LA’s Buzziest Real Estate Stories in 2025

The year 2025 began with a wave of wildfires that tore through the region, leaving scars that still haven’t healed as rebuilding crawls forward in the Pacific Palisades and Altadena.

Mayor Karen Bass came under fire for traveling to Africa during the windstorm that preceded January’s deadly Los Angeles wildfires, despite receiving advanced warnings from weather officials. She has also been accused of mishandling the aftermath. It wasn’t until the end of November the first rebuild in the Palisades was ready for occupancy.

Various people and entities jumped in to help with fire recovery, including Rick Caruso, the billionaire real estate developer who founded Steadfast L.A. (He managed to save his own retail center in the Palisades by hiring private firefighters.)

Measure ULA continued to rankle industry pros with agents saying it impacted deals across the board and multifamily developers talking about pivoting away from new construction in the City of Los Angeles.

“The math ain’t mathing,” said LaTerra Development’s Chris Tourtellotte on developing new apartment buildings in the City of Los Angeles, at The Real Deal’s inaugural L.A. roundtable event in September.

Local and state politicians tried to find ways to amend the so-called “mansion tax,” which since April 2023 has imposed a 4 percent tax on property sales above $5 million and 5.5 percent on transactions totaling more than $10 million. Bass asked the L.A. City Council to roll it back temporarily for Palisades victims, which led to a Los Angeles City Council committee voting in November to explore that. State politicians sought — and — failed to cut tax rates for some newly built multifamily and commercial properties.

“It’s continuing to be challenging and they really need to fix it because it’s the crux of the issues today when we’re selling anything residential, even commercial, it comes up and it really has probably stopped 50 percent of the deals, maybe even more,” Aaron Kirman, CEO of Christie’s International Real Estate Southern California, said at TRD’s event.

Vertical construction for the $10 million One Beverly Hills, near the intersection of Santa Monica and Wilshire boulevards, commenced at the end of November, a milestone celebrated by the City of Beverly Hills and the project’s developers. The two-tower mixed-use development includes residences, an Aman Beverly Hill hotel, up to 45 stores and restaurants and 10 acres of botanical gardens and open space. Beverly Hills Mayor Sharona Nazarian told the Los Angeles Times the project is “an important addition to Beverly Hills.”

Also in Beverly Hills, developer Leo Pustilnikov scored a potentially far-reaching victory when a Los Angeles County superior court judge ruled that the city violated state housing law by attempting to block his 19-story, 165-unit apartment building with a hotel and restaurant. The ruling forced the city to resume review of the developer’s project and may impact Beverly Hills’ strategy for blocking other builder’s remedy projects, a California legal loophole allowing developers to override local planning when cities fail to adopt a timely and compliant local housing plan.

Downtown Los Angeles grappled with a slow recovery in 2025 due to pandemic-related issues, immigration raids and subsequent protests, like the “No Kings” day of action against the Trump administration.

Dozens of people were arrested following a large-scale U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement raid in the Los Angeles Fashion District on June 6. The raids created question marks around the state’s homebuilding industry, which was already facing labor shortages. Protests resulted in violence, including the destruction of property, attacks on law enforcement and freeway blockades.

There was a glimmer of hope for Downtown L.A. when TRD reported in August that there were two serious buyers vying for Oceanwide Plaza and a deal was expected to close by the end of the year. That didn’t happen and the half-built abandoned eyesore’s future remains uncertain.

Of course the year was not without some celebrity news and interpersonal industry drama that drew reader interest.

Beyoncé and Jay-Z took out a second $57.75 million mortgage on their Bel Air mansion, bringing the total amount borrowed on the property to around $110.6 million.

“Million Dollar Listing Los Angeles” agent Josh Flagg sued his former boss, Stephen Kotler, over alleged hacking. “Million Dollar Listing” star Tracy Tutor departed Douglas Elliman for Compass after turbulence at the former firm. And billionaire developer Donald Bren disavowed his son, David Bren, in the wake of lawsuits in which the younger Bren allegedly used his family name to sell fake Beverly Hills club memberships.