Brentwood Breaks Ground After Four Years, USC Gets 1,261 Beds, and Van Nuys Keeps Building
Five days. Three groundbreakings or openings. And a set of locations—Brentwood, Exposition Park, Van Nuys—that together span the full geographic and economic range of this city. That's what Los Angeles looks like right now when you zoom out far enough to see the whole picture: a market building simultaneously at every price point, in every submarket, for every kind of resident. This week's projects are proof that the pipeline isn't slowing. It's spreading.
On September 1st, four years of entitlement finally gave way to a shovel in the ground at 11905 Wilshire Boulevard in Brentwood. The project from Radha Group's Nirup Venkatachalam—designed by Carrier Johnson + Culture—is a seven-story, 81-unit mixed-use building featuring studios, one-, and two-bedrooms above roughly 3,500 square feet of ground-floor commercial space, a 105-car garage, a gym, a plaza, and two outdoor decks. Nine units are reserved for very-low-income households. Completion is targeted for 2028. Four years from first filing to groundbreaking is unfortunately not unusual in Los Angeles—but what matters now is that the shovels are moving. This delivery will represent the first new multifamily supply on Wilshire Boulevard between the 405 and Barrington in years. In a submarket where Apple's Westside campus in adjacent Culver City is generating sustained employment demand across the entire corridor, 81 units of new rental supply at this address will not sit vacant. Brentwood commands premiums for a reason—and this building is arriving at exactly the right moment to capture them.
A few miles southeast, one of the most anticipated student housing deliveries in recent LA memory has officially opened its doors. The Standard at Expo Park—an eight-story, 429-unit, 1,261-bed complex developed by Landmark Properties at 3900 South Figueroa Street—now stands where a surface parking lot once occupied one of the most strategically valuable parcels in the Olympic corridor. Five renovated 1920s townhomes. A rooftop pool. An amenity package built to compete seriously for USC students' rent checks. And a location that could not be better timed: more than $100 million in public infrastructure improvements are actively being deployed throughout Exposition Park ahead of the 2028 Summer Olympics, and the $1 billion Lucas Museum of Narrative Art is scheduled to open late 2026 directly in the neighborhood. For investors evaluating the Figueroa corridor and Exposition Park, the Olympic investment context is not background noise—it is the primary demand driver. When $100 million-plus in public infrastructure converges on a neighborhood ahead of the world's most watched sporting event, the residential and commercial markets in the immediate vicinity respond with sustained, multi-year demand. Landmark Properties is positioned to capture some of the strongest student housing absorption in LA in years. The timing is not accidental.
And quietly, without fanfare, 14243 Sylvan Street in Van Nuys began framing this week—another affordable housing project under construction just northeast of the Van Nuys Civic Center, one of the San Fernando Valley's largest public employment anchors. Van Nuys sits at the functional center of the Valley: 405, 101, Orange Line BRT all converging in a submarket that serves as the administrative and civic backbone of the region. Affordable housing at this specific location—within walking distance of court services, county offices, and Valley transit hubs—is exactly the kind of proximity-to-employment siting that produces stable long-term occupancy and minimal vacancy. This is the third confirmed affordable housing project in Van Nuys in the past 60 days. When affordable developers—among the most financially constrained builders operating in this market—are deploying capital in a submarket at this frequency, they are telling you something about the underlying demand fundamentals that the headline numbers don't always capture. Van Nuys's long-term trajectory is pointed in one direction. And the builders know it.
Brentwood. Exposition Park. Van Nuys. Four-year entitlement victories, Olympic-corridor timing, and affordable conviction in the heart of the Valley. Los Angeles is building everywhere, for everyone, all at once. September is off to a strong start.
Joseph Trujillo is a co-owner and Editor-at-Large for L.A. STYLE Magazine and Host of Mr. Los Angeles Real Estate with eXp Luxury. DRE# 02007156. UCI: dle-agent-1763665847-28fa430e. For inquiries: joseph@mrlosangelesrealestate.com | +1 424-655-2641
