MWest Holdings Sells L.A.'s Wilshire Royale Apartments for $45.5 M
Located in the Westlake District, the 193-unit multifamily asset includes 8,933 square feet of ground floor retail.
MWest Holdings has sold the Wilshire Royale apartments for $45.5 million to Mosser Capital Management. The 193-unit property includes 8,933 square feet of ground floor retail space.
Located in the Westlake District, The Wilshire Royale was built in 1927. It features neoclassical architecture, one of the few examples of the architectural style left in Los Angeles. MWest renovated the asset in 2017, using historic photos as a guide to revive the original Moroccan-style architecture and design in the building. Interior units have also been renovated and will continue to be renovated as they turn. The renovation helped drive value at the property and occupancy rates during MWest’s ownership.
MWest worked diligently to bring the property back to its original grandeur, even purchasing furniture pieces from the Figueroa Hotel. “That was really urban archeology,” he said in a previous interview with GlobeSt.com.
The area, nestled between Downtown Los Angeles and Koreatown, is also thriving. It has 78 million square feet of office space and two metro stations just a short walk away.
Overall, Los Angeles’ apartment market has quickly recovered from the pandemic. Apartment leasing is at a 15-year high, and demand has been so healthy that vacancy has fallen to 4% and rents are up 3% for the year, according to research from Marcus & Millichap. Job growth is behind the market’s swift recovery. In the second quarter, 89,000 jobs were added to the employment market. At the same time, 9,700 units were leased and the county added 37,000 new households to Los Angeles County. Marcus & Millichap expects equally strong job growth in the second half of the year, ultimately predicting that 250,000 jobs will be added to the market this year.
The activity is beginning to attract investment capital back to the market, as this deal shows; however, investors were slower to return to the market. The same Marcus & Millichap research reports that deal activity was down 25% for the first half of the year. The decrease in activity was most notable in the $1 million to $10 million-investment segment, which is largely made up of class-B and class-C properties.
Joseph Grabiec, Kevin Green and Greg Harris of Institutional Property Advisors represented the seller in the deal and secured the buyer.