Echo Park and Silver Lake are the hottest markets for condo buyers right now

Los Angeles has plenty of options for buyers in the market for condos (here are a few now)—but some ‘hoods are in more demand than others. A new MLS map tracks recent sales across the city, and it found Silver Lake/Echo Park is the hottest neighborhood for condo buyers these days.

Twenty-five 25 condos sold there in the first quarter of 2017—up from just eight in the first quarter of last year. The total amount paid in those 25 sales was $17.7 million, averaging just over $700,000 per unit. That was nearly a 300 percent increase over sales volume during the same period of 2016, when condo buyers spent $4.7 million in the area.

Estately analyst Ryan Nickum tells Curbed that the market for condos in the Silver Lake area is small, but growing quickly. More condos were available in March than in the previous 12 months. Of the 13 condos on the market now, 10 have sales pending, while the median sale price of $610,000 over the past year is nearly 11 percent higher than it was a year earlier.

Sales are also up in the Baldwin Hills/Crenshaw area, as well as Hollywood, Mid-Wilshire, and Marina del Rey—which saw 83 sales this past quarter, up from 52 a year ago.

The area with the most condo sales overall was Westwood/Century City, with 119 sales. But that was a very small increase over the 116 that sold in the first quarter of last year.

With home sales surging across Los Angeles County, there aren’t a lot of legitimately cold areas on the map (many of the neighborhoods shaded blue simply don’t have many condos to begin with).

But sales have slowed in Santa Monica, where the 74 units sold in early 2017 was down a bit from the 87 sold a year earlier. In neighboring Brentwood, sales declined to 38 from 61 in the first quarter of 2016.

Courtesy MLS

• Curbed condo comparison: What $425K buys you around LA [Curbed LA]
• Here’s where condo prices are on the rise in LA [Curbed LA]
• Mapping LA’s hottest neighborhoods among homebuyers [Curbed LA]