Muted Reaction to Hilton & Hyland’s Latest Shift

Hilton & Hyland lost its managing director, and you could call industry reaction to the latest in the brokerage’s saga muted to say the least.

Steve Katz, who joined the brokerage a little over a year ago, exited quietly shortly after New Year’s Day, and was succeeded by Felix Pena.

A lack of buzz about the latest twist at Hilton & Hyland calls into question the brokerage’s relevance in the market, and it comes off of what could be viewed as a particularly tough stretch for the business. That includes agent and executive departures, a lawsuit from what is now Hilton & Hyland’s former landlord over alleged unpaid rent, and a move to smaller offices on Maple Drive in Beverly Hills’s Golden Triangle.

Interestingly, the Maple Drive address is the same building where Hilton Hilton — the brokerage led by Hilton & Hyland co-founder Rick Hilton — has set up shop. That business also seems to be at its own inflection point. The Real Deal reported earlier this month The Agency poached Justin Alexander and two of his team members from Hilton Hilton. That’s left the brokerage with an agent headcount of four, according to records pulled from the California Department of Real Estate on Friday.

On the primaries

Want another example of a muted reaction from this past week? Look no further than L.A.’s mayoral race, which saw Fourth District Councilmember Nithya Raman’s last-minute entry about a week ago.

If residential real estate cared about this latest development for the June primaries, the industry hid it well.

Raman, a Democratic Socialists of America member, turned the heads of some within real estate late last month with her proposed Measure United to House L.A. carveouts, which mainly speak to commercial developers. That’s a 15-year exemption from the tax for newly built multifamily, commercial and mixed-use projects. For existing commercial and residential properties, the proposed amendments do little outside a carveout in instances of a natural disaster. This could explain the largely silent reaction to the latest development at city hall.

Still, when it comes to mayor of Los Angeles, the question is whether the industry’s residential segment will offer a collective — or at least stronger — voice on the matter.

What people are saying

In residential real estate, market dynamics are often oversimplified to either a buyer’s or seller’s market. What’s playing out right now is more nuanced.

Carolwood Estates’ Jonathan Mogharrabi and Marci Kays are coming off a busy week in which they closed on two Los Feliz properties. That’s no easy feat in an Eastside market Mogharrabi described as being more “sensitive” in terms of deal flow. It’s not that the market is slow, he said. It could be that the sell strategy of other listings may be missing the mark or buyer expectations.

What he’s saying holds weight considering he and Kays just double ended Wednesday’s closing of Fear of God founder and designer Jerry Lorenzo’s Los Feliz home at 2401 Nottingham Avenue for $8.6 million. Then, on Friday, the two represented the buyer and seller on 2720 Glendower Avenue for $7.4 million.

What Mogharrabi is saying lines up with a point Sotheby’s International Realty’s Nicole Plaxen noted last month when the listing at 1200 Bel Air Road was reduced to just under $100 million. That price cut wasn’t the result of no buyer interest, she pointed out. Instead, it was about meeting “today’s buyer mindset.”

LA’s condo market

Next week sales are expected to resume on the former Pendry Residences, now called the Sun Rose Residences.

There are a dozen units left at the 40-residence property sitting at 8420 Sunset Boulevard in West Hollywood. They’ll be priced from $4.3 million to $8 million and range from 3,010 square feet to 4,656 square feet of interior space.

Condo building relaunches and resets are not an anomaly in a market often viewed as less mature than New York or Miami. Salespeople like to talk about the demand for security and services at a condo tower that are supposedly boosting local demand, but one can’t turn away from all the about-faces on strategies to sell.

Last June, TRD reported on the reintroduction of the Mandarin Oriental Residences in Beverly Hills and The Harland in West Hollywood. Each property has its own reason for the why behind the retooling. Part of it was a pricing mismatch. Sometimes it comes down to understanding the market and what amenities make sense.

All that to say, it will be interesting to see what’s in store for when the Aman Residences — the ultra-luxe condos at Cain’s One Beverly Hills mixed-use project — are delivered to the market.