WS Communities, the prominent Santa Monica-based development firm, has listed two assemblages on L.A.’s Westside for sale, including a nine-property development portfolio that hit the market at $28.3 million.
The two new listings come just days after WSC offered up what amounts to one of the highest-profile assemblages in California: A six-property portfolio in Santa Monica, branded “The Santa Monica Six,” where the firm has filed builder’s remedy applications and a buyer could build a total of nearly 3,000 units.
“We just need to raise capital,” Scott Walter, the CEO of WS Communities, said of the rationale behind the recent listings. He declined to elaborate further.
WSC, an affiliate of Neil Shekhter’s NMS Properties, listed “The Santa Monica Six” last week, a bombshell development package that includes a total of 2,930 developable units.
Both of the firm’s new listings are for properties located in Westchester, a neighborhood in the City of L.A. near Los Angeles International Airport that’s often overshadowed by more affluent Westside areas such as Westwood, Century City or Santa Monica.
But it’s a neighborhood ripe for multifamily development, the development assemblage listing emphasizes, because of its proximity to major corporations (Google, Northrop Grumman, Boeing), the beach town of Playa del Rey and the recently opened SoFi Stadium, among other Westside features.
“We’ve done most of the legwork getting the entitlements in place,” Walter said. “Now somebody can just step right in and move forward. It’s a really rare opportunity on the Westside.”
The opportunity includes a group of nine infill properties, within a quarter mile of each other, that are entitled for a total of 288 units; the properties also currently house 61 vacant apartment units and one vacant 4,300-square-foot office building.
The $28 million listing is held by Realty Investment Advisors and went on the market April 17. The firm has already had interest in the portfolio and would consider selling the properties separately, Walter said.
WSC’s other Westchester listing, which went out Thursday and is held by Walker & Dunlop, is for a portfolio of two apartment complexes that include 13 buildings with 307 units.
One complex, called Concourse, was completed in 2020 and consists of three buildings that total 187 units. Of those, 129 units are divided into co-living suites, and 58 are conventional apartments. The other complex, called NMS Westchester, was built in 1949 but renovated in the last decade. The complex includes 116 conventional apartments and four apartments with co-living suites.
The listing for the Santa Monica Six does not mention builder’s remedy — the previously obscure legal provision that has swept the state since WSC used it to file 14 project applications last fall — but instead focuses on entitlements that come from Santa Monica’s updated zoning code and a state density bonus.
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