A billionaire beverage mogul is slimming down his real estate holdings in Los Angeles and across the Western United States in a nine-figure bet on the next wave of tech wealth. 

Russ Savage, founder of Rockstar Energy and longtime luxury home investor, is listing five properties across Los Angeles, Aspen and Park City for a combined $297 million, betting that initial public offerings from companies like SpaceX and anticipated IPOs from firms like OpenAI and Anthropic will unleash a fresh crop of ultrawealthy buyers, the Wall Street Journal reported.

Savage, who sold Rockstar to PepsiCo in 2020 for roughly $4.7 billion, said he expects a surge of newly minted millionaires and billionaires to enter the housing market as major artificial intelligence and aerospace firms cash in on public offerings. The longtime investor, also known as Russell Weiner, believes those buyers will be hunting for trophy properties across multiple markets in a range of climes. 

“We’re entering a new stratosphere of top-end wealth, where there’s no limit,” Savage told the Journal. “Where are they going to buy properties? They’re going to want a ski house and they’re going to want a house in the sun.”

His portfolio hitting the market includes two Los Angeles homes asking $85 million and $34 million, respectively, an $85 million estate on Aspen’s Red Mountain and a pair of Park City properties listed for $55 million and $38 million.

Savage’s largest Los Angeles listing is a Beverly Park estate he purchased in 2007 for about $20 million. The roughly 2-acre property underwent a yearslong overhaul that included a gut renovation of the main residence, along with the addition of a guest house and fitness center. The project, delayed by the pandemic, is expected to wrap up this fall.

His second Los Angeles offering is a roughly 13,000-square-foot home in the Hollywood Hills that has bounced on and off the market since he acquired it in 2019 for about $16.5 million, once listing for as much as nearly $28 million. He also rented the home for three years for roughly $120,000 per month before taking it off the market in 2023 for a renovation effort. Savage said he decided to relist rather than continue waiting for uncertainty around Los Angeles’ Measure ULA, often dubbed the “mansion tax,” to subside.

The median sale price in Beverly Hills in April was $4.9 million, up from $3.4 million in the same period last year, per Realtor.com data cited by the Journal. Once Savage sells the homes, he plans to shift his attention to Florida, where he is pursuing additional renovation projects and looking for new acquisitions. 

— Chris Malone Méndez

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🏆 The largest new development to secure permits last week was in Toluca Lake for the construction of a nearly 12,000-square-foot multifamily building at 4423 North Cartwright Avenue. Bondfield, LLC is behind the project, according to Urbanize LA. The $4 million project will have 13 apartments — two of which will be reserved for very low income residents — and will stand five stories tall.

Job Filing Number: 24010-10000-01413

📊 On the residential side, a wilfire rebuild project received permits for a 7,670-square-foot single-family home at 951 North Chautauqua Boulevard in Pacific Palisades. The two-story house is expected to cost $1.3 million to build and will include a fire-fighting sprinkler system.

Job Filing Number: 25010-10000-06330

Alterations

🏆 Del Rey had the top alteration project to score permits last week at 11819-11821 West Lindblade Street, where plans were filed for more than 15,000 square feet of work. The project involves converting an attached garage into an accessory dwelling unit and adding a second story to enlarge the existing single-family home.

Job Filing Number: 25014-20000-05447

📊 In Encino, a similar application for 6,484 square feet of alteration work at 4184-4186 North Hayvenhurst Drive received permits. The project includes a major remodel, changing the home from one to two stories and adding an ADU.

Job Filing Number: 24014-20000-05149

Demolitions

🏆 A demolition request received permits in Northridge, where plans were filed to knock down a 14,280-square-foot retail building at 8800 North Tampa Avenue, which previously operated as a Petco. It’s unclear what will happen with the property following the demolition.

Job Filing Number: 25019-20000-02152

📊 A demolition is on the way for a school building at 4533 North Laurel Canyon Boulevard in Studio City. The Campbell Hall School is in the midst of a multi-year redevelopment masterplan working with architecture giant Gensler. 

Job Filing Number: 25019-20000-04367

Los Angeles has one of the deadest downtowns in the world, according to a new survey.

Out of 75 of the top cities around the world, L.A. ranked among the lowest for vibrancy in Gensler’s 2026 City Pulse report released this week.

Around 65% of those surveyed found DTLA vibrant compared to more than 80% vibrancy scores for New York, Chicago, Sydney and Shanghai.

The urban planning and consulting company surveyed 35,000 city residents on how they ranked their city for a variety of statements. Los Angeles ranked 20th-lowest globally and 11th-lowest among 34 U.S. cities in vibrancy.

Downtown Los Angeles needs more people to return to downtown to work, shop and eat if it wants to boost its scores, said Kelly Farrell, the managing director of Gensler’s L.A. office

“L.A.’s kind of central problem is that businesses have left L.A. We need them to bring the offices back in,” she said. “Bring the people back in so they’re staying after work and interacting with those businesses that are in the area.”

While there are pockets of downtown that are thriving and local residents say life is improving, Los Angeles’ downtown suffers from an image problem that is weighing on how it is perceived.

Gensler’s report highlights key factors that contribute to a thriving downtown area. Downtowns should have a blend of shops, offices, and housing, walkability, and a role as a cultural and entertainment hub.

Despite its status as the city’s historic seat of government, finance, arts and sports, downtown L.A. has experienced a trend of offices leaving post-pandemic, leading to fewer visitors and the remaining stores and restaurants struggling.

The Los Angeles Office of Finance showed that the number of businesses reporting leaving downtown has increased greatly over the last two years, following a lull post-pandemic. Similarly, downtown has accounted for a growing share of overall exits from the region in the last five years.

According to a Times data analysis, downtown has regularly accounted for the highest number of closures. Among the neighborhoods hit the hardest by closures, South Park, the Fashion District, Central City and Pico-Union had the highest number of closures from 2024 to 2025. Nearly 40% of the office space in the Financial District is functionally empty, and 30% of retail space is vacant, according to CBRE.

Another important factor is whether or not people linger there. Rather than the number of visitors, Gensler said in the report, the amount of time spent downtown matters more in cultivating a thriving downtown area.

L.A. has consistently struggled to get locals back into downtown in recent years.

Perceived safety issues downtown are one major reason businesses are leaving downtown, and locals won’t go there.

Vandalism, assaults and robberies downtown have driven businesses out, and a noticeable lack of police presence makes people reluctant to return. Still, Los Angeles Police Department Capt. Kelly Muniz said in April that crime is down 10% from last year.

Gensler’s L.A. director says that as people flood back into downtown, crime will continue to decline.

“One of the best things we can do for safety is have an abundance of population,” said Farrell. “You will see right now that we have a lot of great ground-floor retail that’s empty. As that gets fuller, we typically see that crime starts to go down with it.”

Farrell said results can change dramatically between each year of the survey, and as L.A. sees more offices return to downtown, perception of vibrancy will increase with it.

🏆 The largest new development to secure permits last week was in Encino, where plans were filed to build a nearly 46,000-square-foot affordable housing complex at 11033 West Hartsook Street. The six-story project will feature 59 apartments and includes two levels of subterranean parking. It’s unclear who is behind the $9 million development.

Job Filing Number: 21010-20000-05610

📊 Logos Faith Development also obtained permits for a project in South Los Angeles where it plans to build a 33,300-square-foot multifamily complex at 708 West 85th Street. The four-story affordable housing project will house 62 units and is valued at $7.3 million. Logos partnered with St. Rest Friendship Church which owns the project site for the development. JZA Architecture will design the building.

Job Filing Numbers: 24010-10000-03424, 25030-10000-01563

📊 In Koreatown, plans to build a six-story, 16-unit apartment building at 110 North Mariposa Avenue received permits. The $3.7 million project will span 19,231 square feet and include a ground-floor garage. Based on a CEQA report, it appears that architecture and planning firm bBA Studios is behind the development, which will rise in the place of a previous two-unit residential structure.

Job Filing Number: 25010-10000-00657

Alterations

🏆Also in Koreatown, Jamison Properties received permits for more than 200,000 square feet of alteration work at 3424 West Wilshire Boulevard. The firm is planning to convert an existing 13-story commercial office building into 260 joint living and work quarters. Jamison obtained a $60-million loan for the project, The Real Deal previously reported.

Job Filing Number: 24016-10000-13194

📊 Over in Boyle Heights, the nonprofit A Community of Friends received permits to alter 47,033 square feet of space at 2201 East 1st Street. The $10 million project involves a major remodel to redevelop the current two-story, 62-unit SRO building into a four-story, 80-unit affordable housing complex.

Job Filing Number: 22014-10000-06157

The City of Los Angeles has acquired one of the first affordable housing projects completed under its Executive Directive 1. 

The Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles purchased Sands Off Sawtelle, a 44-unit apartment building at 11418 Missouri Avenue in Sawtelle, for $16.7 million, L.A. Business First reported. Developers Generation Real Estate Partners and Eris Development sold the four-story property in a deal working out to $378,400 per unit. 

The Sands Off Sawtelle development was completed in 2025 and was one of the first projects to begin construction under ED1, implemented in late 2022. HACLA purchased the property to preserve the affordable housing in the West Los Angeles neighborhood, an agency spokesperson told L.A. Business FIrst.

Of the 44 units, 17 will be reserved for households earning up to 50 percent of the area median income, and 26 units would be reserved for residents earning up to 80 percent of the area median income; the remaining residence is set aside for an on-site property manager. 

Zoning changes under ED1 made it financially feasible for Generation Real Estate Partners to build low-income housing in a high-resource area without government subsidies, Generation co-founder Steven Schiebe said. 

“The new zoning law lifted traditional design constraints on height, floor area ratio, density and more, which had stood in the way of helping address the city’s housing shortage in West Los Angeles,” Schiebe said. 

ED1 streamlines approvals for 100 percent affordable developments by slashing city review timelines and allowing projects to skip public hearings. As of last summer, developers had submitted proposals for 35,000 ED1-backed units and secured approvals for approximately 29,000, CoStar reported. 

“Market-rate housing [construction] has been essentially canceled at this point,” Chris Aiello, founding partner at Six Peak Capital, told CoStar. “Virtually no land makes sense from an investment perspective to build market rate.”

Los Angeles now ranks among the nation’s top markets building affordable housing, according to a RentCafe report earlier this year. About 21 percent of all apartments completed in the L.A. metro area between 2020 and 2024 were affordable units. The more than 9,400 units built represent a 79.5 percent increase compared to the previous five-year period between 2015 and 2019. 

— Chris Malone Méndez

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In addition to more than 500 industry professionals in attendance, Connect CRE Los Angeles 2026 had a formidable array of speakers. These included the current Mayor, Karen Bass, a former Mayor and current candidate for Governor, Antonio Villaraigosa; and a lineup of other heavy hitters from the worlds of development, financing, investment, economics and government. 

The video below summarizes the candid discussions that took place onstage at the Intercontinental Los Angeles Downtown at the May 28 conference. Later this year, the Connect Events team will be back in LA for more in-person events, including Connect Apartments (Sept. 22) and Connect Retail West and Connect Healthcare (both in November; dates TBA). 

601W Companies has completed its acquisition of one of Brookfield’s distressed office towers in Downtown Los Angeles. 

The New York-based firm purchased the 55-story Class A office building at 333 South Grand Avenue, known as the Wells Fargo Center North Tower, for an undisclosed amount, Commercial Observer reported. 601W was reportedly in talks to pay roughly $180 million earlier this year, per CO. 

The firm made the buy with a $132 million first-mortgage acquisition loan from Northwind Group. The loan also includes an additional $48 million “good news” lending facility for costs related to future leasing. 

The deal lands as downtown is in the midst of an office value reset after hitting rock bottom in the pandemic. The “broader repricing” of the local market “has created an attractive entry point that fundamentally changes the competitive position of new ownership,” Northwind Group founder Ran Eliasaf said in a statement.

The 1.4-million-square-foot office building recently underwent more than $63 million in capital improvements, including a redevelopment of retail space and renovations to the lobby. The upgrades are expected to attract “a concentration of financial institutions, law firms and government tenants” to the Bunker Hill building, Eliasaf added, as more so-called traditional office users increasingly gobble up space downtown. 

Brookfield listed the distressed property for sale last fall. At the time, the Wells Fargo Center’s North Tower was 61 percent leased, while the 63,000-square-foot retail portion was just 35 percent leased, The Real Deal reported. Vacancy at the building’s offices is higher than the downtown office market’s 32.4 percent overall vacancy rate, per Colliers’ first quarter data. A deal for 601W to buy the property first emerged early this year, TRD reported. 

The roughly $506 million debt on the Wells Fargo Center North Tower was in default, but the property was not handed over to a receiver, unlike other downtown offices once owned by Brookfield. It’s the latest former Brookfield property downtown to sell out of distress. Earlier this year, the firm sold the adjacent Bank of America Plaza to Capital Group for $210 million. — Chris Malone Méndez

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It’s a special edition of sorts, with a “landlords want their money” column, and “they’ll do whatever it takes to get it” theme.  

In the case of One California Plaza, it’s a receiver, really … but semantics. 

In any case, Trigild — the court-appointed receiver of the One Cal Plaza office tower on Bunker Hill after a $300 million default — accused boutique investment bank MJC Partners of owing no less than $350,000, in a complaint dated late May. 

The suit is over a $500,000 early lease termination fee, of which MJC Partners has allegedly only paid $150,000.  The receiver and MJC Partners did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The end of the landlord-tenant relationship — which One Cal Plaza owners Rising Realty Partners and DigitalBridge inherited when they purchased the tower — came after MJC “repeatedly fell behind on their rent payments and associated costs” on roughly 10,000 square feet of office space, the receiver claimed. 

MJC’s original 2015 lease agreement was made when the landlord was Maguire Properties, per copies attached to the complaint. The original lease was an eight-year agreement, and the annual base rent reached around $279,000 or about $33 per square foot by the end. It was extended to June 2026 — when Rising and DigitalBridge were landlords — and the rent was about $300,000. (The lease termination agreement was signed June 2025.)

Jamison vs Hanshin Pocha

Next up: Jamison and its Korean comfort food tenant Handhin Pocha at the family company’s City Center on 6th mall in Koreatown. (The loan on the mall had a stint in special servicing recently.) 

Jamison, in an early June complaint, claimed it served Hanshin Pocha a three-day notice to pay or quit last month. The past due rent was $71,250, per the lawsuit, which the tenant has since allegedly failed to pay. 

Now, Jamison wants that $71,250 — plus, $965 per day, starting June 1. A Jamison representative declined to comment, and the Hanshin Pocha owner did not immediately respond to a request.

The Jamison-Hanshin Pocha 10-year lease was signed in 2019, and the highest annual rent for the roughly 5,000 square foot space would total about $284,000. 

Hackman vs Erewhon

Lastly, a counterattack to a landlord’s unpaid rent complaint. 

In case you missed it, Hackman Capital Partners is suing Erewhon over unpaid rent. Michael Hackman’s company claims its luxe Culver Steps tenant owes more than $275,000. The rent itself — which does not include other rent-related costs like common area maintenance — comes out to more than a million dollars each year, per the 15-year lease that began June 2023 and was attached to the complaint.

Now, Erewhon has responded by disputing the claim and asking the court to appoint a certified public accountant to handle it and keep Hackman from taking further action. 

It seems this dispute centers on common area maintenance (CAM) costs — which is still rent, but considered additional rent in commercial real estate leases. 

Erewhon’s share of the Hackman Culver City real estate CAM costs is 34 percent, based on the more than 14,000 square feet it takes up. Even so, Erewhon claims it paid. “Defendants paid all the disputed CAM Costs under protest solely to avoid threatened default, forfeiture and other lease enforcement remedies,” the counter reads. 

Hackman and Erewhon did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the latest.

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The Los Angeles City Council postponed some upzoning mandated by Senate Bill 79 by allowing increased density in areas across the city. 

The City Council voted unanimously this week in favor of the Low-Rise Ordinance, permitting developers to build up to four stories in 57 neighborhoods near transit stops, LAist reported. 

The move caps off several months of top-down pushback against SB 79 taking effect on July 1. 

Mayor Karen Bass and Council Member Traci Park called on Gov. Gavin Newsom to veto the transit-oriented upzoning bill last fall but he signed the legislation. That prompted the City Council in November to ask the Planning Commission to draw up a local alternative to the law, as SB 79 allows cities to delay full implementation until 2030 if they create local legal pathways to create more housing. 

The Planning Commission put forward options earlier this year, and in March, the City Council voted to upzone 55 single-family and low-density areas, largely concentrated in Central L.A., West L.A., the Eastside and the San Fernando Valley. It was an expansion of the Opportunity Corridor Transition Area, a provision that incentivizes developers to build small, multifamily housing projects near transit. 

The change allows buildings between four and 16 units and up to four stories to be built in single-family and low-density areas. 

The Low-Rise Ordinance seeks to delay SB 79 in areas deemed historically significant, at high risk of fires or economically “low-resource.” 

The state’s push for upzoning under SB 79 would affect nearly three-quarters of single-family-zoned land across the city.

“The promise of having duplex, triplex and courtyard typologies of housing are being lost with this measure,” Barbara Broide, a Westside Neighborhood Council boardmember, said of SB 79’s “unintended consequences.” “Instead we’re seeing four-story apartment buildings with no setbacks, no trees, no place for families, for children to play or tomatoes to be planted.”

— Chris Malone Méndez

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The City of Angels lost nearly 10,000 residents last year. L.A. County lost 62,000.

It’s not exactly a mass exodus, but L.A.’s shrinking population is enough to leave a few economists shuddering at the long-term implications of so many people skipping town: less political influence, a smaller tax base, etc.

But amid the Southland’s sea of change, one thing seems to always stay the same: Housing is still expensive.

Typically, population declines and aging housing stock conjure visions of Rust Belt decay, where land loses value and abandoned homes sell for next to nothing. But in L.A. — despite vanishing Hollywood jobs and immigration crackdowns — housing costs remain sky-high.

This year, the region has seen a slight dip in home values and a slight uptick in vacancy rates. But L.A. County’s population has been whittling down for the last decade, with 400,000 people leaving since 2016. During that stretch, home prices and rents have nearly doubled.

What gives?

Experts say a few factors are at play, but there’s one sneaky trend that’s often overlooked: household composition.

“People are moving out of L.A., but households are becoming smaller, so the number of households that require housing is actually rising,” said Stephanie Hawke, associate research director of land use and supply at the Terner Center.

Hawke said the number of one- to two-person households is rising while three-plus-person households are falling. A single-family home that once held a family of four now holds a couple with no kids. An apartment that once held a couple with no kids now holds a single person.

In 2010, the average household size in L.A. County was 2.98, according to U.S. Census Data. In 2024, it was 2.81. That might seem a marginal difference, but it actually represents hundreds of thousands of people.

“A growing housing stock is accommodating fewer people,” said Hans Johnson, a senior fellow at the Public Policy Institute of California.

Johnson said the shifting demographics are coming from both the young and the old. Declining marriage rates among people in their 20s and 30s is leading to lower birth rates, while older people tend to live alone after their spouse dies. Both lead to smaller average households.

Another element keeping housing prices high is the classic law of supply and demand.

“We build less than we need,” Hawke said.

State housing goals say L.A. County needs to add more than 800,000 housing units by 2029 to keep up with demand, including more than 450,000 in L.A. But despite laws meant to boost housing production, including duplex-focused Senate Bill 9 and density-focused SB 79, the city appears well short of that goal.

“California has long had a housing shortage,” Johnson said. “So even though we’ve been building new housing over the last five years at a time of negative population growth, there’s an outstanding stock of undersupply that means markets are stressed, and prices remain higher in L.A. than the rest of the country.”

Real estate agent Bret Parsons said in many cases, it doesn’t make sense for homeowners to sell even if they want to, which exacerbates the supply shortage.

“People sit on homes because they don’t want to pay capital gains taxes or the ‘Mansion tax,’” he said. “They refuse to sell because they don’t want to give that money to the government, so there are few houses available.”

Another factor? The types of people leaving vs. the ones replacing them.

“Remember who’s moving out and moving in,” Hawke said. “Lower-income folks are being forced out, and higher-income folks who can afford higher rents are moving in.”

A report from the Public Policy Institute of California showed that housing costs have become the biggest reason people leave the state. Lower-income workers without college degrees are often moving out, and they’re generally replaced by higher-income workers who can pay more for housing. As a result, the market doesn’t adjust, and rents stay high.

Parsons said the dynamic is widening the wealth gap in L.A. Homeowners stay put, enjoying ever-rising property values, while renters are forced to leave the city and start over elsewhere with no equity built up.

The mini exodus also brings a more existential question: Is it such a bad thing if people leave? In Southern California — a car-jammed, smog-choked metropolis that serves as the face of suburban sprawl, where rush hour is actually four hours and the hip new bagel joint always has a line down the block — is it the worst thing in the world to get a little breathing room?

From a political perspective, perhaps. The American Redistricting Project forecasts California losing four congressional seats in the 2030 apportionment due to population loss, the most of any state by far.

But Hawke sees the issue through a different lens.

“You have to think about what, and who, makes L.A.” she said. “Are you forcing those folks out? And will it be the same city if everybody leaves?”

Johnson said historically, population growth is a reflection of how desirable a place is, but declines aren’t necessarily negative. He said L.A. County, and California as a whole, have embraced a slow-growth mindset for a few years now, and the state already lost a congressional seat as a result of the 2020 census.

“It’s about following the right examples,” he said. “The Northeast has embraced slow growth while still doing well economically, but there are other places in the world struggling with stagnant economies, poverty, and cheap-but-low-quality housing. That’s a model you won’t want to repeat.”

Should the departure continue, or even increase, experts say it’s still not likely L.A. will ever be overbuilt like some of its Rust Belt counterparts due to pent-up demand that has never quite been met. Johnson said there is market elasticity tied to migration; as we build more housing and it impacts prices and rents, then fewer people will leave, and the ones who were priced out could return.

“California is a desirable place to live. Weather, oceans, mountains,” he said. “It’s hard to envision it ever being overbuilt.”