To hear the skeptics tell it, Los Angeles County is far from prime real estate these days.
Surveys of residents show deep dissatisfaction about the quality of life. Data show Los Angeles County’spopulation dropping even as other places rebound.
But when it come to real estate values, the center core of Los Angeles County still holds a major advantage over its fast-growing suburbs, according to a Times data analysis.
In fact, the gap in price between Los Angeles’ center and its far-flung suburbs is greater than many other major cities, an analysis based on data from the real estate company Redfin found.
Homes in Los Angeles County sold for 66.8% higher than in L.A.’s surrounding suburbs in June, according to the data. For this analysis, the suburbs were Riverside, San Bernardino and Ventura counties. Orange County, where average home prices are higher than Los Angeles County’s, boasts bustling job centers and was counted as its own urban area.
Across the nation’s 21 biggest metropolitan areas, Los Angeles ranked first in price premium compared with suburbs, just edging out New York City, the data showed.
On a price per square foot basis, the difference is starker: homebuyers in the core of Los Angeles (as defined by Redfin) pay an 84.7% premium over those purchasing in surrounding areas.
In Phoenix, homes in the city center cost 27% more than in the suburbs and exurbs, the third-highest value of any major city. In Dallas-Fort Worth, the premium was just 11%. And in Denver, San Antonio and Detroit, suburban homes were actually more valuable than homes in the city proper.
Following the COVID-19 pandemic, return-to-office policies shifted prices up in city centers around the country, said Daryl Fairweather, Redfin’s chief economist. Additionally, she said, “soaring gas prices make living in car-dependent suburbs more expensive than before.”
Oftentimes, demand is driven by young adults starting their own families, she said. But housing demand is just one half of the pricing picture.
“There is also the supply factor, like whether suburban homes are coming on the market because baby boomers are passing on or moving elsewhere,” Fairweather said.
By some measures, the data is not surprising. Far-flung suburbs have always offered a lower-cost alternative to people wanting bigger homes and a less urban feel.
L.A.’s suburbs and exurbs have seen prices go up. In the case of the Inland Empire, prices have risen faster in recent years than L.A.’s.
But Los Angeles County still has some key advantages that other areas across the nation lack.
Los Angeles’ job centers, while disparate, can still be inaccessible from neighboring counties. Roughly 96,000 people work in Burbank, while 54,000 work in El Segundo, 2024 census data show.
“The main driver of why Los Angeles and New York would have some of the biggest premiums for the urban core would be how difficult it would be to get from the exurb to the core or even to its surrounding suburbs,” said Hans Johnson, a demographer at the Public Policy Institute of California.
Because California is so expensive, the suburbs and exurbs of Los Angeles are still more expensive compared with those of other cities. Generally, the prices get cheaper the farther out you go, he said.
Though “Rancho Cucamonga looks very different from Hemet,” he noted, Los Angeles’ suburbs and exurbs are also highly priced in comparison with other major national suburbs.
As moving farther out gets a buyer more house, he said, much of the migration from coastal to inland locales in California is driven by people looking for more affordable, larger homes.
Los Angeles and Orange counties have some other advantages. Key job centers are located there, especially for high-paying professional positions. For all of Los Angeles County’s woes, it still boasts high-quality housing stock, proximity to the beach and mountains, and top shopping destinations.
Comparing the suburbs and exurbs with Orange County is even more stark.
Orange County is the most expensive market in the entire region. The median home there sold this year for $1.25 million (or $692 per square foot), more than double the suburban and exurban median price.
Places such as Irvine and Costa Mesa are job centers and luxury communities, where home buyers pay even more: Average home prices in those Orange County communities are nearly $1.5 million.
In the years leading up to the pandemic, the price premium for homes in L.A.’s core was typically between 67% and 72%, the Redfin data show.
At the height of the California exodus — from 2021 to 2023 — the premium decreased to as low as 53% as buyers moved out of the city center for more space and to take advantage of new remote telecommuting options.
But in the years since, the premium has fully recovered to pre-pandemic levels, suggesting that the relationship in price between Los Angeles and its suburbs and exurbs may be here to stay.
As doom and gloom spread about urban blight in downtown L.A., Johnson argued that a thriving housing market can exist alongside the poverty and despair in the city’s core: “Urban California has high incomes and tremendous inequality.”
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