California Association of Realtors lists its Koreatown office building

The California Association of Realtors has decided to sell its headquarters building after flirting with the idea of redeveloping the Los Angeles property.

In 2021, the City of Los Angeles gave a green light to CAR’s plans to redevelop the one-acre site at 525 South Virgil Avenue in Koreatown into a mixed-use project which would feature 46 condominiums and 84 affordable apartments.

But on Aug. 31, CAR announced that it would sell the four-story building that it has owned since 1981. 

The ask is about $21.2 million, confirmed Rick Shumacher, the trade organization’s COO. The listing price was based on appraisals and recommendations from Kidder Mathews, the commercial real estate brokerage that represents the property.

A chief reason for the sale is that the great majority of CAR’s board did not think the organization should get into the development game. 

“It makes more sense to look for another home for our headquarters office than to start doing the things you would need to do to take in tenants or rent out portions of the property,” Shumacher said.

CAR employs more than 120 people in the Los Angeles area, but most of them work remotely, a prime reason the trade group looked to sell the office building which was constructed in 1965. 

The business group made an announcement in October 2022 at its REimagine! Conference & Expo that its board decided to sell the building. It took almost a year to list because it took time to prepare the building for sale, Shumacher said. 

CAR has not determined a location for a new headquarters, according to a CAR representative.

It also took time for the group’s giant board to make the decision to step back from the development strategy, Shumacher said. 

“There are very few things that all 800 members of the board of directors agree on every aspect. There were some people who thought we should hold the property. They were looking at it as an investment that would continue to bring income to the organization, even if we were to move out of the facility. It took over the course of several board meetings,” he said. 

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The board discussed the issue at a number of meetings from 2021 to 2022, he added.

Koreatown has attracted a lot of development and apartments are currently a focus in the neighborhood. About 5,200 residential units are under construction in the area, according to Taylor Avakian, associate vice president of Matthews Real Estate Investment Services, a commercial real estate firm not involved in the deal for the CAR headquarters. 

“That little pocket is a B-,” Avakian said of the neighborhood where CAR’s headquarters are located. “It’s between a rougher neighborhood of Westlake, but it gets nicer west of Hoover Street.” 

CAR is more than 110 years old and has more than 200,000 member residential brokers in the state, according to its website.