Downtown Los Angeles has seen one of the most significant declines in apartment construction among the 50 largest cities in the United States, according to a new report from RentCafe.
The real estate data website found that only 19.1% of new apartments built in Los Angeles between 2020 and 2024 were located in the downtown area. This represents a 31-point drop from the last decade, when 50.5% of new apartment construction was concentrated downtown.
A total of 5,792 new apartments were built in downtown L.A. between 2020 and 2024, the study found.
RentCafe’s analysis suggests that downtown L.A. has been heavily impacted by the rise of remote work since the COVID pandemic, leading developers to focus their attention elsewhere.
“As cities reassess their downtown strategies in the wake of hybrid work (over fully-remote), few have seen a more dramatic decline than Los Angeles,” the authors noted.
Despite this shift in new construction, RentCafe said “adaptive reuse” -the repurposing of existing buildings- continues to be a factor in shaping downtown L.A. housing.
Converted buildings accounted for 14.5% of new downtown L.A. units this decade, the same percentage as in the 2010s.
Washington, DC, has seen the highest number of new downtown apartments among the largest U.S. cities between 2020 and 2024, nearly 23,000 units, followed by Long Beach, CA; Milwaukee; Detroit; and San Francisco.
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