latest read on inflation, out Feb. 13, will be so closely watched. The fact that rates haven’t fallen this year is “a result of uncertainty about the economy and the timing of the Fed’s rate cuts,” Sturtevant said.

    “The strong job market is good news for the spring buying season, as higher household incomes are a necessary component, but it also means that mortgage rates are not likely to drop much further at this point,” Mike Fratantoni, chief economist at the Mortgage Bankers Association, told MarketWatch.

    Another reason mortgage rates are still high is that lenders are trying to protect themselves against lower rates in the future, Cris deRitis, deputy chief economist at Moody’s Analytics, told MarketWatch. If rates fall, lenders run the risk that a borrower will pay off a loan early by refinancing. That would limit how much in interest that lender could expect to make.

    “In an odd sort of way, then, the expectation that mortgage rates will be lower in the future can lead lenders to increase rates today to compensate for the prepayment risk,” deRitis said. 

    Lower rates, more competition among buyers

    So when can prospective buyers expect mortgage rates to fall significantly? 

    “Homebuyers should expect mortgage rates to move lower as we head through 2024,” Sturtevant said. While Fannie Mae expects rates to fall below 6% by the end of the year, other economists, like Fratantoni, expect the 30-year rate to finish the last quarter of 2024 at 6.1%.

    But even if rates do fall, that won’t necessarily mean buyers will be better able to afford a home, because a drop in rates could heat up competition for homes even as it boosts buyers’ purchasing power.

    “There is still very low inventory in the market, and buyers need to act quickly when they find the right home for them,” Sturtevant said.

    For the many homeowners who currently have a mortgage rate below 4%, rates stuck in the 6% range may be leading them to put off plans to sell their home and buy a new one.

    But it’s worth noting that since 2000, rates on 30-year mortgages have ranged from a high of about 8.62% to a low of 2.81%, averaging about 5% over that span. And compared with the historical average of the 1970s, which was 7.7%, the current rates in the 6% rage are not that high, deRitis noted.

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  • Housing Help? Dallas Is a National Leader in Turning Old Workplaces into Apartments

    Housing Help? Dallas Is a National Leader in Turning Old Workplaces into Apartments

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    Dallas is among the nation’s leaders when it comes to converting old office buildings into living spaces.

    Big D ranks No. 3 in the number of former offices getting the home-makeover treatment, according to a recent report by RentCafe, a nationwide apartment search website. The city is breathing life into 3,163 new apartments this way.

    Dallas placed third after two East Coast metros in the 2024 office-to-apartments pipeline: Washington, D.C., with 5,820 units and New York City with 5,215. 

    Bryan Tony with the Dallas Housing Coalition said RentCafe’s findings are “incredibly promising.” Downtown’s amenities are a major draw to young professionals and urban dwellers.

    “The more office-to-residential conversions that can take place here, the more attractive our downtown living experience and our housing affordability will be,” Tony said. “Right now we know that Dallas is becoming increasingly unaffordable, so the only way to combat that is add to our housing supply.”

    The coronavirus pandemic upended the way that people work in Dallas and countless other cities worldwide, with many now clocking in from home rather than reporting to a traditional workspace. Another recent study found that the January occupancy rate in Dallas-area offices was 34.2% lower than it was pre-COVID-19.

    At the same time, home prices have soared in North Texas in recent years, pricing out many would-be buyers.

    Dallas’ leading adaptive reuse projects include the former Oncor building, with 330 units, and the Bryan and Renaissance towers, with 425 and 500 units, respectively, according to a RentCafe news release.

    Tony noted that to keep up with housing demand, Dallas needs to develop 100,000 units by 2033. It’s crucial to get moving quickly on that goal. Also important: not leaving out low-income residents.

    Nearly half of Dallas renters are forking over more in housing costs than they can afford, he said. It’s unclear how many of the adaptive reuse spaces downtown will fall under the “affordable” umbrella, but Tony believes that these transformations are a step in the right direction.

    “Dallas right now as a whole, we have been affordable before, but we’re at risk of really becoming unaffordable,” he said, adding: “Those gaps are becoming more apparent.”

    “We want to keep that competitive edge as a city.” – Bryan Tony, Dallas Housing Coalition

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    Advocates had been pushing to see $200 million allocated to housing in the upcoming bond package. In a straw vote last week, City Council was prepared to approve only $61 million toward that goal.

    Many residents may soon be forced to move because of pricey housing, Tony said. Loads of jobs are located in Dallas, so he hopes that more housing will become available in and around the urban core to attract and retain talent.

    “We want to keep that competitive edge as a city,” he said.

    Jennifer Scripps, president and CEO of Downtown Dallas Inc., noted that at the same time that some companies are downsizing their space, Dallas is welcoming hundreds of new residents each day. In fact, the Dallas-Forth Worth region counted more newcomers between 2021 and 2022 than any other metro nationwide: nearly 170,400 additional residents.

    But converting break rooms into bathrooms won’t necessarily be easy. Scripps pointed out that it’s challenging to reconfigure these spaces, pointing to factors like plumbing, additional toilets and other considerations.

    Scripps said she’s toured properties that were converted a decade or so ago that have held up well.

    “When people think about housing in Dallas, the kinds of apartments we offer in downtown, it wasn’t always the kind of apartment stock people were used to,” she said. “So we’ve had to kind of reinvent our apartment market downtown over the last 15 years, and now I think it’s showing lots of signs of health as we’ve had transplants from the coasts moving in, and a real demand that has been sustained.”

    Scott Goldstein with Downtown Dallas Inc. noted via email that newer conversion projects tend to land in the luxury realm, with prices as high as $4.16 per square foot. But older conversion-project units may not necessarily break the bank, with some costing as low as $1.71 per square foot, he said.

    Over the past couple of decades, downtown Dallas has also introduced more than 20 acres of green spaces, Scripps said. That’s good news for residents who need to walk their pups. And Dallas today is a national leader in greening its downtown with a veritable “portfolio of parks.”

    Plus, the area is home to tons of cafes and restaurants, as well as services including tailors, dry cleaners and optometrists.

    Many people want to work near where they live, Scripps said.

    “By attracting highly qualified professionals and people who work in a variety of businesses that we have downtown …,” she said, “by having a healthy, diversified economy and attractive housing and high quality of life, it’s ultimately what all of this stuff is about, right? That we will have a healthier, safer and more vibrant downtown.”



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    Simone Carter

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  • Drone footage: Isla Vista bluff collapses in storm, damaging a student apartment balcony

    Drone footage: Isla Vista bluff collapses in storm, damaging a student apartment balcony

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    A bluff in Santa Barbara’s Isla Vista community where several people have fallen to their deaths over the years gave way during the recent storms, and students in an apartment building above the bluff were evacuated as inspectors checked a crumbling balcony.

    The terrace on the 6700 block of Del Playa Drive is cracked and hanging off the edge of the bluff, which has been eaten away by coastal erosion over the past few decades. The 45 UC Santa Barbara students who live in the building were evacuated Tuesday morning but allowed back in after an inspector examined the property. No one was injured.

    “The bluffs in Isla Vista have been a longtime problem,” said Laura Capps, a Santa Barbara County supervisor who visited the area Tuesday and spoke to students. “This morning it fell. Thankfully, no injuries. They were able to get all the kids out of the apartment.”

    The slide occurred around 9:50 a.m. due to “cliff / bluff erosion,” according to Santa Barbara County Fire spokesperson Scott Safechuck. It comes as the record-breaking storms that have buffeted California continue inundating many parts of Southern California with rain.

    Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s Department Lieutenant Garrett Te Slaa was first on scene Tuesday.

    He said the department was concerned about possible issues at the bluffs during the rain this week, and said coastal erosion is a constant issue in Isla Vista.

    “It’s obvious that the bluff is continuing to erode,” he said. “This is the perfect mix of a saturated bluff and over-capacity balconies.”

    Te Slaa said that crews were brought in Tuesday while students were evacuated to install a new fence along the balcony, closer to the property. He said that as coastal erosion continues, the balconies will become smaller.

    Capps took a photo from down the bluff that shows the red fence that encircles the balcony hanging over the beach, threatening to tumble into the sand.

    The bluffs have made headlines over the years as students and others have fallen to their deaths to the beach below.

    Since 1994, 13 people have died in cliff accidents, according to the Santa Barbara Independent.

    Most recently, a student, Benjamin Schurmer, died after falling about 40 feet from the bluffs.

    Capps proposed an eight-step plan to combat the deaths, including increasing the height of fencing surrounding the 60 or so properties on the bluffs.



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    Noah Goldberg

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  • Opinion: In L.A., real estate envy is all too real. I can't stop looking at Zillow

    Opinion: In L.A., real estate envy is all too real. I can't stop looking at Zillow

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    I was leaving a friend’s housewarming party on a street of nice single-family homes in Los Angeles a few years back when my curiosity got the best of me. I pulled up Zillow on my phone, entered her address and blinked at the property’s purchase price. I suppose I could have just asked her. In Los Angeles, talking about the cost of real estate is common, and I’ve often heard people comparing their refinance interest rates or saying how much they had to pay over the asking price. But by pursuing the information privately, I could digest my feelings about not being in a position to afford a house of equal value because I came from a different family of origin, because I was unmarried, because our writing careers had unfolded differently.

    This emotional aspect of homeownership isn’t discussed in articles that make the choice between buying and renting seem as low impact as choosing whether to eat carbs. Of course, it’s a financial investment and should theoretically be approached without sentiment. But it’s also one of the most loaded tenets of the American dream. When a belief or ideal has been drilled into your subconscious, detaching your values and self-identity from the fantasy can be difficult. This is true, even for people like me who were raised outside the mainstream.

    When I was a child, my mother and some friends bought 100 acres of land in Maine, creating an intentional community as part of the Back to the Land movement in the 1970s. Four families, including my own, designed and built properties — with our own hands — as well as the organic gardens, compost bins and wood piles that supported our chosen way of life. Everything was purposeful, such as our home being heated by solar energy and wood we mostly cut from our land. We ate our vegetarian, home-grown meals together under our skylights and at regular neighborhood potlucks. At the time, I felt like an outsider at school. Most families in our village had lobstered for generations and did not understand our preferences. But even then, I sensed I was being raised thoughtfully and well.

    All of this introduced me to the idea that owning a home was a conscious commitment to creating a small oasis of mindful, environmentally friendly, community-oriented living, as well as an act of stewardship — my parents own 30 acres of woodland that our family will never develop. And while I rebelled at 15 by moving to Massachusetts to start college early, I internalized these values and have been looking for my own version ever since.

    Perhaps it was this unusual upbringing that made me always love peeping in other people’s windows, to see how they lived by comparison. On runs through my neighborhood, I have spied scenes of a boy practicing piano or my neighbors watching “Jeopardy” by the light of their Christmas tree. As a child, I drew elaborate underground squirrel-houses with bunk beds and roller rinks. As an author, when I’m creating a new character I go to their hometown’s Zillow page and seek their living situation, scouring photos for my scene-setting. In my forthcoming novel, the main character, Mari, is a ghostwriter who sleuths intel about her client by looking up her home on Zillow. But I don’t need an excuse to peruse the site. Even though I’m not in the market to buy, I love to get lost in the fantasy of other houses, other lives.

    This tendency to look up residences in my neighborhood, for sale or not, morphed into looking up homes to which I am invited. Like many things in life, you only have to do it a few times for it to become a habit, whether it feels good or not. When I looked up a former mentor’s new home, the elegant, high-ceilinged rooms, alluring yard and swimming pool gave me all the feelings we can have about an old friend whose career has skyrocketed when ours has not yet hit the same heights.

    Perhaps I should stop. Or perhaps it’s a healthy way of getting a handle on how I compare myself to others and assess where I am in my own life, and what my level of success or acquisition says about me. Perhaps, just as it fuels my writing, it helps me envision the many possible future stories of my own life.

    Finally, in 2017, I compromised on my desire for a home and bought an investment property in Joshua Tree. Many of my friends also own places there, so in that way I was becoming part of a community as I had long sought. But owning a house that I would live in had become such a potent signifier, and even though I’m well aware that being able to buy property anywhere is a luxury many others will never have, this still felt like a concession. I knew vacationers would frequent it more than I would.

    The day I decided to buy the home, I peered up at the sky through one of the perfectly placed windows and nearly wept because the space was that beautiful. The Los Angeles real estate market — and the rental market — had beaten me down, and I had given up thinking I had a right to anything as nice as this property. Except I did, and I do. We all have this right. And now, sometimes, I pull up the Zillow listing for my house and smile at this little corner of the world where I fulfilled a dream and took the first step into my own version of stewardship.

    Sarah Tomlinson is a writer in Los Angeles. Her first novel, “The Last Days of the Midnight Ramblers,” is to be published Feb. 13.

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    Sarah Tomlinson

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  • Buy Buy Home: The Perth houses for sale you must know about in Dalkeith, CBD and Kardinya – Medical Marijuana Program Connection

    Buy Buy Home: The Perth houses for sale you must know about in Dalkeith, CBD and Kardinya – Medical Marijuana Program Connection

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    Buy Buy Home: The Perth houses for sale you must know about in Dalkeith, CBD and Kardinya Original Author Link click here to read complete story.. … Read More

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    MMP News Author

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  • This New Jersey financial pro just won nearly $500K on a sports bet. He'll use it to pay off student loans.

    This New Jersey financial pro just won nearly $500K on a sports bet. He'll use it to pay off student loans.

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    After winning nearly $500,000 on a $5 sports bet, a New Jersey financial adviser said he is planning to follow some of the advice he gives to clients and put the money to good use.

    Travis Dufner, a 32-year-old adviser with Millstone Financial Group in Millstone, N.J., is the bettor who has stepped forward to say he won the $489,378.01 parlay payoff. The wager involved picking 14 players who would score a touchdown over the holiday weekend’s NFL games.

    When…

    Master your money.

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  • 'Real Housewives' broker lawsuit settled with donation to pro-Israel charity

    'Real Housewives' broker lawsuit settled with donation to pro-Israel charity

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    Celebrity real estate agent Mauricio Umansky will not face a civil trial for allegedly violating his duties as a broker in the sale of a prominent Malibu hilltop mansion that he flipped for nearly $70 million.

    Real estate investor Sam Hakim and his agent dropped their consolidated Superior Court lawsuits this month against Umansky, his development partner Mauricio Oberfeld and other defendants. The legal action accused the two men of conspiring to buy the mansion in 2016 for $32.5 million — despite an alleged higher offer from Hakim — so they could fix it up and sell it for a big profit.

    Umansky and his luxury Beverly Hills real estate firm, The Agency, not only represented the buyer and seller in the transaction, but Umansky had a stake in the buyer’s limited liability company fronted by Oberfeld. The 2019 lawsuit sought at least $35 million in damages, or roughly the profit made flipping the property in 2017 to the heir of a Hong Kong drink manufacturer.

    Jennifer Shakouri and Alan Hearty, attorneys for Hakim, a Beverly Hills resident who runs a family real estate investment firm, said in a statement that their client, who is Jewish, decided to “put this matter behind him” amid the war in Gaza.

    “In light of current global events, including the shocking attack on the state of Israel on October 7, Mr. Hakim decided his time and energy would be better served on matters other than this litigation. This led him to resolve this matter,” said the statement, which noted that as part of the settlement Umansky agreed to give money to a “pro-Israel charitable organization.”

    “Regarding the issue of wrongdoing by Mr. Umansky, the court records speak for themselves,” the statement concluded.

    In an interview, Umansky, who is also Jewish, said the donation by himself and his brokerage was something he would have gladly done anyway. He declined to disclose the value of the donation. He said the decision by Hakim and his agent to drop the litigation was an indication of its lack of merit.

    “At the end of the day, I believe that from the beginning I did not do anything wrong,” he said.

    Hakim’s decision followed the production of text messages that had long been sought by the defendants in discovery. Texts between Hakim and his broker, Aitan Segal, suggested that Hakim was first made aware of the partnership that Umansky and Oberfeld had formed to buy and flip the property through a 2017 article — not one he read in 2018 as he had claimed.

    Real estate investor Sam Hakim poses in front of the Malibu mansion whose $70-million sale prompted his lawsuit against Mauricio Umansky.

    (Mel Melcon / Los Angeles Times)

    The issue of when he first knew of Umansky’s involvement is relevant to how long he had to file the case before the statute of limitations expired. Attorneys for the defendants sought to have the case terminated over the delayed production of the texts; Judge Mark Epstein rejected that bid in an October decision while leaving open the possibility of monetary sanctions.

    Jeremiah Reynolds, an attorney for Oberfeld and another defendant, Matt Dugally, who also was a member of the buyer’s group and owns a luxury home builder with Oberfeld, said in a statement that neither client paid Hakim “to settle this frivolous case against them.”

    “Sam Hakim voluntarily dropped his lawsuit under threat of court ordered sanctions for his failure to turn over text messages that demonstrated his case never should have been filed,” the statement said.

    The Hakim lawsuit was not the first filed against Umansky over the 16.5-acre Malibu compound, a conspicuous piece of real estate featuring a 15,000-square-foot mansion overlooking the city’s pier. The compound was featured on “Real Housewives of Beverly Hills,” a show featuring Umansky’s spouse Kyle Richards, when the broker — the star of his own Netflix reality show — was readying it for resale.

    The estate was acquired in 2006 by Teodoro Nguema Obiang Mangue, the playboy son of the president of Equatorial Guinea. He was forced to sell the home in 2014 after the U.S. government filed an asset forfeiture case that accused him of buying the mansion, a jet and other luxury items with laundered funds generated by corrupt business dealings in his native country.

    Umansky was hired by Nguema to conduct the sale, with the first $10.3 million in proceeds going to the U.S. government and the remainder for the benefit of the people of Equatorial Guinea. After it was reported in the media that Umansky was a member of the group that flipped the home in 2017 for $69.9 million, Nguema sued Umansky, accusing him of self-dealing that lowered the initial sale price.

    Umansky reached a settlement with Nguema, who is no longer in the U.S., that provided $6.35 million to a healthcare nonprofit working in Equatorial Guinea, as part of the asset forfeiture case that wrapped up in 2021.

    The Agency’s insurance company also sued after the brokerage filed an insurance claim to help fund the Nguema settlement. The insurer accused Umansky of a conflict of interest in the deals and sought to rescind the brokerage’s policy. An undisclosed settlement was reached.

    Umansky said that he was unable to comment on those cases and settlements due to nondisclosure agreements.

    At the same time, Hakim’s case had been wending its way through Santa Monica Superior Court, with voluminous filings by both sides. The original complaint accused Umansky, Oberfeld and other defendants of eight causes of action, including fraud, breaches of duty and negligent misrepresentation.

    Not every allegation applied to every defendant and over the years Epstein struck several, including the fraud allegation. A trial was set for next year on the remaining causes of action — including an allegation Umansky breached his duty to be an honest and fair broker — assuming the case survived a motion for summary judgment and wasn’t dismissed by Epstein.

    A core issue was Hakim’s allegation that he and Segal verbally offered at least $40 million for the property, but that Umansky never passed the offer on to his client Nguema. They also claimed Umansky told them not to bother to put the offer in writing because of the unusual nature of the transaction, since Nguema would not personally benefit from a higher price.

    Umansky has denied Hakim made such an offer or that he told him to not put it in writing — something he said a sophisticated investor would always do. “It’s a ‘he said, she said.’ I know what happened. And I know that there was no verbal offer made. Period. End the story,” Umansky said.

    Hakim’s attorneys have disputed that there was no evidence. Last year, they submitted into the court file the transcription of a voicemail left for Umansky by Segal in May 2015. During it, the agent notes that his client is ready with an all-cash offer in the “40 range.”

    Umansky dismissed the voicemail, saying it was left with him prior to Segal visiting the property. “I am well aware of that. We do that all the time, ‘Hey, I’ve got a client looking up to $60 million. What can I have? What can you show?’ That’s not evidence of any sort of offer.”

    Attorneys for Umansky also have questioned whether Hakim had the financial wherewithal to make an all-cash offer that would close the deal fast, though Umansky’s and Oberfeld’s limited liability company itself needed to bring in other investors.

    Perhaps the most central issue of the case revolved around when Umansky and Oberfeld reached their own agreement to buy the property. Umansky informed Nguema and the Department of Justice in June 2016 — weeks before the sale closed and long after negotiations with Hakim had ceased — that he had only recently been invited to participate in the buyers’ group.

    But Epstein cast doubt on that in a ruling this year, stating there were documents indicating a “concrete February 2016 plan for a joint partnership that had long been in the works.”

    “The court notes that the evidence does seem pretty clear that Umansky’s suggestion that the discussions only started a little bit before May 2016 was simply false and he knew it when he said it,” the judge wrote.

    Umansky said the “judge was completely wrong in those statements” — and almost seemed to rue the case was dropped.

    “Unfortunately, or fortunately, it’s not going to be heard at trial,” he said.

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    Laurence Darmiento

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  • 'Game-changer for the Valley': Almost 1,500 new housing units to be built at North Hollywood Metro station

    'Game-changer for the Valley': Almost 1,500 new housing units to be built at North Hollywood Metro station

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    As part of an ongoing Metro effort to build housing and community around transportation hubs, a new mixed-use development dubbed District NoHo is coming to North Hollywood’s Metro station.

    The Los Angeles City Council voted Friday to approve the 15-acre project, greenlighting a massive development that will include 1,481 residential units as well as office, retail and restaurant space.

    A quarter of the units will be rent-restricted, more than double the ratio required for the city’s density bonus.

    “District NoHo will be a transformative project for this city,” City Council President Paul Krekorian said in a statement. Krekorian represents Council District 2, which includes North Hollywood.

    “This is a truly transit-oriented development that will enable hundreds of Angelenos to live, work, study, shop and enjoy recreation without driving, parking or riding in anything other than zero-emission public transportation,” he said.

    The project will also bring to the area 750 parking spots reserved for Metro customers, and two acres of open space for the public as well as three shopping plazas. The North Hollywood station is Metro’s third busiest.

    District NoHo is one of Metro’s several joint development projects, which are real estate collaborations between Metro and private developers built on Metro land to create more housing around transit.

    The project will feature improvements to North Hollywood’s Metro station, including a new entrance to the B Line subway on the west side of Lankershim Boulevard, improvements to the G Line busway terminus, and new internal streets and walkways to break up the large development site, a city report said.

    Metro has made the ambitious commitment to build 10,000 housing units in Los Angeles County by 2031, “with the goal of contributing to solving Southern California’s housing crisis,” the agency said in a news release in July. Half of the units are intended to be rent-restricted for lower- to moderate-income households.

    While District NoHo will include 366 rent-restricted units, some community members say the project isn’t doing enough to create affordable housing. Reimagine District NoHo, an effort driven by the nonprofit NoHo Home Alliance, has been fighting for the inclusion of more affordable units.

    “The government’s obligation is to do the most good for the most people,” said Desmond Faison, with Reimagine District NoHo. “I think that it misses the mark. … We’re building a monolith to capitalism.”

    Faison said that only the most wealthy North Hollywood residents would be able to afford to live in District NoHo’s market rate units. Glenn Block, another North Hollywood resident who is involved with Reimagine District NoHo, said the 15 acres the development will be built on could be put to better use.

    “This project fails on every level,” he said.

    The property will have nearly 100 more rent-restricted units than the original proposal, according to Metro project manager Marie Sullivan. The number of affordable units is limited because funding for the units comes from many different sources, all of which have restricted budgets.

    “There’s only so much affordable housing funding that comes from federal, state and local sources each year,” Sullivan said.

    Metro is also using income from the market-rate units to fund other aspects of the project, including a park and shopping plazas, she said.

    “We need the revenue from market-rate homes to fund a lot of these public benefits,” she said.

    District NoHo will also boost the community by creating roughly 10,000 jobs during construction, according to a city report, and an additional 2,500 jobs through property operations. Construction is expected to generate $1 billion.

    The development of the property includes the demolition of nearly 50,000 square feet of surface parking lots and industrial space.

    The project, which has been in the works since 2015, “provides a model of sustainable development for the whole region,” Krekorian said. “This is a game-changer for the Valley.”

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    Caroline Petrow-Cohen

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  • Demolition of burned Tustin hangar underway; asbestos levels ‘below any level of concern’

    Demolition of burned Tustin hangar underway; asbestos levels ‘below any level of concern’

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    The scorched remains of a World War II blimp hangar in Tustin are being razed as air quality officials call nearby asbestos levels “below any level of concern” while continuing to urge neighbors to take safety precautions.

    The enormous wooden military relic went up in flames Nov. 7, showering ash and debris — later found to contain asbestos — on nearby residential neighborhoods.

    The 17-story hangar smoldered for more than a week, and residents have struggled to get information about the fallout on air quality and airborne contaminants, including when debris will be removed from their properties. While the property is owned by the Navy, a mix of government agencies have been involved in the firefight and aftermath, including the Orange County Fire Authority and the South Coast Air Quality Management District.

    “Our biggest frustration overall is that there’s just nobody in charge,” nearby resident Jeff Lawrence told The Times.

    Deconstruction of the hangar should be completed in the next day or two, Tustin officials said Saturday. Plans call for extinguishing all remaining hotspots of the fire, using heavy equipment excavators to remove debris and clearing roadways so water trucks can reach all areas of the hanger.

    The trucks equipped with nozzles and hoses will be used for fire suppression and dust abatement throughout the process. The hangar doors and their supporting concrete pillars will be stabilized and left in place for the time being.

    “Since monitoring began, all particulate matter from smoke and fire data at community sites are well below any level of concern,” the city said in a statement. “Asbestos sampling data received to date are also well below any levels of concern.”

    Most schools in the area have been cleared for on-campus instruction attendance, but a few are still being inspected by asbestos consultants, the Tustin Unified School District said on its website Sunday.

    Most public parks are open, but Centennial Park and Veterans Sports Park remain closed until further notice, parks officials said.

    The Orange County Healthcare Agency recommends people who believe their neighborhood has been affected by fire debris take such precautions as keeping doors and windows closed and not running air conditioning systems that draw in outside air. Avoid activities that will displace debris related to the fire, such as sweeping, leaf blowing, mowing and gardening. 

    Blocks of the city where bulk debris from the fire has been collected are shown a map on the city website.

    Times staff writer Hannah Fry contributed to this report

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    Roger Vincent

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  • Caltrans long aware of conditions under 10 Freeway that fueled fire

    Caltrans long aware of conditions under 10 Freeway that fueled fire

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    The state was long aware of conditions under Interstate 10 where a massive fire Saturday severely damaged the freeway south of downtown Los Angeles — with Caltrans inspectors on site as recently as Oct. 6, according to state officials, tenants and a lawyer for the company leasing the land.

    The fire was fueled by wood pallets stored under the freeway and is being investigated as an arson.

    The plot of land was leased by Caltrans to a private company that subleased it to small blue-collar businesses at much higher rents.

    For years, a pallet distributor, a recycler, a mechanic shop and a garment factory supplier operated between the freeway pillars on East 14th Street a block east of South Alameda Street. Along the perimeters, homeless people camped and lighted fires to keep warm.

    The conditions did not raise any apparent alarm bells among state officials who regularly inspected the site. Google Earth photos from January 2023 and March 2022 show dozens of columns of pallets stacked two stories high, amid piles of tires, wood boxes, cardboard and old vehicles, all visible from four streets and a freeway offramp.

    “Caltrans staff inspect all airspace lease sites at least annually to check for potential safety hazards and lease violations,” said Eric Menjivar, a spokesperson for Caltrans District 7, which maintains state highways in Los Angeles and Ventura counties. Areas under and next to the freeway are considered airspace.

    “Staff also monitor what is placed or stored on site by the tenant. If deficiencies are noted, Caltrans staff notifies the tenant for remedy. The State Fire Marshal also inspects regularly for fire and life safety.”

    Menjivar said Caltrans inspected the property Oct. 6 after Caltrans had filed a lawsuit to remove its tenant, Apex Development Inc., for noncompliance with the lease. The suit, filed in September, said the company had not paid its rent in more than a year and had illegally sublet the land to a host of small businesses.

    The California Department of Transportation has not provided inspection reports requested by the Times.

    Jose Luis Villamil Rodriguez, who started renting a spot on the property from Apex in 2011, said he watched Caltrans inspectors regularly come to the site.

    “They would even take photos,” he said. “Everyone knew what was under the freeway, they saw the pallet yard and so I’m pretty sure they were aware of it.”

    Rodriguez said the pallet yard business had been under the freeway for about seven years. He said the owner was constantly storing and moving the pallets. Rodriguez said he never interacted with the inspectors. Out of caution, Rodriguez said he had fire extinguishers at his job site. “Whether others didn’t, I wouldn’t know,” he added.

    Caltrans had rented the 48,000-square-foot lot to Apex and its owner, Ahmad Anthony Nowaid, starting in 2008. Under Apex’s lease agreement, the property could be used only for parking operable vehicles and “open storage”; other uses required the approval of Caltrans and the Federal Highway Administration, something the company does not appear to have secured. Apex was also not allowed the storage of inoperable vehicles, flammable materials or other hazards.

    The lease agreement between Caltrans and Apex was filed in court as part of the state’s lawsuit against the company for unpaid rent. As of September, Apex owed nearly $80,000 in back rent on the property that burned.

    A court hearing in the suit is scheduled for early 2024.

    Apex, through its attorney Mainak D’Attaray, confirmed that Caltrans had inspected the lot at East 14th Street at least once a year. The lawyer also disputed that the various small businesses renting from Apex were there illegally; Caltrans “was fully aware of the sublessees and their operations,” he said in a statement.

    The attorney argued that state officials were wrongly blaming the company and knew about homeless encampments and the overall conditions at the site.

    “Even the State of California’s Fire Marshall inspected the premises,” D’Attaray said in a statement. “Apex is sympathetic to the loss of property and the adverse impact the fire has caused the people of Los Angeles. But Apex was not involved in the fire. Apex is being unfairly scape-goated for something over which it had no control.”

    The lot at the edge of the Fashion District is one of five that Caltrans had rented to Apex’s owner, Nowaid. Caltrans had filed eviction proceedings for all five properties, saying Nowaid’s firm owed a total of at least $620,000 in unpaid rent.

    Earlier this week, Gov. Gavin Newsom criticized Apex and its owner without specifically identifying Nowaid.

    “This guy and this organization, whoever the members of that particular organization are, have been bad actors,” Newsom said at a news conference. “They stopped paying their rent, they’re out of compliance, and as was stated yesterday … they have been subleasing this site to at least five, maybe as many as six tenants, without authorization from Caltrans or authorization from our federal partners.”

    D’Attaray said that the eviction suits were retaliation by Caltrans for a lawsuit that Apex had filed in June, accusing the agency of interfering with his business.

    He said the governor and Mayor Karen Bass were trying “to excuse their own failures to adequately address the public safety issues caused by the unhoused.”

    Apex had repeatedly called the Los Angeles Fire Department to report fires started by homeless people who pitched tents around the perimeter of the lot, D’Attaray said. He claimed that the city’s fire and police departments responded “dismissively.”

    “The unhoused persons camping along the fence line of the premises were allowed to remain and accumulate all types of refuse and materials over which Apex had no control,” D’Attaray said in the statement.

    A spokesperson for Newsom rejected the idea that the governor’s statements were off base.

    “CalFire currently believes the fire was caused by arson — the criminal act of deliberately setting fire to property — in a fenced-off area that Apex was responsible for maintaining while they continued to assert rights under the lease,” the spokesperson said.

    A representative for Bass did not respond to requests for comment.

    A Caltrans engineer, who asked to withhold his name because he was not authorized to speak, said that it was the state agency that should have seen this coming.

    “Caltrans has known about this for a long time,” the engineer told the Times earlier this week. “They have permitted lessees to store flammable stuff underneath these freeways for decades. They’ve had a couple of fires in the last three years that have affected columns, but inspectors can’t completely get underneath the bridge to make a thorough inspection because of all the junk.”

    In Atlanta, a similar fire in 2017 caused a portion of the 85 Freeway to collapse after a 39-year-old homeless man who police said had been smoking crack set fire to an upholstered chair on top of a shopping cart.

    The fire ignited combustible materials stored under the freeway. Federal investigators found the Georgia Department of Transportation partly responsible.

    In an alert sent out to transportation agencies across the country, the National Transportation Safety Board warned: “Although catastrophic fires fueled by materials stored underneath bridges are relatively rare events, the loss of this structure demonstrates what can happen if bridge owners are not vigilant about monitoring and controlling such materials.”

    The I-85 closure snarled commuter traffic on the region’s busiest throroughfares for six weeks. In response, Caltrans wrote up a policy directive directly based on that incident that prohibited the storage of flammable materials under its bridges and required access for bridge inspections.

    It is not clear if it was enforced.

    Assemblymember Miguel Santiago (D-Los Angeles) said the fire on Saturday “should have never happened.

    “There’s already protocols in place,” he said. He praised the governor’s response to the fire and his administration, which has pushed the effort to “Fix the 10.”

    Santiago said he felt confident that the governor’s office and Caltrans would provide information about the state’s leases, including a review of litigation and enforcement mechanisms.

    “Once we get the information there needs to be strong accountability mechanisms in place to prevent anything like this from ever happening again and putting the public at risk.”

    Carina Quinto, who runs a mobile mechanic shop out of the freeway underpass, was bewildered by officials. She had been watching news reports about the fire and was surprised to hear officials say they had no idea what was going on under the underpass.

    “Supposedly the city didn’t know the kind of businesses that were running under the freeway. They knew exactly what we were doing,” she said. Someone from sanitation came regularly to check that oil was properly disposed, she said.

    When asked for proof of the visit, she said, it burned up in the fire.

    Times staff writers Taryn Luna and Thomas Curwen contributed to this report.

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    Rachel Uranga, Matt Hamilton, Ruben Vives

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  • Why Your Personal Brand Shouldn’t Be About You

    Why Your Personal Brand Shouldn’t Be About You

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    When creating a website or developing marketing materials for yourself, a starting point might seem to be listing your awards and accomplishments. You likely have admirable credentials and skills that could be noted. If you have a long track record or experience, it could seem fitting to include these too.

    While these are all valid points, individuals who see these resources may not be strongly attached to statements that focus on you. As visitors click on to your website, they might only glance at the achievements you have listed there. They’re more likely to look for material that speaks to them.

    That’s why, when building a personal brand, I always encourage professionals to think about their customers and target audience first. Once you understand what they’re looking for, you can address their needs. You’ll be able to design solutions that resolve their challenges and help them improve their lives or businesses.

    Follow these steps to create a personal brand that helps others connect to you.

    1. Walk in Your Customer’s Shoes

    I was fortunate enough to be introduced to the work of Donald Miller, bestselling author of “Building a Story Brand,” through my coach Rod Santomassimo, founder of the Massimo Group. Miller emphasizes the importance of understanding the problems you are helping your customers solve. Instead of focusing solely on showcasing your strengths, direct your attention to your customers and their needs.

    2. Create Customer Avatars

    Before I sat down to build my own personal website, JamesNelson.com, I spent ample time thinking about the audience. I created avatars who represented the types of visitors who would likely be interested in the site. I did the same during the process of writing my book, “The Insider’s Edge to Real Estate Investing.” It was important to know who the book was for and why they would choose it. The audience included college students and individuals who were just starting to learn about real estate and think about making their first investment. It also consisted of veteran real estate investors who might be looking to step up their game. Addressing multiple audiences can work, as long as you have meaningful messages for each one.

    3. Craft A Compelling Value Proposition

    Spend some time thinking about the value you provide to your customers. You’ll want to clearly define your value proposition and highlight how your products or services solve your customer’s pain points. Focus on the benefits they will gain by connecting with you. My speaking coach, Joel Weldon, is quick to note that the audience is always more interested in what’s in it for them as opposed to hearing about you. The more your marketing materials can speak to those points, the better.

    4. Emphasize How They Can Improve

    As you address your customer’s challenges and provide solutions, be sure to include how their lives or businesses will change. On your website or other promotions, help individuals see what they’ll be able to accomplish if they connect with you. Perhaps they’ll be able to increase their savings, build a portfolio, or reduce the length of time they need to accomplish tasks. If the customer can envision themselves in a new way, they may be more likely to reach out for what you’re offering.

    5. Establish Yourself As The Expert

    As you share resources, focus on providing the information your target audience is hoping to find. If you can give them what they’re looking for, they’ll start seeing you as an individual who can help solve their problems. The chances of them turning to you the next time they need a solution will increase as well.

    Once you place yourself in the journey of a consumer, you’ll be able to connect with them and provide a product or service that helps them solve their problems. As you do so, think of the values you stand for, and how that sets you apart from competitors. The more you can reach customers on an emotional level and establish yourself as an expert, the more you’ll grow your network and future business opportunities.

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    James Nelson, Contributor

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  • Here’s why you might not have to pay a 6% commission next time you sell a home

    Here’s why you might not have to pay a 6% commission next time you sell a home

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    Going back decades, if you wanted to buy or sell a stock on the open market, you had to pay a 2% commission to buy and a 2% commission to sell. Then the advent of discount brokerage, led by Charles Schwab Corp.
    SCHW,
    +1.64%    ,
    made lower commissions available until eventually, with improved technology and efficiency, the entire industry changed to enable the average investor to avoid commissions completely.

    But the internet hasn’t done much to reduce the cost of selling a home in the U.S. Sellers typically pay a 6% commission to a real-estate agent to list and sell a home, with the seller’s agent splitting that commission with the buyer’s agent. But all of that may change because of a verdict this week in a class-action lawsuit in federal court against the National Association of Realtors.

    Aarthi Swaminathan covers the case, what may happen next and the implications for home sellers and buyers:

    Real-estate advice from the Moneyist


    MarketWatch illustration

    Quentin Fottrell — the Moneyist — works with three readers to answer tricky real-estate questions:

    Economic outlook

    On Wednesday, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell may have bolstered the case that the central bank is finished raising interest rates for this economic cycle. The federal-funds rate was left in its target range of 5.25% to 5.50%.

    Jon Gray, the president of Blackstone Group, spoke with MarketWatch Editor in Chief Mark DeCambre and said he expected the Fed to succeed in bringing down inflation without pushing the U.S. economy into a deep recession.

    Friday employment numbers: Jobs report shows 150,000 new jobs in October as U.S. labor market cools

    Bond-market trend switches again

    The U.S. Treasury yield curve has been inverted for nearly a year.


    FactSet

    Normally, longer-term bonds have higher yields than those with short maturities. But the yield curve has been inverted for nearly a year, with 3-month U.S. Treasury bills
    BX:TMUBMUSD03M
    having higher yields than 10-year Treasury notes
    BX:TMUBMUSD10Y.

    There has been elevated demand for long-term bonds, as investors have anticipated a recession and a reversal in Federal Reserve interest-rate policy. When interest rates decline, bond prices rise and vice versa.

    As you can see on the chart above, the yield curve was narrowing until mid-October. Yields on 10-year Treasury notes were close to 5% on Oct. 19, but they have been falling the past several days as the three-month yield has remained close to 5.5%.

    In this week’s ETF Wrap, Christine Idzelis reports on where all the money is flowing in the bond market.

    In the Bond Report, Vivien Lou Chen summarizes the action as investors react to the Federal Reserve’s decision not to change its federal-funds-rate target range this week and to other economic news.

    For income-seekers looking to avoid income taxes, here’s a deep dive into municipal bonds, with taxable-equivalent yields and a deeper look at those within four high-tax states.

    Ford’s good news — in the bond market

    Ford Motor Co.’s debt rating has been lifted by S&P to investment-grade.


    Getty Images

    Ford Motor Co.’s
    F,
    +4.14%
    credit rating was upgraded to an investment-grade rating by Standard & Poor’s on Monday. This takes about $67 billion in bonds out of the high-yield, or “junk,” market, as Ciara Linnane reports.

    A stock-market warning based on history

    The original Magnificent Seven.


    Courtesy Everett Collection

    By now you have probably heard the term “Magnificent Seven” used to describe stocks of the tremendous tech-oriented companies that have led this year’s rally for the S&P 500
    SPX
    : Apple Inc.
    AAPL,
    -0.52%    ,
    Microsoft Corp.
    MSFT,
    +1.29%    ,
    Amazon.com Inc.
    AMZN,
    +0.38%    ,
    Nvidia Corp.
    NVDA,
    +3.45%    ,
    Alphabet Inc.
    GOOGL,
    +1.26%

    GOOG,
    +1.39%    ,
    Meta Platforms Inc.
    META,
    +1.20%
    and Tesla Inc.
    TSLA,
    +0.66%    .
    With Tesla’s recent decline, that company is now the ninth-largest holding in the portfolio of the SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust
    SPY,
    which tracks the benchmark index. Here are the top 10 companies held by SPY (11 stocks, including two common-share classes for Alphabet), with total returns through Thursday:

    Company

    		 Ticker

    		 % of SPY portfolio

    		 2023 total return

    		 2022 total return

    		 Total return since end of 2021
    Apple Inc.

    		 AAPL,
    -0.52%         		7.2%

    		 37%

    		 -26%

    		 1%
    Microsoft Corp.

    		 MSFT,
    +1.29%         		7.1%

    		 46%

    		 -28%

    		 5%
    Amazon.com Inc.

    		 AMZN,
    +0.38%         		3.5%

    		 64%

    		 -50%

    		 -17%
    Nvidia Corp.

    		 NVDA,
    +3.45%         		3.0%

    		 198%

    		 -50%

    		 48%
    Alphabet Inc. Class A

    		 GOOGL,
    +1.26%         		2.1%

    		 44%

    		 -39%

    		 -12%
    Meta Platforms Inc. Class A

    		 META,
    +1.20%         		1.9%

    		 158%

    		 -64%

    		 -8%
    Alphabet Inc. Class C

    		 GOOG,
    +1.39%         		1.8%

    		 45%

    		 -39%

    		 -11%
    Berkshire Hathaway Inc. Class B

    		 BRK.B,
    +0.80%         		1.8%

    		 13%

    		 3%

    		 17%
    Tesla Inc.

    		 TSLA,
    +0.66%         		1.7%

    		 77%

    		 -65%

    		 -38%
    UnitedHealth Group Inc.

    		 UNH,
    -0.98%         		1.4%

    		 2%

    		 7%

    		 9%
    Eli Lilly and Company

    		 LLY,
    -2.15%         		1.3%

    		 60%

    		 34%

    		 115%
    Sources: FactSet, State Street (for SPY holdings)

    Five of these stocks (including the two Alphabet share classes) are still down from the end of 2021. SPY itself has returned 14% this year, following an 18% decline in 2022. It is still down 7% from the end of 2021.

    Mark Hulbert makes the case that a decade from now, the Magnificent Seven are unlikely to be among the largest companies in the stock market.

    More from Hulbert: These dividend stocks and ETFs have healthy yields that can lift your portfolio

    A different market opportunity: India is seeing a multidecade growth surge. Here’s how you can invest in it.

    The MarketWatch 50


    MarketWatch

    The MarketWatch 50 series is back, with articles and video interviews starting this week, including:

    PayPal soars after earnings report

    PayPal CEO Alex Chriss.


    MarketWatch/PayPal

    After the market close on Wednesday, PayPal Holdings Inc.
    PYPL,
    +1.89%
    announced quarterly results that came in ahead of analysts’ expectations, and the stock soared 7% on Thursday even though the company lowered its target for improving its operating margin.

    In the Ratings Game column, Emily Bary reports on the positive reaction to PayPal’s new CEO, Alex Chriss.

    A less enthusiastic earnings reaction: EV-products maker BorgWarner’s stock suffers biggest drop in 15 years after downbeat sales outlook

    Consumers drive mixed reactions to earnings results

    Apple Inc. reported mixed quarterly results.


    Mario Tama/Getty Images

    Here’s more of the latest corporate financial results and reactions. First the good news:

    And now the news that may not be so good:

    Harsh verdict for SBF

    FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried.


    AP

    It might seem that some legal battles never end, but it took only a year from the collapse of FTX for the cryptocurrency exchange’s founder, Sam Bankman-Fried, to be convicted on all seven federal fraud and money-laundering charges brought against him. The charges were connected to the disappearance of $8 billion from FTX customer accounts.

    Here’s more reaction and coverage of the virtual-currency industry:

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